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X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

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Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#151

Post by waterhouse »

qual wrote: post #110
theultdev wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a "veiled whistle blow", it's my personal belief. But yes, I am against woke culture at it's core, vehemently. In no way does an emoji encourage armed violence. Are you against violent video games as well?

(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.

(Not the person you were asking, either)

In one sentence, wokeness is aggressively pursuing racial (and other identity-based) conflict above everything else, not caring what else you trample on (including even classic civil rights principles). "Microaggressions" is probably the most distinctively woke concept.

Censoring gun emojis is not woke in that respect, since it doesn't pursue any particular identity conflict (except, maybe, crusading on behalf of anyone with gun-related PTSD?). But the method (forcing people to sanitize their communication) and some aspects of the motivation (hand-wringing about some bits of language, acting like some people have extremely delicate sensibilities, using that to justify censorship) are similar to some prominent manifestations of wokeness and the corporate policies they push. So I can understand why the connection was drawn, though the term isn't quite appropriate.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#152

Post by nottorp »

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…

I always thought the purpose of a standard set of emoji is to keep the Unicode commitee employed...

If you don't have a heated debate about the meaning of the dot over the poop emoji every year they may find themselves out of a job and that would be too productive.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#153

Post by qual »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #116
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.

> Can you help me understand what woke culture is to you? Within this context it’s replacing guns with water pistols, systematically and comprehensively, in the name of fighting gun violence. On the same token, it’s replacing a water pistol emoji with a gun—in the aftermath of an armed assassination attempt on a Presidential candidate (and former President)—on a platform that regularly censors, in the name of free sp…

>Performative nonsense designed to appeal to emotions instead of doing something about the implied problem. (Guns and censorship, respectively.)

Thanks! This helps me understand it a bit more. Sort of a synonym for "virtue signalling" it seems?

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#154

Post by kortilla »

Dig1t wrote: post #80
soupbowl wrote: post #13

The fact that the emoji was "censored" to begin with is weird to me. But the internet is weird and now people will be getting banned from X for using gun emojis to promote political violence.

There is nothing stopping you from uploading a picture of a gun and putting it in your post. Why is an emoji any different or more dangerous than letting people upload pictures?

That’s like saying you can put pictures of the letters you need in a post to form words. It’s completely impractical in systems that even allow you to upload pictures and impossible for anything based on Unicode only input

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#155

Post by sunaookami »

edwinjm wrote: post #52
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think their “focus” is on emojis? This is probably just one among many things they’re doing. And it’s the right thing to do, because the political censorship of the pistol emoji is yet another example of how deeply biased tech companies have been in pushing their politics onto customers.

The gun emoji is used to make death threats etcetera. Why do you want that on a social media platform? It's not politics, it's just decency.

Everybody knows that death threats were invented with emoji.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#156

Post by ben_w »

wewtyflakes wrote: post #114
theultdev wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a "veiled whistle blow", it's my personal belief. But yes, I am against woke culture at it's core, vehemently. In no way does an emoji encourage armed violence. Are you against violent video games as well?

> In no way does an emoji encourage armed violence. Obviously, in a vacuum, an emoji does not do anything at all. Though emojis are used in context to convey intent, just as words are. Would you say words do not encourage armed violence? Sure, the dictionary does not, but when pieced together, narratives can be created that do. That is not to say we should ban words, but lets not kid ourselves and pretend they have n…

> That is not to say we should ban words, but lets not kid ourselves and pretend they have no power at all.

Indeed.

The whole reason I value freedom of speech is not a love of certain voices, but because of the power of speech to effect change.

Took me a long time to realise that while all improvements are change, not all change is an improvement. Dictators fear free speech because it has the power to take away their power. That power can also be used, has been used, to take away democracy.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#158

Post by aquova »

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 bizarre state of this emoji was that it already faced this change. One vendor (Apple I believe) decided to make it a water gun, slowly the rest of the industry followed, officially changing its name to "water pistol". Now the old battles are new again.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#159

Post by xg15 »

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.

I would extend "the same thing everywhere" through time as well, i.e. it's a bad thing to ever change the meaning of an emoji after it's been published, for the obvious reason that this messes with old texts and all other locations where the emoji has been used with the old meaning.

This means that the move back then to change the gun to a water pistol was an extremely bad move, no question here. But moving it back to the original meaning now is just as bad - it will just disrupt in the same way lots of newer texts that assume the glyph is a water pistol.

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