Finally, it will be possible to flip someone off via emoji | Hacker News Reader

Finally, it will be possible to flip someone off via emoji

onefoottsunami.com

64 pointspaublyrne83 comments

This is a symbol that will be used 10s of millions of times in the next few years. If not much much more.

The fact it's even in discussion if it should be there is a huge free flow of speech rights issue.

I'd like to think if you're on hn you see the problems around the fact this was not there years ago.

I want a world were people can communicate exactly as they wish. Not by a standard, especially a standard with morals thrown in.

I don't disagree with the premise that free speech is important, but it's hard to argue that the absence of a middle-finger emoji is preventing people from being nasty to each other on the internet.

This changes nothing of consequence (but I personally see no reason not to include it).

Indeed, people were already using _|_ before that. (I vaguely remember a bit of Haskell humour around using that sequence of characters...)

probably referring to the bottom type: ⊥

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_type

I suppose the advantage of a middle finger emoji is it can be understood across (some) language barriers, and it's more concise than a roughly equivalent written insult.

Because before emoticons, there was no free speech?

Also, this may be informative: [1]

Finally, you may be right that this finger symbol will be used 10s of millions of times in the next few years, but I suspect that often it will end the conversation. Hence the symbol may be considered as part of "speech" but it will certainly not aid "communication".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

Communicating that a conversation is now at an end is often a useful feature, rather than a bug.

But using this symbol is ending the conversation in a disrespectful way, thereby nullifying the rest of the communication.

Who says that a communication is magically "nullified" if it's ended disrespectfully? My expression of negativity and disrespect is just as valid - if not more so - than trying to conceal it in platitudes like you seem to be implying a preference for.

Communicating disrespect is a useful message in and of itself. If I am telling someone to get lost, I don't want to have to pussyfoot around like some character in an Elizabethan novel.

edit - though maybe a Shakespearian play. I wonder if they have an emoji for biting your thumb at someone.

...what?

Are you opposed to any text format that does not allow user-defined characters?

(Although perhaps you should be if you're a Chinese speaker and have to suffer for applications' poor lack of support for more obscure characters.)

Free speech is about what you can say, not how you can say it.

This doesn't make sense. Just because a symbol could potentially be in use does not mean that not having it is a violation of free speech. Where is the symbol with a guy standing on a table mooning his boss? Sure, someone could make that, but thinking that the absence of this symbol creates a "huge free flow of speech rights issue" is ludicrous.

This is similar to stupid crap like Swype and Google's version of it both not inserting curse words when I gesture type them. It's not their business to butt into mine. If I want to gesture type a curse word I should be able to. I understand the issue of possible mistypes being a problem but that's why you turn them off by default and give someone a simple solution to turn them back on.

I'm reminded of a joke that's been repeated many times on twitter. "Dear [Apple|Google|etc.], I never, ever intend to type the word 'duck'"

Each rule we follow blindly is a stupid one. If the introduction of a new sign just promotes hate and brings no advantages, then there is no value gained.

The Unicode Standard, Version 7.0 Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs -- Range: 1F300–1F5FF

http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-7.0/U70-1F300.pdf

Chart Page 4 at Codepoint 0x1f595

Description on Page 14: Hand symbols 1F595 REVERSED HAND WITH MIDDLE FINGER EXTENDED

https://codepoints.net/U+1F595 http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f595/index.htm

Edit: mmm HN doesnt allow posting or can't save the UTF-8 middle finger..

Edit2: It appears that HN is blocking most unicode chars because people used it for spammy titles.

That's correct, I asked about it recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10156894

Just learned about it's neighbour at 0x1F596 ("RAISED HAND WITH PART BETWEEN MIDDLE AND RING FINGERS")

Given that there are 4 possible places between fingers where to put a separation (2⁴), two hands (⨯2), and each finger could be extended or bent (⨯2⁵) and the hand could be shown from front or back (⨯2), I'm actually quite amazed that they haven't shown due engineering diligence and spent a whole 2¹¹ codepoints to, for once and for all, solve the problem of displaying hand gestures... Even though some will be quite challenging to perform.

Clearly the solution is to have all those attributes to be combining codepoints over two single base codepoints of RIGHT HAND and LEFT HAND. The only question is whether in canonical form they should come before or after skin tone codepoints.

I've never quite understood the emoji thing, can somebody explain it to me? Why are "funny" symbols and pictures being put into the Unicode standard? I thought the point of extending the standard with symbols is to accommodate languages that use symbols for writing.

Part of the reason Unicode exists (other than encoding every possible writing system) is to unify existing encodings. Emojis come from Japan where mobile operators used proprietary encodings to transmit emojis in text messages.

Ah, that makes a lot more sense! I thought we had people sitting around talking about what funny picture to put in Unicode next. It's much more understandable if it's something that already exists that's being "ported in".

I think we have that now. The Japanese emoji that have been standardized are kindda culturally skewed, but suddenly became very available world wide and a lot of people around the world want their culture to be represented equally. Hence the whole skin color deal.

And flags. The original japanese emoji set only has 10 country flags (japan, korea, germany, china, USA, france, spain, italy, russia and the UK), the Unicode consortium added 26 REGIONAL INDICATOR symbols used in pairs to encode territorial flags using CLDR region subtags e.g. U+1F1FA REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER U followed by U+ 1F1F8 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER S => 🇺🇸 (USA flag)

Frankly, I much prefer having 26 combining symbols over having to maintain a fixed list of country flags in the Unicode standard. That doesn't solve the problem of maintaining country flags but makes it Somebody Else's Problem, which is fine in my book.

It also lets you have a semi-decent fallback, where you can have some icon for "This was supposed to be the flag for country code XX but we don't know what that looks like."

It's because those "funny" symbols are needed in concise, informal communication on the internet. Smileys are very useful for conveying extra meaning, such as humor or sarcasm.

Normal people don't use /s :)

Your comment makes a weak case for this special symbol need, since it uses the :) smiley rather than the "Unicode Smiley"

HN filters some Unicode. Parent post may have used an emoji that got filtered out.

It's actually lack of application support for emojis on desktop.

But mobile devices, where you really want to be efficient when typing, do have support for Unicode smileys.

So my point still stands :)

:-) But even on a mobile device, if you used a Unicode smiley, the HN software would filter it out.

I wonder if it's just lack of proper Unicode support or some sort of protection against Unicode shenanigans.

Protection. Unicode is supported in general: éѲ報.

Unicode smiley, sure, but it would appear that not all emoji's are filtered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10202935

It's offensive, a sad commentary on humanity, and I don't mind being down voted on Hacker News for stating it openly. (Actually, if you really want to do things right, just flip me off, yes?)

Agreed. And the OP going out of his way to push for it is sad. There are more important problems to spend your time on than trying to make it easier to insult each other. If you want to insult someone, you can still do it in English. Your freedom of speech is not restricted.

There are more important problems to spend your time on than criticizing people in internet comment sections, yet here you are.

What's even sadder to me is the idea that a universal pictorial language is subject to moralizing. The idea is facilitating communication, not just that which is judged by you to be positive.

Maybe this will help make a case for including a means for users to disable any and all emoji if they choose to do so.

In what sense is it "a sad commentary on humanity?"

cry me a river?

> It's offensive

By what measure? To whom?

> a sad commentary on humanity

Again: by what measure?

Offensiveness is arbitrary.

Emojis are supposed to be for fun. Some people enjoy playfully teasing their friends. Of course yes, this could be abused, but choice words are _much_ more hurtful than a picture of a middle finger.

I wonder if this means they will stop autocorrecting to the word "ducking" as well.

Why the duck would they? This shut never gets old - almost a clbuttic.

You graduated comedy school with magna semen laude, didn't you?

"They", hm, who does that? Honest question

Apple.

just add shortcuts for duck/ducking to fuck/fucking, now no one will know when you're drunk.

And the V sign is there but the reverse two fingered salute is not. Though perhaps that would lead to too much confusion and accidental offense between cultures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_sign#As_an_insult

Au contraire:

U+1F594

Unfortunately they name it 'REVERSED VICTORY HAND', which might get people in trouble.

Using this all the time now :) Thanks

Likewise, perhaps the most famous and heretofore controversial Emoji - "Smiling Poop Emoji" - symbolises good luck in the home of Emoji. http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/24687/1/w...

I may be a Luddite but I really prefer the old ways.. An ability to simply write FUCK YOU, or FUCK OFF is enough for me and is supported on all platforms.

Given enough time, we may just have a modern Emoji pictograph set to rival that of the Chinese.

It is allready implemented in Windows 10, although it doesn't scale down well. I'd paste it here but HN doesn't seem to support Unicode emoji, which is odd

One of the reasons is that people were cramming unicode into submission titles.

This is why we can't have nice things.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10156894#up_10157836

I recall a thread where the title used Unicode bold text - can't find it now, was curious how HN handled archived threads with Unicode.

Can you set the skin color or it has to be a yellow hand? For when you need to add a certain specific racial factor to your insult?

Here is the link to the full list of new emojis mentioned in the article: http://9to5mac.com/2015/09/09/ios-9-1-emojis/

Cheers to more symbolic expression and communication!

I'm less concerned with the middle finger and more concerned with the addition of tacos and unicorns!

Wake me up when you can give someone a powerful electric shock via emoji. A control character, literally.

This reminds me of a bash.org quote.

http://bash.org/?4281

Of all of the even mildly helpful things a person can do with their time, this guy decides to rally for adding a "fuck you" emoji and then decides to blog about it like it's a life-long accomplishment... This is just very sad.

Agreed, people should only dedicate time to things approved by you.

This serves as a reminder that the Unicode standard is remarkable US centric at times. Where's the guy flipping the bottom of his chin? Where's whatever the equivalent in Bangladesh is? (I'm sure there is one...)

Interesting point. Why isn't the unicode standard just "obscene hand gesture" (or similar?) and then localisation can take care of the rest?

I pulled open the standard as linked by cnvogel and expected to see what is in a sense the exact opposite... a list of all vaguely practical hand gestures, with the middle-finger merely one in a sea of gestures. While it is in the middle of some other more generic gestures, some of which definitely have obscene connotations in some cultures [1], it's less exhaustive than I've come to expect from Unicode. See also [2] which lists some cultural middle-finger equivalents, some of which show up in the Unicode list, or in the case of 1F594 ("peace") easily can if the icon designer is not careful. (In fact I think the Unicode sheet shows the obscene-in-the-UK variant.)

I sort of expected to be able to make a crack about it being a bit culturally imperialist not to include the middle finger just because the US considers it obscene, but instead it stands out more than I expected, so I can't.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-ok#Negative_connotation

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_finger#Similar_gestures

Emoji is actually more Japan centric, hence the numerous sushi emoji, bento box emoji and various other Japanese items.

Yeah, that's the DoCoMo legacy shining through.

We've had \.|.. since as far as I can remember.

It's already on Android ie via WhatsApp.

Is it really necessary to have another way to insult people on the internet?

0x1f595

and 0x1f594 "REVERSED VICTORY HAND" which is the equivalent sign in the UK, Australia and NZ.

I'm really trying to see this as a positive. Sorry, but I just can't do it.

No need. The Unicode Consortium is not a therapeutic institution. It's about humans and their language, not about happiness.

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit corporation devoted to developing, maintaining, and promoting software internationalization standards and data, particularly the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of text in all modern software products and standards. The Unicode Consortium actively develops standards in the area of internationalization including defining the behavior and relationships between Unicode characters.

- http://www.unicode.org/consortium/consort.html

The primary use of this icon will most likely be friends joking with each other. I don't see why this is a bad thing.

Friend A: <Joke at Friend B's expense>

Friend B: <REVERSED HAND WITH MIDDLE FINGER EXTENDED>

As I write this, it reminds me a bit of http://bash.org/?23396

> It's about humans and their language

Particularly relevant because e.g.:

* <OK HAND SIGN> is offensive in Brazil.

* <THUMBS UP> is offensive in the middle-east.

Unicode assigns numbers to the symbols. Humans assign meanings to the symbols.

> <OK HAND SIGN> is offensive in Brazil.

Well, not really. It may be, or may not. People use it as an Ok symbol too, what makes it quite useless for either use.

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