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> This seems like approximately the dumbest possible place to have political battles. Isn't the entire purpose of having a standard set of emojis as part of Uni

by Alupis 2y ago

> This seems like approximately the dumbest possible place to have political battles. Isn't the entire purpose of having a standard set of emojis as part of Unicode to enable reliable communication of the concepts and emotions associated with them? Does anyone see what's happened here? A small group of people made a political decision and force changed the pistol emoji into a water gun. Then... later on, someone else undoes the change and suddenly now they're blamed for waging a political battle! We see this elsewhere too. Github with master -> main, despite master remaining the default everywhere else and causing endless confusion with examples/tutorials all over the internet. Immigrants -> Migrants, voting laws returning to pre-covid rules (and being likened to Jim Crow on Steroids as a result), etc. There's a segment of society that's in love with renaming/changing things everyone else was fine with, and then when people try to change things back - they're attacked as radical political warmongers.

cmiles74 2y ago
The phrase "small group of people" is doing a lot of work, I think. We had the largest technology/media companies in the country making similar changes.
- Alupis 2y ago
  The reality is a small handful of people - or even one person - makes these decisions. Nonetheless, even if we were to believe 100% of the people at Twitter, Facebook, Google, et al decided on this change together, it's still a small group of people and it still is a political decision.
- bathtub365 2y ago
  All of the employees of all of those companies combined are still a small group of people compared to the number subjected to the results of their decisions.
- bitcharmer 2y ago
  Let's not fool ourselves, these changes are almost exclusively pushed by small but very vocal minority groups and SJWs
xg15 2y ago
I can't speak for everyone, but as far as I'm concerned, the initial change to a water gun was just as stupid and damaging as this one. My point is just that changing it back now is not undoing the damage, it's creating even more damage.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  I agree. One of the reasons why I hesitate to use emojis is that there isn't enough standardization of what they look like. I've seen texts I've written that include them on other devices and have been pretty dismayed that that even relatively minor visual differences can make a huge difference in the meaning I intended vs the meaning that was actually received. The water pistol/gun thing is this taken to an extreme. The initial change was bad because it introduced a huge amount of uncertainty in meaning. The change back is bad for exactly the same reason.
  - PostOnce 2y ago
    In my experience, the water pistol was still used to denote violence, it was just dressed up to somehow make big tech feel less culpable for violent(ly emotional) social media.
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      As with all emojis, what they mean depends on the social group using them. In my social group, the gun version was never used for anything. When it became a water pistol, though, it started to get used to indicate a certain sort of playfulness.
- anonfordays 2y ago
  >My point is just that changing it back now is not undoing the damage, it's creating even more damage That's just like, your opinion man! Some of us view it as the Internet healing.
  - AlexeyBelov 2y ago

by Alupis 2y ago

cmiles74 2y ago

The phrase "small group of people" is doing a lot of work, I think. We had the largest technology/media companies in the country making similar changes.

Alupis 2y ago
The reality is a small handful of people - or even one person - makes these decisions. Nonetheless, even if we were to believe 100% of the people at Twitter, Facebook, Google, et al decided on this change together, it's still a small group of people and it still is a political decision.
bathtub365 2y ago
All of the employees of all of those companies combined are still a small group of people compared to the number subjected to the results of their decisions.
bitcharmer 2y ago
Let's not fool ourselves, these changes are almost exclusively pushed by small but very vocal minority groups and SJWs

xg15 2y ago

I can't speak for everyone, but as far as I'm concerned, the initial change to a water gun was just as stupid and damaging as this one. My point is just that changing it back now is not undoing the damage, it's creating even more damage.

JohnFen 2y ago
I agree. One of the reasons why I hesitate to use emojis is that there isn't enough standardization of what they look like. I've seen texts I've written that include them on other devices and have been pretty dismayed that that even relatively minor visual differences can make a huge difference in the meaning I intended vs the meaning that was actually received. The water pistol/gun thing is this taken to an extreme. The initial change was bad because it introduced a huge amount of uncertainty in meaning. The change back is bad for exactly the same reason.
- PostOnce 2y ago
  In my experience, the water pistol was still used to denote violence, it was just dressed up to somehow make big tech feel less culpable for violent(ly emotional) social media.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    As with all emojis, what they mean depends on the social group using them. In my social group, the gun version was never used for anything. When it became a water pistol, though, it started to get used to indicate a certain sort of playfulness.
anonfordays 2y ago
>My point is just that changing it back now is not undoing the damage, it's creating even more damage That's just like, your opinion man! Some of us view it as the Internet healing.
- AlexeyBelov 2y ago