5 ms·

So much hypocrisy going on. If fighting racism was the goal Unicode should not have added skin colored emojis. This is the dumbest move ever.

adamrezich 4y ago
I will never understand why emoji, the whole point of which is to convey universal emotions (and other icons), ever needed skin tone modifiers at all. why do "thumbs up" and "thumbs up, but i'm white btw" need to be encoded differently? why is everyone OK with Native Americans and other ethnicities with reddish skin tones being excluded? just a complete mess top-to-bottom, and now we can basically never undo it. imagine trying to explain to aliens from another planet 500 years from now why 500 years ago we decided to a.) include skin tone modifiers to begin with and b.) only allow for the gradation of skin colors that we do. beyond ridiculous. EDIT: I forgot to mention how insanely ridiculous it is that we have these skin tone modifiers, but they don't even work for all "people" emoji, because of the obvious issue of rendering cartoon human faces in a way that isn't considered a racist caricature for many races. this makes sense of course, but I can't understand why, when this argument came up, they didn't just choose to scrap the whole idea instead of implementing it and restricting it to a subset of "people" emoji.
- ben_w 4y ago
  People like customising these things to be mini-avatars as a form of self expression. I don’t see a reason to get upset about this option existing — not even from the perspective of “oh no strings are even weirder, I can’t safely treat them as a stream of bytes all the time”, given that combining characters are needed for other stuff anyway. (No idea why you think other skin tones can’t be added later).
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    >(No idea why you think other skin tones can’t be added later). because why would we add further bloat and implementation complexity to something that is already bloated and complex to implement?
    - ben_w 4y ago
      You believe that’s a reason to think it can’t be done?
      - adamrezich 4y ago
        not at all, of course. realistically the biggest impediment to adding more skin tones is that if the list of additional skin tones wasn't completely exhaustive, there would be public outcry. as it stands right now, the simple gradient scale is "good enough," so there isn't much impetus to add any more.
        Lammy 4y ago
        > if the list of additional skin tones wasn't completely exhaustive, there would be public outcry This is kind of how I felt when looking at the scale just now, because none of the 10 really look like me. Maybe it's supposed to be a round-down/up sort of thing, or maybe I should calibrate my display?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- twelvechairs 4y ago
  The default was yellow which basically represents white people.
  - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
    I mean, sortof, I guess, maybe. Given the history, one could make an argument that they represent Asians rather than Caucasians (it's always seemed odd to me that we ended up with this name for white(r) people, but such is life).
    - SemanticStrengh 4y ago
      white skinned people should be called beige skinned people. Only albinos could pretend to whitehish-ness and still they are mostly not, because even if their skin maximally reflect light, they are still made of blood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism_in_humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism_in_humans BTW humans can become easily become black in a continuous like manner https://alchetron.com/cdn/melanotan-ii-d26dbedd-94fb-434a-8d70-fc290197c63-resize-750.png https://alchetron.com/cdn/melanotan-ii-d26dbedd-94fb-434a-8d... extreme: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3198931/Reddit-user-claims-inject-illegal-pigment-enhancer-pale-super-tan.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3198931/Reddit-user... It's a very nice technology and is an example of permanent whole body genetic mutation via epigenetics.The issue is that it is irreversible.. The converse, a whitening substance does not exist yet but could exist in theory, by antagonizing the melanin receptors.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    Really? The default was yellow because that's what Franklin Loufrani used back in the 1970s in France, and he's (probably) the one responsible for the smiley becoming a global icon. Did he intend yellow to mean white people? I'm highly skeptical, but I'd be open to listening if you have some documentation...
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    this is the most insane recurring argument and I'll never understand it. sure that's how The Simpsons works, but that's not how LEGO works, so that argument gets canceled out. then you look at the yellow smiley face iconography that I'm sure has cultural roots somewhere but was universally used to specifically express universality—back when WAL*MART used it as their logo, were they specifically trying to market to white people, at the exclusion of all others?? then you take the history of emoji into account and you see that that doesn't really work as an explanation at all. it's like you (and everyone else who makes this inane argument) are trying to make something that's not white-people-centric, white-people-centric, just so you can complain about it being white-people-centric.
- SemanticStrengh 4y ago
  It can and should be undone. There is a difference between the identifier and the representation, android should render color skinned emojis in their yellow equivalent, as simple as that.
- sorenjan 4y ago
  Because people didn't understand that emoji was supposed to represent concepts, and saw them as small illustrations instead. That's also why Apple's version is basically the de facto standard now, and Google and Microsoft has had to adjust theirs to look more like Apple's to minimize confusion when the small pictograms doesn't look the same for sender and receiver.
three_seagrass 4y ago
Excluding skin color and gender is being blind to prejudice, not fighting it.
- twofornone 4y ago
  This attitude promotes prejudice, merely redirecting it to whatever demographic is convenient to paint as "dominant", it will never solve the problem because it explicitly prescribes different treatment based on ethnicity/gender. Its an emotionally appealing but logically nonsensical justification for bigotry. And particularly appealing to people who are more interested in power than actual equality.
  - three_seagrass 4y ago
    Good thing then being inclusive involves all races and genders then, including the dominant one. It would be pretty terrible if a historically "dominant" demographic felt persecuted because of equal options with emoji colors.
    - twofornone 4y ago
      This common argument is disingenuous. You hide behind the term "inclusive" as though everyone is treated equally but simultaneously believe that >Excluding skin color and gender is being blind to prejudice, not fighting it. Which implies that historic and current prejudice must be corrected with more prejudice. Which is inconsistent with inclusiveness and equality. And we've all seen how this works in practice - certain races and one gender in particular are expected to prejudge other participants and cede their vaguely defined, unilaterally assigned and assumed privilege to create concrete prejudiced privilege for others in the "inclusive" group. And given that personal circumstances are irrelevant, this the definition of prejudice. While you may refuse to acknowledge this explicitly, logically your approach to solving racism is more racism. Which leads me to conclude that at least the loudest among the D&I camp are only using claims of equality as a thin disguise for powermongering. >It would be pretty terrible if a historically "dominant" demographic felt persecuted because of equal options with emoji colors. And here, ironically, you are proving my point. To correct historic injustice we are obligated to immediately dismiss any grievances from white people, bonus for snark and sarcasm. When minorities complain, all claims are immediately valid, but if whites (and sometimes Asians, when politically expedient) raise legitimate concerns, they're just being fragile. That's prejudice, my friend. And the degree to which it has become casually acceptable in increasingly larger circles is concerning. By the way, I don't think anyone is concerned over the expanded color pallet itself, its the insistence that injecting divisive racialism into a race agnostic communication tool is the solution to prejudice. Even assuming that minorities are offended by a single yellow option is racist, much in the same way that latino people don't actually care for the similarly misguided "latinx" designation.

adamrezich 4y ago

I will never understand why emoji, the whole point of which is to convey universal emotions (and other icons), ever needed skin tone modifiers at all. why do "thumbs up" and "thumbs up, but i'm white btw" need to be encoded differently? why is everyone OK with Native Americans and other ethnicities with reddish skin tones being excluded? just a complete mess top-to-bottom, and now we can basically never undo it. imagine trying to explain to aliens from another planet 500 years from now why 500 years ago we decided to a.) include skin tone modifiers to begin with and b.) only allow for the gradation of skin colors that we do. beyond ridiculous. EDIT: I forgot to mention how insanely ridiculous it is that we have these skin tone modifiers, but they don't even work for all "people" emoji, because of the obvious issue of rendering cartoon human faces in a way that isn't considered a racist caricature for many races. this makes sense of course, but I can't understand why, when this argument came up, they didn't just choose to scrap the whole idea instead of implementing it and restricting it to a subset of "people" emoji.

ben_w 4y ago
People like customising these things to be mini-avatars as a form of self expression. I don’t see a reason to get upset about this option existing — not even from the perspective of “oh no strings are even weirder, I can’t safely treat them as a stream of bytes all the time”, given that combining characters are needed for other stuff anyway. (No idea why you think other skin tones can’t be added later).
- adamrezich 4y ago
  >(No idea why you think other skin tones can’t be added later). because why would we add further bloat and implementation complexity to something that is already bloated and complex to implement?
  - ben_w 4y ago
    You believe that’s a reason to think it can’t be done?
    - adamrezich 4y ago
      not at all, of course. realistically the biggest impediment to adding more skin tones is that if the list of additional skin tones wasn't completely exhaustive, there would be public outcry. as it stands right now, the simple gradient scale is "good enough," so there isn't much impetus to add any more.
      - Lammy 4y ago
        > if the list of additional skin tones wasn't completely exhaustive, there would be public outcry This is kind of how I felt when looking at the scale just now, because none of the 10 really look like me. Maybe it's supposed to be a round-down/up sort of thing, or maybe I should calibrate my display?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
twelvechairs 4y ago
The default was yellow which basically represents white people.
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  I mean, sortof, I guess, maybe. Given the history, one could make an argument that they represent Asians rather than Caucasians (it's always seemed odd to me that we ended up with this name for white(r) people, but such is life).
  - SemanticStrengh 4y ago
    white skinned people should be called beige skinned people. Only albinos could pretend to whitehish-ness and still they are mostly not, because even if their skin maximally reflect light, they are still made of blood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism_in_humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism_in_humans BTW humans can become easily become black in a continuous like manner https://alchetron.com/cdn/melanotan-ii-d26dbedd-94fb-434a-8d70-fc290197c63-resize-750.png https://alchetron.com/cdn/melanotan-ii-d26dbedd-94fb-434a-8d... extreme: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3198931/Reddit-user-claims-inject-illegal-pigment-enhancer-pale-super-tan.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3198931/Reddit-user... It's a very nice technology and is an example of permanent whole body genetic mutation via epigenetics.The issue is that it is irreversible.. The converse, a whitening substance does not exist yet but could exist in theory, by antagonizing the melanin receptors.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Really? The default was yellow because that's what Franklin Loufrani used back in the 1970s in France, and he's (probably) the one responsible for the smiley becoming a global icon. Did he intend yellow to mean white people? I'm highly skeptical, but I'd be open to listening if you have some documentation...
- adamrezich 4y ago
  this is the most insane recurring argument and I'll never understand it. sure that's how The Simpsons works, but that's not how LEGO works, so that argument gets canceled out. then you look at the yellow smiley face iconography that I'm sure has cultural roots somewhere but was universally used to specifically express universality—back when WAL*MART used it as their logo, were they specifically trying to market to white people, at the exclusion of all others?? then you take the history of emoji into account and you see that that doesn't really work as an explanation at all. it's like you (and everyone else who makes this inane argument) are trying to make something that's not white-people-centric, white-people-centric, just so you can complain about it being white-people-centric.
SemanticStrengh 4y ago
It can and should be undone. There is a difference between the identifier and the representation, android should render color skinned emojis in their yellow equivalent, as simple as that.
sorenjan 4y ago
Because people didn't understand that emoji was supposed to represent concepts, and saw them as small illustrations instead. That's also why Apple's version is basically the de facto standard now, and Google and Microsoft has had to adjust theirs to look more like Apple's to minimize confusion when the small pictograms doesn't look the same for sender and receiver.

three_seagrass 4y ago

Excluding skin color and gender is being blind to prejudice, not fighting it.

twofornone 4y ago
This attitude promotes prejudice, merely redirecting it to whatever demographic is convenient to paint as "dominant", it will never solve the problem because it explicitly prescribes different treatment based on ethnicity/gender. Its an emotionally appealing but logically nonsensical justification for bigotry. And particularly appealing to people who are more interested in power than actual equality.
- three_seagrass 4y ago
  Good thing then being inclusive involves all races and genders then, including the dominant one. It would be pretty terrible if a historically "dominant" demographic felt persecuted because of equal options with emoji colors.
  - twofornone 4y ago
    This common argument is disingenuous. You hide behind the term "inclusive" as though everyone is treated equally but simultaneously believe that >Excluding skin color and gender is being blind to prejudice, not fighting it. Which implies that historic and current prejudice must be corrected with more prejudice. Which is inconsistent with inclusiveness and equality. And we've all seen how this works in practice - certain races and one gender in particular are expected to prejudge other participants and cede their vaguely defined, unilaterally assigned and assumed privilege to create concrete prejudiced privilege for others in the "inclusive" group. And given that personal circumstances are irrelevant, this the definition of prejudice. While you may refuse to acknowledge this explicitly, logically your approach to solving racism is more racism. Which leads me to conclude that at least the loudest among the D&I camp are only using claims of equality as a thin disguise for powermongering. >It would be pretty terrible if a historically "dominant" demographic felt persecuted because of equal options with emoji colors. And here, ironically, you are proving my point. To correct historic injustice we are obligated to immediately dismiss any grievances from white people, bonus for snark and sarcasm. When minorities complain, all claims are immediately valid, but if whites (and sometimes Asians, when politically expedient) raise legitimate concerns, they're just being fragile. That's prejudice, my friend. And the degree to which it has become casually acceptable in increasingly larger circles is concerning. By the way, I don't think anyone is concerned over the expanded color pallet itself, its the insistence that injecting divisive racialism into a race agnostic communication tool is the solution to prejudice. Even assuming that minorities are offended by a single yellow option is racist, much in the same way that latino people don't actually care for the similarly misguided "latinx" designation.