5 ms·

I wonder if all the gender variants / skin tones etc gets put into much use in real world? I mean yeah, having them is a good idea but they don't seem to be eas

by eknkc 5y ago

I wonder if all the gender variants / skin tones etc gets put into much use in real world? I mean yeah, having them is a good idea but they don't seem to be easy to use on emoji keyboards. Do people care enough to choose the correct skin tone and stuff? It is mostly "set it and forget" though for the singular person emojis, so it makes sense. Would you spend time to choose the right tones, genders etc on a handshake emoji?

Maxion 5y ago
I think if it more as of a way to be more individualistic in your expressions. The use cases are most likely as you say, set it and forget it. But as there are a lot of people in the world who have different skin color, there is a need for multiple different skin colored emojis. With handshake being one of the few without a way to customize the skin color it makes sens that it is worked on.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  > But as there are a lot of people in the world who have different skin color, there is a need for multiple different skin colored emojis. Why? The way I look at this graphic: they are schematic cartoon repræsentation of nail-less, hairless hands that are quite minimal, and originally were in a shade of amber that no human skin would ever have. These are clearly abstractions; human hands have a variety of variations to them: - finger length - finger thickness - nail length - amount of hair - visibility of tendons - missing fingers - extra fingers - perhaps partially missing fingers I do not see why such would need to be reflected in a schematic abstraction. Personally, I have long, thin fingers, relatively long nails that are painted black, relative hairlnessness, very visible tendons, and a copper-ish skin color that is not well reflected in all the skin color options. I cannot say I see a particular reason to select something that can approximate the look of my own hands for this, nor can such feasibly be done with the sheer amount of individual variance. > With handshake being one of the few without a way to customize the skin color it makes sens that it is worked on. I agree that excluding handshakes is inconsistent. I simply find it odd to say there is a need whatsoever to allow or skin color customization, and only limit it to what seems to be a linear progression from latte to chestnut, which does not even capture all common tones of human skin, and why would one stop there? If one is going to allow color customization, it seems better to have a mechanism to actually select r.g.b.a. color values. The linear gradient between two polar extremes seems to suggest if anything that it was motivated by a U.S.A. “race” based incentive, that is known to often reason as though what they call “black” and “white” are the only two “races” on the planet. It seems an odd priority with an odd implementation.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Because some people are really really big on personalization, aesthetics and customization. Some people spend hours tweaking how their characters in games look like. Some people are willing to pay just so they can customize character details. And while I almost never use emoji, some people use them a lot.
    - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
      That in no way answers why options of skin tone on a linear scale between latte and chestnut were chosen as the only particular option, which do not even cover all common human skin tones. As I said, if skin tones should be customization, then simply allow for an a.r.g.b value of some sorts.
      - watwut 5y ago
        Picking a.r.g.b value is nothing but simple. More of "time consuming and annoying".
      - galgalesh 5y ago
        The skin tones were based on the Fitzpatrick scale, a recognized standard for determining skin color. ARGB Skin tones are technically difficult to implement in unicode and would explode the amount of work needed by emoji font designers. It's always a trade-off between enabling expression and keeping it practical.
        pbronez 5y ago
        That's really interesting! It's nice to know that the tones were chosen from an established dermatological scale that was created to help people keep their skin healthy. That's about as wholesome and rigorous as you could hope for, I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Skin_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Skin_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale
      - steerablesafe 5y ago
- sokoloff 5y ago
  There are people of different hair colors and styles as well; do we also need to represent that in fonts? Heights, weights, eye colors (possibly heterochromic), and many others are all possible variations among humans. I’ve never felt the need to give someone a “<skin color> <gender> with <color1, color2> eyes and <length, style, [colors]> hair thumbs-up” to indicate agreement or mild praise. Of course it’s fine to represent these concepts in graphics/picture form; I’m not trying to squelch that we have differences that might be relevant to marketing contact lenses, reproductive healthcare, fitness, or hair services. It’s just not obvious that we need to express the full spectrum of humans with high-fidelity across many dimensions in fonts. I truly hope that my unborn great-grandchildren look with confused derision on the level of importance we currently assign to skin color.
mft_ 5y ago
I see them used quite a lot with common emojis like thumbs-up. People (obvs, I guess) use the closest tone to their real-world tone.
dagurp 5y ago
When I see people using them it's usually someone who thinks it's funny to use another skin tone than their own. If they use the correct one I can't help but think they're racist.
- xdennis 5y ago
  What? I only the lightest skin colour because I don't want to get accused of "digital black face" like I've seen others.
  - dagurp 5y ago
    What I'm saying is why choose a skin tone at all? If you used the default then there's no room for interpretation.
zimpenfish 5y ago
> but they don't seem to be easy to use on emoji keyboards On iOS, at least, it's a simple 'press-and-hold' to get the variants which then persist. > Do people care enough to choose the correct skin tone and stuff? I have, yeah, at least on the ones I use regularly. It would be great if the OS could notice that I've changed N of them and offer to set the default for the rest rather than me having to do it each time, mind.
- c17r 5y ago
  According to this https://www.imore.com/how-use-new-diverse-emoji-keyboard-iphone-and-ipad https://www.imore.com/how-use-new-diverse-emoji-keyboard-iph... if you change it via the globe it remembers.
  - zimpenfish 5y ago
    Yeah but it only remembers for each emoji - when there's hundreds* of the little buggers, it's annoying to have to change them individually. I'd like it to remember that I've changed, say, 5 of them to $COLOUR and offer to set the rest to the same as a default.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  > On iOS, at least, it's a simple 'press-and-hold' to get the variants which then persist. actually i believe on first use i believe the tone picker opens, making you select one, which it remembers. Then you can change with press-and-hold
gadders 5y ago
I think if I was black/person of colour, I'd maybe set the skin tone to closer to my real one. As a white person, if I ever did a "handshake" emoji with a person of colour (and that's assuming if I even knew they were - you can't always tell over chat) I think I would default to just double-yellow [1]. I think to do anything else would be a minefield - did I get the shade wrong? Am I being patronising? [1] and I rather that was just double-blue or something, due to the way yellow could be misconstrued.
parliament32 5y ago
Honestly I've never seen a single person in real life use a skin tone, across imessage / slack / snapchat for years, despite my social group using emojis heavily and being fairly diverse. Everyone sticks to the yellow. The skin tones thing seems to be mostly for twitter-activists and the like, as far as I can tell.

by eknkc 5y ago

Maxion 5y ago

I think if it more as of a way to be more individualistic in your expressions. The use cases are most likely as you say, set it and forget it. But as there are a lot of people in the world who have different skin color, there is a need for multiple different skin colored emojis. With handshake being one of the few without a way to customize the skin color it makes sens that it is worked on.

Blikkentrekker 5y ago
> But as there are a lot of people in the world who have different skin color, there is a need for multiple different skin colored emojis. Why? The way I look at this graphic: they are schematic cartoon repræsentation of nail-less, hairless hands that are quite minimal, and originally were in a shade of amber that no human skin would ever have. These are clearly abstractions; human hands have a variety of variations to them: - finger length - finger thickness - nail length - amount of hair - visibility of tendons - missing fingers - extra fingers - perhaps partially missing fingers I do not see why such would need to be reflected in a schematic abstraction. Personally, I have long, thin fingers, relatively long nails that are painted black, relative hairlnessness, very visible tendons, and a copper-ish skin color that is not well reflected in all the skin color options. I cannot say I see a particular reason to select something that can approximate the look of my own hands for this, nor can such feasibly be done with the sheer amount of individual variance. > With handshake being one of the few without a way to customize the skin color it makes sens that it is worked on. I agree that excluding handshakes is inconsistent. I simply find it odd to say there is a need whatsoever to allow or skin color customization, and only limit it to what seems to be a linear progression from latte to chestnut, which does not even capture all common tones of human skin, and why would one stop there? If one is going to allow color customization, it seems better to have a mechanism to actually select r.g.b.a. color values. The linear gradient between two polar extremes seems to suggest if anything that it was motivated by a U.S.A. “race” based incentive, that is known to often reason as though what they call “black” and “white” are the only two “races” on the planet. It seems an odd priority with an odd implementation.
- watwut 5y ago
  Because some people are really really big on personalization, aesthetics and customization. Some people spend hours tweaking how their characters in games look like. Some people are willing to pay just so they can customize character details. And while I almost never use emoji, some people use them a lot.
  - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    That in no way answers why options of skin tone on a linear scale between latte and chestnut were chosen as the only particular option, which do not even cover all common human skin tones. As I said, if skin tones should be customization, then simply allow for an a.r.g.b value of some sorts.
    - watwut 5y ago
      Picking a.r.g.b value is nothing but simple. More of "time consuming and annoying".
    - galgalesh 5y ago
      The skin tones were based on the Fitzpatrick scale, a recognized standard for determining skin color. ARGB Skin tones are technically difficult to implement in unicode and would explode the amount of work needed by emoji font designers. It's always a trade-off between enabling expression and keeping it practical.
      - pbronez 5y ago
        That's really interesting! It's nice to know that the tones were chosen from an established dermatological scale that was created to help people keep their skin healthy. That's about as wholesome and rigorous as you could hope for, I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Skin_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Skin_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale
    - steerablesafe 5y ago
sokoloff 5y ago
There are people of different hair colors and styles as well; do we also need to represent that in fonts? Heights, weights, eye colors (possibly heterochromic), and many others are all possible variations among humans. I’ve never felt the need to give someone a “<skin color> <gender> with <color1, color2> eyes and <length, style, [colors]> hair thumbs-up” to indicate agreement or mild praise. Of course it’s fine to represent these concepts in graphics/picture form; I’m not trying to squelch that we have differences that might be relevant to marketing contact lenses, reproductive healthcare, fitness, or hair services. It’s just not obvious that we need to express the full spectrum of humans with high-fidelity across many dimensions in fonts. I truly hope that my unborn great-grandchildren look with confused derision on the level of importance we currently assign to skin color.

mft_ 5y ago

I see them used quite a lot with common emojis like thumbs-up. People (obvs, I guess) use the closest tone to their real-world tone.

dagurp 5y ago

When I see people using them it's usually someone who thinks it's funny to use another skin tone than their own. If they use the correct one I can't help but think they're racist.

xdennis 5y ago
What? I only the lightest skin colour because I don't want to get accused of "digital black face" like I've seen others.
- dagurp 5y ago
  What I'm saying is why choose a skin tone at all? If you used the default then there's no room for interpretation.

zimpenfish 5y ago

> but they don't seem to be easy to use on emoji keyboards On iOS, at least, it's a simple 'press-and-hold' to get the variants which then persist. > Do people care enough to choose the correct skin tone and stuff? I have, yeah, at least on the ones I use regularly. It would be great if the OS could notice that I've changed N of them and offer to set the default for the rest rather than me having to do it each time, mind.

c17r 5y ago
According to this https://www.imore.com/how-use-new-diverse-emoji-keyboard-iphone-and-ipad https://www.imore.com/how-use-new-diverse-emoji-keyboard-iph... if you change it via the globe it remembers.
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  Yeah but it only remembers for each emoji - when there's hundreds* of the little buggers, it's annoying to have to change them individually. I'd like it to remember that I've changed, say, 5 of them to $COLOUR and offer to set the rest to the same as a default.
madeofpalk 5y ago
> On iOS, at least, it's a simple 'press-and-hold' to get the variants which then persist. actually i believe on first use i believe the tone picker opens, making you select one, which it remembers. Then you can change with press-and-hold

gadders 5y ago

I think if I was black/person of colour, I'd maybe set the skin tone to closer to my real one. As a white person, if I ever did a "handshake" emoji with a person of colour (and that's assuming if I even knew they were - you can't always tell over chat) I think I would default to just double-yellow [1]. I think to do anything else would be a minefield - did I get the shade wrong? Am I being patronising? [1] and I rather that was just double-blue or something, due to the way yellow could be misconstrued.

parliament32 5y ago

Honestly I've never seen a single person in real life use a skin tone, across imessage / slack / snapchat for years, despite my social group using emojis heavily and being fairly diverse. Everyone sticks to the yellow. The skin tones thing seems to be mostly for twitter-activists and the like, as far as I can tell.