Live data from Hacker News

'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

npr.org

21–30 of 110 posts

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#21

Also: > A new "people holding hands" emoji will let users mix and match > different skin tones and genders, with 171 possible combinations.[1] This reminds me of the article "Code Inflation". [2] [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/02/07/692260599/interracial-couples... [2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7057573

"Code inflation" talks about programs expanding even when they already can do everything needed (e.g. true going from empty to 8k bytes). That's not the case here. These combinations didn't exist before, so the functionality is expanded, not just the code size.

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#22
It seems virtually certain that the "drop of blood" is more useful for issuing threats (jocular or serious) than for talking about menstruation, for the simple reason that there's a lot more threatening than there is talking about menstruation.

Calling blood "the symbol of the period" is overreaching a bit.

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#23

I'm not sure I understand why people think that we should add the other emojis that were suggested. Emojis are in no way supposed to represent every single thing that you could possibly want to talk about; that's why many of them end up representing other things based on context (for example, the eggplant or peach emojis). The blood emoji is fine, but the soiled underwear is just…weird. That would be like asking for…

This isn't "every single thing that you could possibly want to talk about". This is something that half of the world population experiences roughly monthly for some number of years. Certainly it's more frequently experienced than the emojis - though I appreciate those. So it's clearly something that should exist. The underwear might seem odd but it's no weirder than the smiling poop emoji...

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#24
post #23

I'm not sure I understand why people think that we should add the other emojis that were suggested. Emojis are in no way supposed to represent every single thing that you could possibly want to talk about; that's why many of them end up representing other things based on context (for example, the eggplant or peach emojis). The blood emoji is fine, but the soiled underwear is just…weird. That would be like asking for…

This isn't "every single thing that you could possibly want to talk about". This is something that half of the world population experiences roughly monthly for some number of years. Certainly it's more frequently experienced than the emojis - though I appreciate those. So it's clearly something that should exist. The underwear might seem odd but it's no weirder than the smiling poop emoji...

"than the emojis" was really "than the [Christmas] emojis"

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#25
post #23

I'm not sure I understand why people think that we should add the other emojis that were suggested. Emojis are in no way supposed to represent every single thing that you could possibly want to talk about; that's why many of them end up representing other things based on context (for example, the eggplant or peach emojis). The blood emoji is fine, but the soiled underwear is just…weird. That would be like asking for…

This isn't "every single thing that you could possibly want to talk about". This is something that half of the world population experiences roughly monthly for some number of years. Certainly it's more frequently experienced than the emojis - though I appreciate those. So it's clearly something that should exist. The underwear might seem odd but it's no weirder than the smiling poop emoji...

smiling poop:blood::used toilet paper:underwear. Emojis generally common nouns, and generally come with associated context to further specify what the exact meaning is. And, just to be sure, you're comparing two demographics of similar size (women vs. people who use toilet paper); I think that neither group should be given specific emojis in this case.

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#26
post #15
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding? Pictures and "emojis" are far more informationally dense than words are. If anything this shows how quickly language is evolving when facilitated by instantaneous information transfer of near unlimited amounts of data.

Don't be fooled by the pretty images. While painting/photos can express multiple, deep emotions, they are unique. The value added by a copy it's none. Moreover emojis are for 99%+ simple nouns ("hand", "pig", "dog", "smile"). And for thing that are not nouns, you still need to understand that they are logograms, with a "fixed" meaning. Kanjis are not better than Romans - they are just different alphabets. And if you…

The real advantage of emojis (and the reason I suspect most people use them) is to compensate for the loss of body language in texting. I use them so much when talking to one friend in particular that she can tell something is wrong when I stop using them for a little while.

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#27

It seems virtually certain that the "drop of blood" is more useful for issuing threats (jocular or serious) than for talking about menstruation, for the simple reason that there's a lot more threatening than there is talking about menstruation. Calling blood "the symbol of the period" is overreaching a bit.

A drop of blood is a traditional symbol for blood donors, and I wager that is the context where it will end up seeing the most use. That is certainly how I would use it.

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#28
post #23

I'm not sure I understand why people think that we should add the other emojis that were suggested. Emojis are in no way supposed to represent every single thing that you could possibly want to talk about; that's why many of them end up representing other things based on context (for example, the eggplant or peach emojis). The blood emoji is fine, but the soiled underwear is just…weird. That would be like asking for…

This isn't "every single thing that you could possibly want to talk about". This is something that half of the world population experiences roughly monthly for some number of years. Certainly it's more frequently experienced than the emojis - though I appreciate those. So it's clearly something that should exist. The underwear might seem odd but it's no weirder than the smiling poop emoji...

> This isn't "every single thing that you could possibly want to talk about". This is something that half of the world population experiences roughly monthly for some number of years.

Morning wood emoji when?

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#29

It seems virtually certain that the "drop of blood" is more useful for issuing threats (jocular or serious) than for talking about menstruation, for the simple reason that there's a lot more threatening than there is talking about menstruation. Calling blood "the symbol of the period" is overreaching a bit.

I would think knife and skull emojis are more effective for threats.

Re: 'Drop of Blood' Emoji, Symbol of the Period, Is Praised by Activists

#30
post #17
post #13

Outrage culture at its finest. NPR cites a few tweets. Let's analyze: [1] has 13 likes; [2] has 8. No one cares about emojis this much. Real activists (not Twitter keyboard warriors) don't care about emojis, they care about, you know, actual social progress. It took this group like 2 years to get 54,600 signatures when joke petitions like [3] are in the same ballpark. I mean, give me a break. But articles like this a…

The existence of this story and any flaws that may or may not exist in it do not represent the state of journalism as a whole.

Actually they do; this kind of click-bait yellow journalism has become the norm, not the exception. From Breitbart to Huffington Post, they all do it.
Post reply on HN