6 ms·

I don’t think everyone interpreted “Simpsons yellow” as race-less. Certainly the show didn’t - On the show, Homer identifies as a white male IIRC, and some char

I don’t think everyone interpreted “Simpsons yellow” as race-less. Certainly the show didn’t - On the show, Homer identifies as a white male IIRC, and some characters (like Apu) are not yellow. You have to pick some skin tone for the default; just floating features would be off putting. Believing that the pan-white default of “simpsons yellow” is raceless because you feel represented in it excludes that others might not feel represented in it. And it’s a small thing to have fixed that costs you basically nothing.

smegger001 5y ago
Somewhere farther down another commenter asked if I would consider it race neutral if it was dark magenta. My response was yeah sure. If it is not a real skin tone it is neutral and i would feel just as attached to it and feel it is raceless equally as bright yellow. I don't feel anymore or less represented either. *edited for spelling
- mattnewton 5y ago
  Dark magenta would probably have the same problem that floating features have, which is it distracts from the content (and would probably be hard to read compared to actual skin tones). The situation was, people chose yellow as the default, and that excluded some people. So, if we cared about being polite and fixing it for those people, and if our options were to either change to some hideous magenta that couldn’t be misinterpreted as representing a real skin tone vs just offering more skin tones, I think we made the right choice.
  - jxding 5y ago
    The choice is not dark magenta or bright yellow or bust though. A large spectrum of colors exist, and if we really wanted to not offend anyone, we could have chosen blue or green or pink or orange or any other color that couldn't possibly be a skin color (untill we meet easily-offended aliens of course).
  - HKH2 5y ago
    Usually a generic happy face is yellow. I don't think it has anything at all to do with race. It makes sense that that's why they made the other emoticons yellow.
odiroot 5y ago
The Android blob emojis worked for years and people were happy with them. They were so popular that some people even backported them to newer Android versions, after they were removed.
jessedhillon 5y ago
I say this as a non-white person who ostensibly should feel better represented by these emojis: a person who feels anxiety or exclusion when they see a yellow "thumbs up" is someone who has a low grade mental illness in need of address. Well-meaning white people have been duped by a vocal minority of non-whites, who themselves were duped by cynical, washed out 60s radicals with bad ideas who failed to achieve anything in their time. You have been encouraged to treat non-whites like child emperors in your midst, whose every whim and dictate can only lead the way to racial harmony and absolution of your inherited sins. This is madness, and it's embarrassing for me and other right-thinking people to witness. >Believing that the pan-white default of “simpsons yellow” is raceless because you feel represented in it excludes that others might not feel represented in it. What race is Milhouse, with his blue hair?
- mattnewton 5y ago
  > Well-meaning white people have been duped by a vocal minority of non-whites, who themselves were duped by cynical, washed out 60s radicals with bad ideas who failed to achieve anything in their time. You have been encouraged to treat non-whites like child emperors in your midst, whose every whim and dictate can only lead the way to racial harmony and absolution of your inherited sins. We are still talking about adding some code points to Unicode here, right? Or did I miss something? I agree it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it also isn’t a large change to offer skin tones as an option for people who want them. You can simply not use them if you don’t want to. > What race is Milhouse, with his blue hair? Not Indian or Black. Almost certainly he reads as white to most people. The blue hair and yellow skin was not meant to signify the characters place outside of race, it was a stylistic consequence of them not having hairlines https://www.her.ie/entertainment/simpsons-writers-reveals-family-actually-yellow-408513 https://www.her.ie/entertainment/simpsons-writers-reveals-fa... https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Category:African-American_Characters https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Category:African-American_C...
  - jessedhillon 5y ago
    >We are still talking about adding some code points to Unicode here, right? Or did I miss something? This is a matter of representation and inclusion, which are worthwhile goals that should matter to people in positions to make decisions. Also, this is trivial and doesn't matter. >Not Indian or Black. Almost certainly he reads as white to most people. The blue hair and yellow skin was not meant to signify the characters place outside of race, it was a stylistic consequence of them not having hairlines No, you miss the point. It's a creatively liberal work, and viewing it through a racial lens is 1. a choice of the viewer 2. provides a flawed and inconsistent mapping back to human race 3. pathological The fact that you engage the question and believe there is a sincere answer is the evidence of pathology, IMO. It shows a commitment to read race into everything, instead of acknowledging that blue-haired people don't exist, and so it's quite likely that the project of mapping a phylogeny back to homo sapiens is dubious. What you're doing is exactly analogous to a hypothetical person claiming that the Simpsons was a pioneer in pro-ablism art and culture, because all characters have four fingers. It's pareidolia.
swiley 5y ago
This is why I've always preferred the unifont interpretation of emojis: just monochrome graphics that get rendered with the same color as the surrounding text.
- iso1631 5y ago
  I miss the simplicity of things like ;-)
lebuffon 5y ago
Observation IMHO This: :-) is an emoji. These new-fangled things on our phones are tiny pictures. As pictures they communicate differently than ascii characters because they are a different medium. But that horse has left the barn... ;-)
- smegger001 5y ago
  yeah it really bugs me when ascii faces like :-) are auto converted into a emojii/emoticon by messaging apps or text editors. but that is another conversation
- glglwty 5y ago
  That is a 顔文字 not 絵文字
- account42 5y ago
  > IMHO This: :-) is an emoji. No, that's an emoticon. Now get off my lawn.

smegger001 5y ago

Somewhere farther down another commenter asked if I would consider it race neutral if it was dark magenta. My response was yeah sure. If it is not a real skin tone it is neutral and i would feel just as attached to it and feel it is raceless equally as bright yellow. I don't feel anymore or less represented either. *edited for spelling

mattnewton 5y ago
Dark magenta would probably have the same problem that floating features have, which is it distracts from the content (and would probably be hard to read compared to actual skin tones). The situation was, people chose yellow as the default, and that excluded some people. So, if we cared about being polite and fixing it for those people, and if our options were to either change to some hideous magenta that couldn’t be misinterpreted as representing a real skin tone vs just offering more skin tones, I think we made the right choice.
- jxding 5y ago
  The choice is not dark magenta or bright yellow or bust though. A large spectrum of colors exist, and if we really wanted to not offend anyone, we could have chosen blue or green or pink or orange or any other color that couldn't possibly be a skin color (untill we meet easily-offended aliens of course).
- HKH2 5y ago
  Usually a generic happy face is yellow. I don't think it has anything at all to do with race. It makes sense that that's why they made the other emoticons yellow.

odiroot 5y ago

The Android blob emojis worked for years and people were happy with them. They were so popular that some people even backported them to newer Android versions, after they were removed.

jessedhillon 5y ago

I say this as a non-white person who ostensibly should feel better represented by these emojis: a person who feels anxiety or exclusion when they see a yellow "thumbs up" is someone who has a low grade mental illness in need of address. Well-meaning white people have been duped by a vocal minority of non-whites, who themselves were duped by cynical, washed out 60s radicals with bad ideas who failed to achieve anything in their time. You have been encouraged to treat non-whites like child emperors in your midst, whose every whim and dictate can only lead the way to racial harmony and absolution of your inherited sins. This is madness, and it's embarrassing for me and other right-thinking people to witness. >Believing that the pan-white default of “simpsons yellow” is raceless because you feel represented in it excludes that others might not feel represented in it. What race is Milhouse, with his blue hair?

mattnewton 5y ago
> Well-meaning white people have been duped by a vocal minority of non-whites, who themselves were duped by cynical, washed out 60s radicals with bad ideas who failed to achieve anything in their time. You have been encouraged to treat non-whites like child emperors in your midst, whose every whim and dictate can only lead the way to racial harmony and absolution of your inherited sins. We are still talking about adding some code points to Unicode here, right? Or did I miss something? I agree it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it also isn’t a large change to offer skin tones as an option for people who want them. You can simply not use them if you don’t want to. > What race is Milhouse, with his blue hair? Not Indian or Black. Almost certainly he reads as white to most people. The blue hair and yellow skin was not meant to signify the characters place outside of race, it was a stylistic consequence of them not having hairlines https://www.her.ie/entertainment/simpsons-writers-reveals-family-actually-yellow-408513 https://www.her.ie/entertainment/simpsons-writers-reveals-fa... https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Category:African-American_Characters https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Category:African-American_C...
- jessedhillon 5y ago
  >We are still talking about adding some code points to Unicode here, right? Or did I miss something? This is a matter of representation and inclusion, which are worthwhile goals that should matter to people in positions to make decisions. Also, this is trivial and doesn't matter. >Not Indian or Black. Almost certainly he reads as white to most people. The blue hair and yellow skin was not meant to signify the characters place outside of race, it was a stylistic consequence of them not having hairlines No, you miss the point. It's a creatively liberal work, and viewing it through a racial lens is 1. a choice of the viewer 2. provides a flawed and inconsistent mapping back to human race 3. pathological The fact that you engage the question and believe there is a sincere answer is the evidence of pathology, IMO. It shows a commitment to read race into everything, instead of acknowledging that blue-haired people don't exist, and so it's quite likely that the project of mapping a phylogeny back to homo sapiens is dubious. What you're doing is exactly analogous to a hypothetical person claiming that the Simpsons was a pioneer in pro-ablism art and culture, because all characters have four fingers. It's pareidolia.

swiley 5y ago

This is why I've always preferred the unifont interpretation of emojis: just monochrome graphics that get rendered with the same color as the surrounding text.

iso1631 5y ago
I miss the simplicity of things like ;-)

lebuffon 5y ago

Observation IMHO This: :-) is an emoji. These new-fangled things on our phones are tiny pictures. As pictures they communicate differently than ascii characters because they are a different medium. But that horse has left the barn... ;-)

smegger001 5y ago
yeah it really bugs me when ascii faces like :-) are auto converted into a emojii/emoticon by messaging apps or text editors. but that is another conversation
glglwty 5y ago
That is a 顔文字 not 絵文字
account42 5y ago
> IMHO This: :-) is an emoji. No, that's an emoticon. Now get off my lawn.