Rejected emoji proposals
charlottebuff.com
charlottebuff.com
A lot advocate for why something is important (for example, it's easy to laugh at a PMS emoji, but it's hard to disagree with "Currently, although menstruation is a core part of being a woman, it is felt to impose significant limitations on women when influenced by negative societal beliefs and taboos.").
Others are longer docs where many included proposals are now valid emojis, and it's interesting to think how some were picked and others weren't.
I suspect their marketing team was brooding on something.
Sure. Or, perhaps, they were simply well positioned to understand why that emoji was impactful
It's fallen completely out of scope of unicode's purpose of documenting used symbols and into a sort of editorialized control of what can cannot be said.
Aren't people afraid that if there's too much stuff in a standard then people will stop using the standard?
I don't buy that you can have tens of thousands of weird human scripts but then a few icons representing non verbal communication is suddenly "too much". Sure a system might not support everything but the same is true for the regular text scripts. And then it means I can include emojis in my she'll script, slack messages, copy paste around, and it just works.
I love it!
But we already had application specific emoticons. They worked well, they work so well, that even with emojis in Unicode we still use application specific ones instead.
Also, the default ones seem to always be ugly.
Also also, the "weird human scripts" generally have a fairly long history of use.
Windows+. On windows
OSX was something like ctrl-space or something. I rarely chat on Mac so I don't recall.
pile of poo ZWJ party hat
But they're not too different from the set of infantilizing pictograms that did make their way into the standard & that grown-ups are now expected to deal with.
I didn't have a huge beef with the proprietary emojis on old skool Skype and MSN, TBH - they were technically bound to those platforms, and the platforms mostly to private social spheres where they'd form part of the local slang. (And where Skype was used at work in the 00's, people actually refrained from them and acted in a businesslike manner).
Modern day emojis being part of unicode implies that they're somehow universally understood, and that it's fine to sprinkle them around in any kind of social context. Quite horrifying, really.
This just reads a bit like someone older ranting at the younger generation being glued to their smartphone all the time. Modern day emojis are part of our writing system. I use them all the time, from Slack to WhatsApp. They are universally understood, to a limit of course, but I see everybody else using them too and no "office drama" because Alice misunderstood the emoji Bob was using. They make it easier for me to express my emotions and they are as naturally as speaking. There's nothing extraordinarily horrifying really.
The world is better because the director of my billion dollar project is able to heart react in the chat, not worse.
“This year’s proposals for new entries into the standard hieroglyphic dictionary include: slave being whipped, bearded slave being whipped, woman being humped by a donkey, and bearded donkey being ridden by a pregnant cat.”
But I agree generally that the addition of flags was, in retrospect, an unfortunate outcome.
In general emoji are very us-centric, for example the police car emoji doesn't look like a police car to many cultures.
Also, Telegram's sticker support is unmatched. Not a single app even comes close to it.
A few women in my life (managers/directors/executives) are terrified to talk about their periods because it could be used against them. I'm going to risk turning this into one of those "Normalize <XYZ>" tweets.. But cramps, bloating, irritability, pain, any number of other things. I want a status emoji for headaches and "didn't sleep well". Something that says lay off the knucklehead stuff today/for a few hours. Period and pre-period ones would be good too.
If I need to I don't hesitate to start meetings with: "I had 5 hours of sleep so let's see how this goes." Let people talk about why they feel they way they feel.
Three rejected period proposals. Just make one.
Let’s do one for prostates too. I have one uncle who died of prostate cancer and another one who won’t get a prostate exam. I don't even have a walnut emoji to throw at him in the meantime.
I'm for professionals saying whatever they feel they need to say so that they can be understood and perceived in the way they want to be perceived and understood. If not talking about something causes stress, talking about it could help. If talking about it causes stress, don't talk about it.
I work with people around the globe so knowing my sleep schedule helps the people who work with me. For example, I don't like reviewing UX, visual design, or anything involving RxJS when I'm tired. I know this, they know this, so I review things when I'm rested. Similarly I want to know what the people around me need me to know.
Let professionals decide. "Culturally" the scales shouldn't be tilted too far in either direction.
Also talking about different types of people.. Moving from an expectation of an instant response to the expectation of a 24-ish-hour response does wonders for communication. Let people think and maybe sleep on it. Keeps the in the moment thinkers from steamrolling the nap and shower thinkers. Does wonders.
“[Unicode] brings order to a chaotic state of affairs that has made it difficult to exchange text files internationally.“ [0]
If it's not the Unicode Consortium who decides, well somebody has to.
And what is my phone supposed to display when it gets an emoji from one of these sets? Is it supposed to have a URL that it downloads them from or something?
The whole point of Unicode is to be a standard of communication. So it's hard to see how a free-for-all of characters or emoji is still a standard at all.
Surprised that sunglasses with frown was never submitted.
We only have ~1 million Unicode codepoints in total. Wasting one for ever local flag would be a mistake.
I'm also now surprised to see that Wales and Scotland get a flag but Northern Ireland does not. Aren't they on the same standing? I always thought it followed UN membership but that Wales and Scotland got an exception. I know Palestine and Kosovo have emojis also.
Are there any UN full member states without an emoji?
It would require dropping UTF-16, which is the limiting factor. That, or defining planes that aren't available to all encodings. Don't hold your breath.
I don't know who is using UTF-16 or UTF-32. It seems like most of the world has adopted UTF-8. So, maybe one day UTF-16 and UTF-32 will be dropped and more planes will be defined. That's a big maybe. If it happens at all, it's decades away. There are no conversations to do so that I'm aware of.
There are currently 10 planes that are completely unassigned, and there are no current proposals to put anything on them. The Unicode Consortium is very deliberate. Those planes will probably be empty for a long time. And while there are empty planes, they won't be talks about adding new ones. That's my impression. I keep up a bit, but I'm unaffiliated.
Java, JavaScript, Win32's "wide" API, C#, and many more. As for actual file storage, UTF-8 is indeed the most common, but UTF-16 still lingers on.
Like US+33 for Oregon.
Would definitely love if the linked chart had a reason for rejection column
https://emojipedia.org/pregnant-person/
Their guideline: https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#selection_factors_i...
For instance, they suggest using "elephant" to evaluate the usage:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all_2008&gprop...
Uneducated guess, though.
EDIT: Googled. Here is a person who knows what was up: https://jenniferdaniel.substack.com/p/did-someone-say-new-em...
https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2020/20190r-swollen-belly-emoji....
Most (if not all) gender neutral emojis were proposed by the same person.
There's some evidence of support at the end of it, many of which were angry Twitter posts. Some of those posts seem like satire/shitposts, but it's hard to say without context.
I feel like they are missing emojis representing amputees of different types.
But there is a bearded women.
Their governance seems to lack leadership and just goes with whatever pressure they feel.
- It avoids gender stereotyping of men in Parenthood.
- couples say "we are pregnant". The term pregnant is culturally used for men too as their search shows.
- the emoji is not just for pregnancy, it is also for feeling bloated, full, and hungry.
I sometimes used this emoji for saying that I'm expecting something. My partner didn't like it.
So using it for anything other than that defeats accessibility for visually impaired people.
Also, 'we are pregnant' is weird, being pregnant is the act of developing offspring within the body.
This is not how the guys I know use this emoji, btw.
P.S. To get the joke, you have to be familiar with this specific tweet from almost year ago https://twitter.com/jeremyburge/status/1503921387484114944?l... I guess you had to be there.
Source: Analysis of Gender Proposals, https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17439-gender-analysis.pdf
I don't understand this part. Isn't it a good thing that those emojis lack gendered sequences? Or is it that they should have modifiers to make them appear the way that a person wants to present themselves?
Only women can be impregnated. Stating otherwise does not make it so.
America had a much stronger flag culture than, say, Jersey. We see local and state flags flown at private residences.
I’d certainly use my state if it was in Unicode.
With the exception of England, Scotland and Wales, all of that’s just due to following ISO 3166-1, which covers both countries and significant external territories; you might say that it treats the layer as if they were in some sense similar to the former. Sticking to 3166-1 excuses the Unicode Consortium from getting involved in the politically fraught question of which countries to recognise.
National subdivisions such as the countries of the UK or the states of the US are ISO 3166-2. 3166-2 flags, including US state ones, are in Unicode, but they are non-RGI-meaning vendors are permitted to implement them, but neither required nor recommended to do so, and users should not expect them to be supported except on specific platforms or configurations.
What about England, Scotland and Wales? I think there is a justification for that inconsistency: they are considered to be “countries” (including by 3166-2), even if “countries-within-a-country”. This is not purely a linguistic thing-some international sporting competitions treat them as separate countries, and they have lengthy histories of independence. By contrast, almost nobody considers US states to be “countries”, most never have been independent countries, and even the few of those who have been independent have almost all been so briefly (a few decades at most) rather than for many centuries. Hawaii arguably comes closest to qualifying, but very few Americans would call its contemporary incarnation a “country”. And note that Northern Ireland’s flag is non-RGI, but 3166-2 does not officially classify it as a “country”, and calling it that is politically extremely controversial (it appeals to some Unionists/Loyalists, but offends Nationalists/Republicans.)
In some ways US states are even more independent. England doesn’t have its own government or Capitol, nor does it want one.
Sure Scotland was independent, about 500 years ago, but I don’t think that’s very important to the Unicode consortium.
I suspect the concern is simply upkeep. There 50 state flags, and they are changed pretty frequently.
ISO 3166-1 lists “countries”; it also lists many (but not all) “dependent territories” and one or two “special areas”, but there is a well-established international precedent for treating the latter two as if they were “countries” (see e.g. ccTLDs). However, ISO 3166-2 also labels subdivisions as “countries”, but only in two cases - the UK and the Netherlands. The Netherlands case is irrelevant for flags, because all of its “countries” either have 3166-1 codes too, or else lack flags. But the UK has three “countries” which do have flags, so those flags get RGI. Denmark and France contain “countries” too, but not according to 3166-2; but even if 3166-2 was updated to include them, it still wouldn’t make a difference, since they all either have 3166-1 codes too or lack their own flag.
Maybe, someone will convince Hawaii to declare itself a “country within the United States”, and 3166-2 will then be updated to list Hawaii as a “country” - then the Hawaiian flag would get Unicode RGI status. I really doubt all the other 49 would ever do that though.
I understand the importance of standards, but I think the importance of the word “country” is a bit overblown.
The USSR had countries, some of which had 3166-1 codes, and some of which did not.
And ultimately why would the name country be that important?
During the negotiations over the UN Charter, the Soviets claimed that the Union Republics which made up the USSR were sovereign states, with the right to secede, and hence should all be allowed to join the UN - along with the Soviet Union. The West refused - the claim of sovereignty was rather unbelievable (as if Stalin would really let anyone secede!), and it would have given the Soviet Union 16 (or more) votes in the General Assembly, which everyone else saw as unfair. Negotiations had reached an impasse, when a diplomatic compromise emerged - two of the Union Republics (Ukraine and Byelorussia) would become UN members, along with the Soviet Union as a whole; the others wouldn’t. Hence, the UN considered them to be “countries”, and since ISO 3166-1 gets its country list from the UN Statistical Division, it did too. It never made much sense from the perspective of reality, it was simply a historical diplomatic fudge.
> And ultimately why would the name country be that important?
I think it is important because (1) it is an exception to their general rule “countries/dependencies only, but not subdivisions thereof” which is defensible using the text of ISO 3166; (2) it is numerically a very limited exception-it doesn’t threaten to open the floodgates; (3) if someone claims “this is unfair bias in favour of the UK”, they can say “no, it is only because of the text of the standards, we are not engaging in any favouritism”; (4) in spite of all the above, there is a lot of political/popular pressure to give in to the demand, due to Scottish and Welsh nationalism; (5) no comparable political pressure exists for US state flags, because no US state has a mainstream nationalist movement
Quebec is funny because it has two abbreviations: the Canadian one and the American one.
One abbreviation is QE, the other QC. Forgot which is which.
Apparently Quebec residents can get a “Quebec” drivers license issue by NY state.
U+woman + U+mustache = U+woman-with-mustache
U+emo-kid + U+mustache = U+oh-noes
(And _since_ they use it -- especially symbolically to mean "temple"! -- it needs to be represented in Unicode.)
Whatever they do, it’s not that. Emojis allow for multivalence and useful ambiguity in ways that few words still have left in them.
From the perspectives of both communication and poetry, they’re a major boon to what’s now possible in written form.
Rage all you want, though. Talking about them like this helps sharpen our understanding of what they actually do.
Emojis, emotes, gifs, reaction images, these all add extra complexity to the way we communicate. Not everyone needs to be a writer; what's this thing about respect? Obviously I am being facetious because I believe you to have quite a strong and antiquated view of how language works.
Written language always has had a visual component, languages like japanese have written words that comprise entire concepts and can be interpreted in many different ways (kind of like an image). But emojis also do something pretty remarkable in that they are very much universal, of course, people use certain emojis in different ways. But more often than not they can allow from context-based communication between people of different languages in a much simpler and straight forward way. Let me give you an example: You travel to Germany, you don't know German but you go into Grindr and you send hot face emoji, eggplant emoji, and a question mark to a guy. I assure you that, although crude, he will more or less get the message.
In fact, symbols are already used in everyday language. More often than not, if I'm confused about something just sending a question mark (?) will be enough to express it. Sending several question marks (????) will communicate stronger confusion.
Language is what we make of it, if you think reducing the need of using words to express complex ideas is bad then just send more emojis and you'll be communicating, in fewer space, more. How is that bad? On telegram, sometimes I communicate exclusively using stickers with certain friends. It seems to me like, maybe, you might be annoyed because communication has grown more complex than it used to be. People laugh at boomers not knowing how to use emojis.