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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 "t

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.

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.