
An entomologist rates ant emojis - rbanffy
http://curlicuecal.tumblr.com/post/175362924100/an-entomologist-rates-ant-emojis
======
bdz
Kinda similar:

Investigating the Potential for Miscommunication Using Emoji
[https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-
for-m...](https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-
miscommunication-using-emoji/)

Paper: [http://grouplens.org/site-
content/uploads/Emoji_Interpretati...](http://grouplens.org/site-
content/uploads/Emoji_Interpretation_Paper.pdf)

It's intersting because there is a huge difference between the simple emoji
faces accross devices. The grinning face example is really good because the
Apple and Twitter version doesn't look happy at all, like a different
expression under the same emoji

[https://grouplens.org/site-
content/uploads/GrinningFaceWSmil...](https://grouplens.org/site-
content/uploads/GrinningFaceWSmilingEyes-768x154.png)

~~~
Tomte
Oh yeah. I used to send an emoji that looked to me like grinning and my friend
told me after months she was really feeling uncomfortable with me snarling all
the time.

I wish those emojis carried a very small caption. Also because I can't
recognize what half of them are supposed to mean.

~~~
Cthulhu_
The "crying with laughter" one is similar, some people only see the tears
(they are rendered on relatively small screens after all).

~~~
talltimtom
That one has caused so much confusion amongst the older members of my family
on Facebook. My aunt to this day still posts “crying with laughter” to posts
about celebrities dying or natural disasters. We’ve told her it’s not a sad
smiley, but I think she just can’t tell the two apart any more.

------
folli
Reminds me of the dead butterflies: [http://emilydamstra.com/news/please-
enough-dead-butterflies/](http://emilydamstra.com/news/please-enough-dead-
butterflies/)

~~~
kqr
Huh, I could have sworn seeing real, live butterflies with their wings
stretched forward. Of course not when it is resting, but perhaps when it is
just about to take off? Or when it is defensive/threatened?

~~~
nerdponx
I always forget to make note of this when I see a butterfly.

I think what happens is that they tend to hold their wings up, which gives the
impression that they are pointing forward even when they are not.

Then again, I'm not an entomologist.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/8e0hj3/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/8e0hj3/blue_morpho_butterfly/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/5xj1pn/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/5xj1pn/narcissistic_butterfly_is/)

------
anc84
Archive mirror for Europeans who do not want Yahoo/Oath/Tumblr cookies:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20180718095145/http://curlicuecal...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180718095145/http://curlicuecal.tumblr.com/post/175362924100/an-
entomologist-rates-ant-emojis)

~~~
djhworld
I tried turning all the tracking/ads off but it just kept on redirecting me to
their GDPR preferences screen every time I clicked submit.

~~~
fukuro
Intentional dark pattern or honest bug?

I have had this 'bug' on multiple different websites. Forbes in particular is
a nice example, they take 5mins to save your preferences and then it says they
"are working on it. You can change your preferences." (Not direct quote).

------
doomrobo
Off topic, but I think this is interesting:

> I don’t know what this is?

I think statements followed by a question mark is a distinctly Tumblr-y
convention. It's generally used to express confusion. Kinda like raising one's
pitch at the end of a statement to indicate uncertainty.

Pretty cool.

~~~
wild_preference
It’s actually just a lame, noncommittal way to say something. People should
just use the period and stand by what they say, imo.

~~~
yosito
It's a linguistic device that adds richness to the language?

~~~
adito
okay, that's nice use of the question mark.

------
Max_Mustermann
Apparently there's a whole subreddit dedicated to these reviews:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/EmojiReview/](https://www.reddit.com/r/EmojiReview/)

~~~
fhood
Of course there is, and it reminds me that deep down I still love reddit.

------
talltimtom
It’s odd that there’s no mention of the fact that the samsung centaur ant has
5 legs.

~~~
jmull
It's there, it's just exactly behind the back leg in the foreground.

------
laurex
What surprises me is the lack of an emoji with an unambiguous meaning of
"thank you." I use the prayer hands but that seems to be implying something
that doesn't quite fit. Raised hands is somewhat like thanks but also like,
"that's cool."

~~~
sangnoir
> What surprises me is the lack of an emoji with an unambiguous meaning...

Yeah, unfortunately that is hard to express pictorially as there's no
universal human gesture or face for it (unlike most facial expressions). I
have seen the clapping hands [1] use to say thanks, and alternatively the
right-facing fist[2] (as in fist-bump) - but the meaning of the latter can be
lost entirely depending on demography of recipient, or interpreted as being
aggressive (I'll punch you), and the former might be understood to be
applause.

1\. HN does not render Emojis - [https://emojipedia.org/clapping-hands-
sign/](https://emojipedia.org/clapping-hands-sign/)

2\. [https://emojipedia.org/right-facing-fist/](https://emojipedia.org/right-
facing-fist/) sometimes combined with the left-facing fist to make a fist-
bump.

------
tveita
I'm surprised that they don't mention that most of the ants are missing
mandibles.

------
gok
This is so very much what I come to HN for. Bravo!

------
bambax
A little OT but how emojis work?

Does each device send a code, interpreted by the recipient device/platform
with its own library of images, or do devices send pictures, received as is?
Or does it depend on the platform? Is there a standard?

~~~
leni536
The standard is Unicode. The ant is U+1F41C. I have mixed feelings about
emojis in the Unicode standard. Apparently this is a Unicode character
'PISTOL':

[https://emojipedia.org/pistol/](https://emojipedia.org/pistol/)

~~~
andai
Very interesting, in this case there isn't just a different design or
different appearance between devices, but it's actually a _different object._

~~~
Cthulhu_
I heard (but I may have misheard / misremembered) they're actually planning to
remove that emoji from the standard.

It's an er, interesting position that the emoji standards committee (if that's
the term) finds itself in. Do they have the right to determine discourse?
There have been small riots (if that's the right term) about skin colors,
genders, family composition, jobs, and now about weapons as well. They have
the job (which I don't envy) to design an international language that is able
to express a lot of concepts and emotions on the one hand, but on the other
not to offend if possible.

And then there's the implementers, who have to add an extra layer to it - like
the Apple crash bug which was caused by a certain flag emoji being available
in one country but not the other.

~~~
leni536
>They have the job (which I don't envy) to design an international language
that is able to express a lot of concepts and emotions on the one hand, but on
the other not to offend if possible.

Why is their job to avoid offending anyone? Why a pistol emoji showing a real
life pistol is offensive on itself? It's not like I can't offend anyone using
only the ASCII character set.

------
SeanLuke
I don't understand. A whole 6/10 for the WhatsApp ant, which has only three
legs? At least Samsung, missing a leg, got a proper 2/10.

~~~
jhbadger
But three legs makes sense given you are only seeing one side. If you showed a
person from one side it's likely you'd only see one leg. It's the 5 legs and 4
legs that don't make sense.

------
TekMol
By the way, on my Linux machine, I see most UTF characters in Firefox, but
almost none in Chromium.

Does anybody know why?

For example, in Chromium I only see squares here:

[https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f41c/browsert...](https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f41c/browsertest.htm)

But in Firefox I see ants.

~~~
majewsky
Nitpick: Those are _Unicode_ characters, not _UTF_ characters. UTF is just a
family of encoding schemes for Unicode codepoints.

(Bonus nitpick: Also, those are not characters, they're glyphs. The term
"character" is so indefinable that the Unicode standard, to my knowledge,
never uses the term.)

~~~
eesmith
[http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode11.0.0/](http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode11.0.0/)
has "Changes in the Unicode Character Database" and starts "Unicode 11.0 adds
684 characters, for a total of 137,374 characters." The rest of my comment
quotes from the spec, from the section "Characters, Not Glyphs"

> The Unicode Standard draws a distinction between characters and glyphs.
> Characters are the abstract representations of the smallest components of
> written language that have semantic value. They represent primarily, but not
> exclusively, the letters, punctuation, and other signs that constitute
> natural language text and technical notation. The letters used in natural
> language text are grouped into scripts—sets of letters that are used
> together in writing languages. Letters in different scripts, even when they
> correspond either semantically or graphically, are represented in Unicode by
> distinct characters. This is true even in those instances where they
> correspond in semantics, pronunciation, or appearance.

> Characters are represented by code points that reside only in a memory
> representation, as strings in memory, on disk, or in data transmission. The
> Unicode Standard deals only with character codes.

> Glyphs represent the shapes that characters can have when they are rendered
> or displayed. In contrast to characters, glyphs appear on the screen or
> paper as particular representations of one or more characters. A repertoire
> of glyphs makes up a font. Glyph shape and methods of identifying and
> selecting glyphs are the responsibility of individual font vendors and of
> appropriate standards and are not part of the Unicode Standard.

> Various relationships may exist between char acter and glyph: a single glyph
> may correspond to a single character or to a number of characters, or
> multiple glyphs may result from a single character.

------
ralusek
Why does every ant get docked for being a "centaur" with 2 thoraces, and yet
HTC goes unpunished?

~~~
thaumasiotes
The centaur idea refers to the ant's front legs not resting on the ground, not
to the double thorax. I found that jarring too, but the ratings are based on
appeal and HTC is apparently being rated as elegant abstract art. Compare LG's
rating of "This ant is wrong in every way, and yet I can't stay mad at her.
7/10"

Looking more closely, the most disturbing thing I see in these is the Google
ant, which has somehow placed its left front leg over its left middle leg. It
feels like a layer mixup; that position is completely impossible in normal
motion.

~~~
astura
Google had an issue with the beer emoji being physically impossible as well -
a frothy overflowing head on a half full beer.

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16737066/google-burger-
be...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16737066/google-burger-beer-emoji-
android-8-1-fix-release-date)

I agree with the author on the LG ant - it looks wrong but still cute.

------
webwielder2
Apple attention to detail and build quality wins again.

~~~
cooper12
Facebook also deserves credit, though I'm not sure why Messenger has a
different set of emoji.

~~~
Tijdreiziger
Cross-platform consistency.

------
armansu
Was it commissioned by Facebook :D?

~~~
wetpaws
Facebook's ant is really good tbh

------
blooop
Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1012/](https://xkcd.com/1012/)

------
adamtulinius
I'm stuck in a "please accept our gazillion cookies" loop. After managing
preferences (which is implemented illegally, as I understand, since opt-out
should be as easy as opt-in) and saving, I just get shown the same page again.

Too bad, sounded like a fun article.

~~~
Zealotux
I'm currently making a list of bad implementations of GDPR, as far as I've
observed I'd say that roughly 80% (low estimate) of cookie management systems
are dark patterns, and that most of them are downright illegal.

Maybe I should write an article on that, it's a perfect case study.

~~~
class4behavior
A lot sites moved on to merge their privacy policies with their cookie
policies, and they disallow access if you don't accept all of their tracking
methods. How do you judge those examples? I'm not referring to those hiding
the options to opt-out deep within their policies, sometimes even with text
links, but those with absolute consent, i.e., either accept or move on.

~~~
Zealotux
My wording was indeed inappropriate (I'm not a native speaker), "dark
patterns" are subjective but I'd say:

    
    
      - the less privacy-friendly option is a big shiny button, while privacy controls are behind a small greyed link
      - hiding the privacy options behind many interactions, basically making it as frustrating as possible to find the opt-out, I always find that amusing to read "We value your privacy" while I spend so much time looking for actual control over my privacy
      - all of the "partners" checked by default (non GDPR compliant), with no easy way to deselect all ("select all" is, however, usually an option)
      - bait and switch: when you go to partners' settings, checking the checkbox is actually requesting to opt-out, but to know that you need to read a long, grey paragraph with a small font size at the very end of the list
      - punishing the user by making it unnecessarily slow to opt-out, most of them are legitimate from my finding, but I've noticed a few fake loadings (zero requests in the network tab), it may simply be due to poor engineering though (Hanlon's razor)
      - redirecting the user from the original content after he opted-out, also feels like an intended punishment to me (but same as before: can be explained by poor engineering)
    

The list is non-exhaustive, but I wish I had better writing abilities to share
my observations in a Medium article or something like that.

~~~
chrismorgan
(Meta: please don’t use code formatting for lists; just use a paragraph for
each list item, that way it’s _readable_. You can even use U+2022 BULLET • as
the marker instead of - if the fancy takes you!)

~~~
Zealotux
Thanks a lot, I was wondering how to format it!

------
jadedhacker
"Hork-bajir", now that is a deep cut reference.

~~~
deaddodo
With that reference, I knew (within a range of +/\- a couple years) the age of
the author.

------
mar77i
In a more extreme form, someone once compared Peppa Pig with real health
services. I'm somewhat painfully reminded of the ̶w̶a̶s̶t̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶
scientific value that is this kind of content.

~~~
celticninja
Does Peppa Pig encourage misuse of primary care resources?

[https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5397](https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5397)

~~~
eat_veggies
[https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5397](https://sci-
hub.tw/https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5397)

"Dr Brown Bear displays signs of 'burnout.' His disregard for confidentiality,
parental consent, record keeping, and his self prescribing indicate that the
burden of demand from his patient population is affecting his health. He is no
longer able to offer the level of service his patients have come to expect."

Incredible article.

