3 ms·

A water gun is a gun in the same way that a gummy bear is a bear.

• catapart 2y ago
  Right on. And if someone made a "bear" emoji as an image of a gummy bear, I wouldn't accuse them of being out of spec. I would just find it personally misleading. Things that might be appropriate to say with a bear emoji might not be appropriate to say with a gummy bear emoji. That could be confusing, and it could be frustrating. But - as the standard emoji convention is often just "use whatever is closest" (see: eggplant/peach) - I don't think there would be any real, practical problem by people using gummy bears as their "bears". So it's perfectly in spec and could easily be a practical solution. The same is true of the gun emoji. Hard for me to picture a scenario where I would need to communicate "real gun" but not want to say the words "real gun". And given the ubiquitous (until now) change in the icon, I have empirical evidence that it was an entirely practically appropriate solution. And, again, it was no further out of spec than an M1911.