Unicode has added 1791 emojis[1]. Note that it has used significantly fewer codepoints than this for emojis, because some (e.g. flags) are done via a small numb

Unicode has added 1791 emojis[1]. Note that it has used significantly fewer codepoints than this for emojis, because some (e.g. flags) are done via a small number of combining marks (flags use 26 code points for letters in country codes). They've been slowing down the rate of additional emojis since they started doing this. Do you really think they'll accelerate at some point and use up the almost 1 million unassigned code points Unicode has left? Not to mention the fact that many UTF8/UTF16 implementations are already fine with full 32-bit code points, instead of the 21 bits Unicode I'm using above (they have said they'll only ever use 21 bits, but the option is there). Suffice it to say this getting "out of control" and eating up the remaining space in our lifetimes, or our children's lifetimes would be pretty impressive. This means that the worst we have to fear is more boxes, assuming OSes don't keep up with their fallback fonts. Saying adding more symbols-designed-to-be-just-kind-of-placed-in-line-with-other-symbols-like-they-always-have-been is the first step towards MIDI and organization diagrams is like saying you're vegetarian because it's a slippery slope from eating meat to eating people. Also note that unlike every other excess of the Unicode standard, these would require massive changes to the code that handles text. This means that if Unicode decided to do this, you wouldn't have to worry about negative effects because nobody would implement it. [1]: http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html