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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

#171

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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…

Emojis lost the plot when they became too anthropomorphic. Now that they're realistic humanoids they need to represent all skin types, genders, ages, pregnant men, etc.

A smiley doesn't need gender, sex, or age, to convey meaning.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#172

Post by xg15 »

llm_trw wrote: post #162
deanCommie wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A bunch of busy bodies decided to change the meaning of a unicode character: https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f52b/index.ht... This is a problem since unicode characters are meant to be unchanging and rendered to the same glyph forever.

Exactly, so then it would be wise not to add to the damage already done by changing it again.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#173

Post by roughly »

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.

> now people will be getting banned from X for using gun emojis to promote political violence.

Yeah I… don’t think that’ll be happening. From Twitter, sure, from X?

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#174

Post by qual »

waterhouse wrote: post #151
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.

(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 (…

Thanks for taking the time to write this out, I think it helps me understand a bit better. Every definition seems to be sort of different and personalized but I think it's beginning to coalesce into something in my mind, rather than just leaving me confused.

Usually when I try to ask this question, I just have angry people being angry with me, and I end up more confused. So it's nice to have some legitimate explanations come my way.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#175

Post by kremi »

qsort wrote: post #146
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…

I’m pretty sure the thumbs up emoji or the slightly smiling emoji won’t get different interpretations based on font.

And here the issue is not in font differences (or different pictures of the same thing getting different interpretations): it’s the thing represented that’s actually different.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#176

Post by kortilla »

listless wrote: post #147

This from a guy who unveils his new data center at exactly 420 and has a line of cars intentionally named to spell out “s3xy” and the reason we’re all forced to say “space sex” out loud every time we talk about a rocket launch. We are trapped in a meme.

> forced to say “space sex” out loud

Unless your spoken English isn’t very good, it’s quite clear there is no “s” sound in the second half.

Say “space sex” out loud and yes you’ll hear two distinct ‘s’ sounds. Not at all the same as “space ex”.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#177

Post by falcor84 »

listless wrote: post #147

This from a guy who unveils his new data center at exactly 420 and has a line of cars intentionally named to spell out “s3xy” and the reason we’re all forced to say “space sex” out loud every time we talk about a rocket launch. We are trapped in a meme.

In what dialect does SpaceX sound exactly like "space sex"? Sounds like a stretch to me.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#178

Post by bluescrn »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #77
chrisco255 wrote: post #35

I grew up with the argument that video game violence causes real violence. At the time, conservatives were keen on censoring violence, blood and gore in movies, video games and TV shows. It was the liberal establishment that defended artistic violence and sexuality. Now it seems like the pendulum swung and liberals seem keen on promoting squirt gun emojis, meanwhile some of the most popular video games on the market…

I'm not convinced this is a liberal vs. conservative thing in the first place. It seems like a straightforward continuation of the trend: depictions of violence are popular in some circles, yet disreputable in others, so big corporations looking to serve both markets have to find awkward, stodgy compromises to try and keep everyone happy.

It's all pretty silly. We're arguing over a gun emoji on social media, where all sorts of horrific videos are posted, including real people getting shot by real guns.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#179

Post by mikem170 »

theultdev wrote: post #84
rebolek wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original change was for ideological reasons and this change is for ideological reasons too. Both are same stupid waste of time.

If you think the first change was stupid, why would you support keeping it?

Ideological.

All the people arguing both sides of this, then and now, are motivated by ideology. That includes the parent post you replied to, me, you, Elon, etc.

People often argue over cultural changes. And then there's politics on top of that. And in Elon's case perhaps publicity, also.

Re: X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm

#180

Post by Dig1t »

kortilla wrote: post #154
Dig1t wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes but pretty much every single medium where you can use an emoji you can upload a picture.

Signal, iMessage, X, FaceBook, etc.

This thread is specifically about X so that’s what I mostly am talking about here.

But pretty much every communication medium being used allows you to upload pictures. It doesn’t make any sense to me why you’d remove the emoji and not also try to censor all pictures of guns.

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