5 ms·

> The Unicode Consortium is working to limit the number of new emoji added in each new version of the standard to stay "focused on what is useful" and reduce th

by Zababa 5y ago

> The Unicode Consortium is working to limit the number of new emoji added in each new version of the standard to stay "focused on what is useful" and reduce the amount of work that OS and app developers need to do to support new emoji every year. That ship already sailed. I'll repeat my usual rant against emojis. The emojis to convey emotions are great and an useful addition to text-based communication, I like them. The emojis describing objects are useless at best and terrible at worse. The reality they describe is at best that of a few people living in something like San Francisco, at worse an imaginary world that's a grotesque approximation of our reality. Just look at the food emojis: https://emojipedia.org/food-drink/ https://emojipedia.org/food-drink/. It's like what people would eat in a TV series, not what most people actually eat most of the time in the real world.

run-types 5y ago
What food to do you feel is missing from the food emojis?
- peakaboo 5y ago
  You are not kidding? That list has only fast food items on it. Where is the home cooked meals with veggies and meats in different sauces etc? Today I had meat sauce. Yesterday I made a fish soup.
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    If you want them changed, then you should make good use of your time and spend it lobbying the Unicode committee to get these in. Society will much appreciate you for spending time on worthy endeavors like this.
- Zababa 5y ago
  There's nothing to represent a dish that went into the oven, there's no leek, no aspergus, no cooked meat outside of a poultry leg, some cartoonish meat on bone and bacon, only one type of cheese that's again a cartoonish cheese wedge, no cereal except for rice and an ear of corn, no zucchini, no nuts except the peanut, no round bread (not round flatbread, more like sourdough), no pasta except for spaghetti, no fish outside of very specific dishes, no soup. That's without thinking too much about it. It's a very "I live in the city and mostly eat outside, often at ethnic food places" centric vision of food. Edit: there's nothing wrong with living in the city and mostly eating outside, often at ethnic food places. But it's erasing a lot of people.
  - run-types 5y ago
    If leek and asparagus are your biggest omissions, then I think they've done a pretty good job at representing food. The point isn't to have photo-realistic illustrations of every possible food. Instead, they're trying to create a useful set of pictographic primitives that can be used for communication for everyone person on Earth. Even if they had photo-realistic emojis of every cut of meat, it wouldn't be that useful.
    - Zababa 5y ago
      > If leek and asparagus are your biggest omissions, then I think they've done a pretty good job at representing food. That's a strawman, I've cited lots of other things. My point isn't that I can show a leek, my point is that with these emojis, you can maybe cover what 10% of the population on Earth eats, and most of that will be people living in big cities in developped countries . > The point isn't to have photo-realistic illustrations of every possible food. Instead, they're trying to create a useful set of pictographic primitives that can be used for communication for everyone person on Earth. They failed at that. How would you express food cooked in an oven? You can't. There's not even an oven emoji. The food emojis are showing that there is a huge biais for the kind of people that would contribute to the emoji standard, which is again, people living in big cities in developed countries. It's like if someone says "English is universal, everyone I know can understand it". No it's not, it's just the bubble of that person. > Even if they had photo-realistic emojis of every cut of meat, it wouldn't be that useful. I'm not advocating for adding even more emojis, I'm advocating for removing the objects emojis entirely because they will never be able to express what a language can unless they become themselves a language. I could also argue that they could have chosen better primitives, especially now that they make many combination emojis, but the goal here isn't to recreate Little Alchemy. We already have a great tool to communicate "objects" in written forms, and that's language. We lacked a great tool to communicate emotions/facial cues through written text, and "emotion" emojis solved that problem.
  - genewitch 5y ago
    There's bok choy though!
- jdsully 5y ago
  There's no steak or beef emoji for one. I think a lot more people eat that than do Sushi (although I do love sushi). Edit: there’s no steak on that page but my phone has it… I stand corrected
  - run-types 5y ago
    https://emojipedia.org/cut-of-meat/ https://emojipedia.org/cut-of-meat/
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Should probably include all types of cuts too... Maybe some type of modifier so we could have examples from all cuisines around the world from poultry to dog and so on.
- philwelch 5y ago
  There's a sweet potato but no ordinary potato. That seems like an obvious and bizarre oversight.
  - run-types 5y ago
    https://emojipedia.org/potato/ https://emojipedia.org/potato/
    - philwelch 5y ago
      Weird. I must be mistaken; the last time I searched for a potato emoji, it only brought up sweet potato. Perhaps that app was using an older version of the standard; I don't remember for sure.
  - MathYouF 5y ago
    It stems from the fact that Japan invented emojis (it is in fact a very Japanese sounding word) and they eat sweet potatoes much more often than the other kind you're mentioning. Just wanted to make the oversight a little less bizarre for you.
- tszymczyszyn 5y ago
  Bigos, borsch and żurek to be sure. But seriously, the list is very limited. Very much agree with Zababa's point of view.
the_only_law 5y ago
What do people eat in the real world then? A quick glance and most of those many times in my life. I’ve never even been to SF or been on TV. In fact the only items I can say I’ve never consumed out of that list is Mate.
- tszymczyszyn 5y ago
  The thing is people consume lots of different things. It's hard to imagine emojis could cover a substantial part of them. So, why choose this and not that? To give an example, frutti di mare are underrepresented although they are very popular in many countries. OTOH there is a pregnant black man emoji, which likely represents something that has not materialized yet.
- bonoboTP 5y ago
  Non-fast-food, non-takeout cooked meals of the local cuisine
schainks 5y ago
To pick on your example, what's wrong with people using food emojis for prurient reasons, like eggplant and peach?

by Zababa 5y ago

run-types 5y ago

What food to do you feel is missing from the food emojis?

peakaboo 5y ago
You are not kidding? That list has only fast food items on it. Where is the home cooked meals with veggies and meats in different sauces etc? Today I had meat sauce. Yesterday I made a fish soup.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  If you want them changed, then you should make good use of your time and spend it lobbying the Unicode committee to get these in. Society will much appreciate you for spending time on worthy endeavors like this.
Zababa 5y ago
There's nothing to represent a dish that went into the oven, there's no leek, no aspergus, no cooked meat outside of a poultry leg, some cartoonish meat on bone and bacon, only one type of cheese that's again a cartoonish cheese wedge, no cereal except for rice and an ear of corn, no zucchini, no nuts except the peanut, no round bread (not round flatbread, more like sourdough), no pasta except for spaghetti, no fish outside of very specific dishes, no soup. That's without thinking too much about it. It's a very "I live in the city and mostly eat outside, often at ethnic food places" centric vision of food. Edit: there's nothing wrong with living in the city and mostly eating outside, often at ethnic food places. But it's erasing a lot of people.
- run-types 5y ago
  If leek and asparagus are your biggest omissions, then I think they've done a pretty good job at representing food. The point isn't to have photo-realistic illustrations of every possible food. Instead, they're trying to create a useful set of pictographic primitives that can be used for communication for everyone person on Earth. Even if they had photo-realistic emojis of every cut of meat, it wouldn't be that useful.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > If leek and asparagus are your biggest omissions, then I think they've done a pretty good job at representing food. That's a strawman, I've cited lots of other things. My point isn't that I can show a leek, my point is that with these emojis, you can maybe cover what 10% of the population on Earth eats, and most of that will be people living in big cities in developped countries . > The point isn't to have photo-realistic illustrations of every possible food. Instead, they're trying to create a useful set of pictographic primitives that can be used for communication for everyone person on Earth. They failed at that. How would you express food cooked in an oven? You can't. There's not even an oven emoji. The food emojis are showing that there is a huge biais for the kind of people that would contribute to the emoji standard, which is again, people living in big cities in developed countries. It's like if someone says "English is universal, everyone I know can understand it". No it's not, it's just the bubble of that person. > Even if they had photo-realistic emojis of every cut of meat, it wouldn't be that useful. I'm not advocating for adding even more emojis, I'm advocating for removing the objects emojis entirely because they will never be able to express what a language can unless they become themselves a language. I could also argue that they could have chosen better primitives, especially now that they make many combination emojis, but the goal here isn't to recreate Little Alchemy. We already have a great tool to communicate "objects" in written forms, and that's language. We lacked a great tool to communicate emotions/facial cues through written text, and "emotion" emojis solved that problem.
- genewitch 5y ago
  There's bok choy though!
jdsully 5y ago
There's no steak or beef emoji for one. I think a lot more people eat that than do Sushi (although I do love sushi). Edit: there’s no steak on that page but my phone has it… I stand corrected
- run-types 5y ago
  https://emojipedia.org/cut-of-meat/ https://emojipedia.org/cut-of-meat/
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Should probably include all types of cuts too... Maybe some type of modifier so we could have examples from all cuisines around the world from poultry to dog and so on.
philwelch 5y ago
There's a sweet potato but no ordinary potato. That seems like an obvious and bizarre oversight.
- run-types 5y ago
  https://emojipedia.org/potato/ https://emojipedia.org/potato/
  - philwelch 5y ago
    Weird. I must be mistaken; the last time I searched for a potato emoji, it only brought up sweet potato. Perhaps that app was using an older version of the standard; I don't remember for sure.
- MathYouF 5y ago
  It stems from the fact that Japan invented emojis (it is in fact a very Japanese sounding word) and they eat sweet potatoes much more often than the other kind you're mentioning. Just wanted to make the oversight a little less bizarre for you.
tszymczyszyn 5y ago
Bigos, borsch and żurek to be sure. But seriously, the list is very limited. Very much agree with Zababa's point of view.

the_only_law 5y ago

What do people eat in the real world then? A quick glance and most of those many times in my life. I’ve never even been to SF or been on TV. In fact the only items I can say I’ve never consumed out of that list is Mate.

tszymczyszyn 5y ago
The thing is people consume lots of different things. It's hard to imagine emojis could cover a substantial part of them. So, why choose this and not that? To give an example, frutti di mare are underrepresented although they are very popular in many countries. OTOH there is a pregnant black man emoji, which likely represents something that has not materialized yet.
bonoboTP 5y ago
Non-fast-food, non-takeout cooked meals of the local cuisine

schainks 5y ago

To pick on your example, what's wrong with people using food emojis for prurient reasons, like eggplant and peach?