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X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

blog.emojipedia.org

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Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#141

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

xg15 wrote: post #124

This seems like approximately the dumbest possible place to have political battles. Isn't the entire purpose of having a standard set of emojis as part of Unicode to enable reliable communication of the concepts and emotions associated with them? In that sense it's perfectly fine if it was a water pistol, a real gun or whatever else as long as it's the same thing everywhere . But the same codepoint showing up as a wa…

> In that sense it's perfectly fine if it was a water pistol, a real gun or whatever else as long as it's the same thing everywhere.

It used to be a real gun everywhere, until the schoolmarms started chiming in. It is supposed to be one, no matter what the ministry of truth thinks it should be replaced with.

> drama, shitstorms

On X? How will they ever recover.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#142

Post by anvuong »

edwinjm wrote: post #68
sharkjacobs wrote: post #15

This is exactly as stupid as changing it to a water pistol in the first place was

Why do you want a real gun? I bet most uses are to bully people. It seems that's the kind of social network Elon wants.

And changing it to water pistol reduces the bullying? I have seen racism expressed through colored emoticons, destroying its original intents of inclusivity. It's stupid to change it in the first place, this is just doubling the stupidity.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#143

Post by qual »

theultdev wrote: post #122
qual wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not the person you were replying to) I'm curious what/how you define "woke culture", because the only definitions of "woke" I've ever heard are basically "thing I don't like" or "the left". Neither of those definitions have helped me understand what you are so vehemently against. Can you help me understand what woke culture is to you? This is a genuine question.

It's definitely an umbrella term and we'd be here for a while discussing all facets of it, but in this case in particular it's the movement to censor speech under the guise of anti-gun rhetoric (like an emoji will cause gun violence). That is no different than Christians trying to ban violent video games. Note that I am not the one who brought up the term to the conversation. I did want to avoid the labels as there's…

>Note that I am not the one who brought up the term to the conversation.

Of course, but since you said you were vehemently against it, I thought you'd be the better person to give me some perspective and help me learn.

>I did want to avoid the labels as there's always someone who comes up and ask you to define the label instead of talking about the issue itself. In this case, censorship.

I would have found it much clearer if your comment said "I am against censorship at it's core, vehemently", and as an added bonus you wouldn't be annoyed by me asking about it.

But, to be clear, the reason I asked about the label instead of the issue is because I don't understand what issue(s) woke culture represents to you. So trying to talk about those issues would be difficult.

My impression so far is that woke culture is more than just censorship. I'm very anti-censorship, but I've also been called "woke" in passing as an insult, so unfortunately I'm still left a bit confused. Thanks anyways, though!

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#144

Post by deanCommie »

delichon wrote: post #139
xg15 wrote: post #124

This seems like approximately the dumbest possible place to have political battles. Isn't the entire purpose of having a standard set of emojis as part of Unicode to enable reliable communication of the concepts and emotions associated with them? In that sense it's perfectly fine if it was a water pistol, a real gun or whatever else as long as it's the same thing everywhere . But the same codepoint showing up as a wa…

Disagree. If the cat emoji becomes a dog, it isn't OK if it's the same everywhere. I don't think it's much different to turn the poo emoji into flowers, the bomb emoji into a kiss, or the pistol emoji into a water pistol.

The question isn't whether it was OK to turn the gun emoji into a water pistol in the first place.

It doesn't matter if it wasn't. It was done, and it was done at a time when there was political will for everyone to follow suit and be consistent.

The question is whether it's OK to turn it back. Because there ISN'T the same political will. And other emoji providers will NOT follow X in this.

Having X "go back" because the original change was "unjust" doesn't fix the underlying problem. It creates a new one.

Literally perfect application of the concept of "two wrongs don't make a right"

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#146

Post by qsort »

xg15 wrote: post #124

This seems like approximately the dumbest possible place to have political battles. Isn't the entire purpose of having a standard set of emojis as part of Unicode to enable reliable communication of the concepts and emotions associated with them? In that sense it's perfectly fine if it was a water pistol, a real gun or whatever else as long as it's the same thing everywhere . But the same codepoint showing up as a wa…

This is why I believe including emoji in unicode was a blunder. A capital "A" is the same in any font; I can write a message in monospace and my interlocutor can read it in sans-serif, or tap in morse code and have it rendered in hand- writing, in all cases the difference is immaterial.

On the other hand we don't use pictures in the same way, the meaning of the message depends on the exact picture used as part of the "font". The whole thing about flags and skin tones are symptoms of the same problem.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#148

Post by nebula8804 »

pensatoio wrote: post #51
tills13 wrote: post #8

Wow they're working on really important and consequential things over there at Twitter under new management.

Couldn't you have made the same argument against changing it in the first place?

No because the reason it was changed is actually Apple's fault. They switched to a water pistol but because you can transmit an emoji cross platform, what may be perceived as a innocent message using the water pistol emoji could come across as a negative message when that water pistol is rendered as a gun in the receiver's phone.

Scroll down in this page for the example I am citing:

[0]:https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-and-the-gun-emoji/

This really raises an interesting attack vector. Get influential enough at Apple -> push a change that could cause trouble for others given you are the largest entity -> they will be forced to adopt your change.

This should have been picked up by congress because it is some small group (or even one person) affecting the decisions of the entire industry.

Also its pretty fitting that Musk has applied his signature move: Make the change damn the consequences and then re-learn the reason why it was done in the first place when some disaster occurs. It must be nice that he never has to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#150

Post by rurp »

edwinjm wrote: post #68
sharkjacobs wrote: post #15

This is exactly as stupid as changing it to a water pistol in the first place was

Why do you want a real gun? I bet most uses are to bully people. It seems that's the kind of social network Elon wants.

Does changing it to a water pistol actually reduce bullying at all? I suspect not. My bet is that the water pistol change was driven by virtue signaling and corporate risk aversion rather than any real belief that it would do anything useful.

Conversely though, the decision to change it back is probably driven by trolling and attention-seeking more than anything.

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