4 ms·

The internet needs a "tin foil hat" emoji, but two proposals have been rejected :( Emoji proposals and status: https://unicode.org/emoji/emoji-proposals-status

The internet needs a "tin foil hat" emoji, but two proposals have been rejected :( Emoji proposals and status: https://unicode.org/emoji/emoji-proposals-status.html https://unicode.org/emoji/emoji-proposals-status.html

brikym 4mo ago
Seems like a conspiracy. Also it's so silly that pistol turned into water pistol.
turblety 4mo ago
Did they give a reason why it was declined? Was it some bureaucratic "form not filled in correct" thing, or are they actually against the concept of it?
- lifthrasiir 4mo ago
  Vendors-have-no-capacity-to-handle-more-than-handful-number-of-emojis-per-each-release thing. To elaborate: it should be plain obvious that not every Emoji proposal can be accepted even though all of them are correctly filed, as there would be too many Emojis there then. So there has to be some threshold, and that threshold is mostly stipulated by vendors' willingness to process new Emoji characters for designing fonts and updating softwares in time.
- zyx321 4mo ago
  That list only includes suggestions that were seriously considered and voted on. Since it's a vote, there is no single official 'reason' for rejection. If I had to guess: it would be confusing to anyone who didn't grow up with American TV shows.
  - pwdisswordfishq 4mo ago
    Eh, it's not like there are hundreds of emojises pretty much exclusively tied to Japanese culture.
    - maxbond 4mo ago
      They were grandfathered in, not voted on. Or rather there was a vote that resulted in adopting the character sets developed by Japanese telecoms en masse.
      - Ekaros 4mo ago
        Weirdly this is in line with Unicode in general. Widespread (and not even widespread) historic use in say print results in characters getting included.
    - mananaysiempre 4mo ago
      > emojises I don’t protest the coinage here (goodness knows my native language did worse things to English words), but I can’t stop saying it in Gollum’s voice.
  - throawayonthe 4mo ago
    what's the connection to american TV shows? i'm only aware of the tinfoil hat through cultural osmosis i guess, something about shielding from radio waves it's a popular image/byword/archetype for conspiracy theorists, idk if it's a common enough symbol to justify emoji inclusion. the submitted proposals probably have analyses of that though :p
- wodenokoto 4mo ago
  Generally Unicode is for encoding all existing encodings/writing. So you generally can’t add something because it would be cool or fun or useful, but only because it is currently in use and cannot be encoded by Unicode.
  - chordbug 4mo ago
    If this were entirely true, we'd never see new emoji added, and yet we do.
    - goodmythical 4mo ago
      That's not at all the case. Unicode began as a standard for making things like string(':)') in to a single character. Consider all of the languages it supports. Consider: ﷽ (which isn't an emoji, but the point stands) which is an entire sentence. It was already in use in certain places and unicode decided they wanted to support it, so now they do. Previously, one would have to type out the entire sentence in the original characters, but now it is a single unicode, just like u+263a () used to be alt+1 (). The emoji was already in use long before unicode existed, and in seeing it in common use, they decided to support it.
account42 4mo ago
The entire notion that emoticons should be limited to what a committee approves (which is then mangled by corporate PR even further) is ridiculous. Just retvrn to images.
- brikym 4mo ago
  This. But more work is needed. I tried a bunch of Discord alternatives like Matrix but very few have a fun experience with things custom emoji images that really make a chat server feel like a home.
  - uxellodunum 4mo ago
    There are clients on Matrix that support custom emojii, such as Sable and Commet. Neither are absolutely perfect, but I know people who daily-drive one of the other (or both, which is where I'm at depending on the device). For the most part, now that Matrix is merging those Matrix 2.0 specs finally, and the 2.0 features are already out in the wild with excellent results, it has a really good base, and as expected we've started to see clients build more into the average-consumer space to pose as alternatives to both niche and mainstream audiences such as Discord, Whatsapp, etc - Which it just wasn't/isn't able to do on Matrix 1.x (legacy).
    - brikym 4mo ago
      That's positive. I think the other feature I wanted was embeds. I know prefetching content can be a security risk but it's super convenient.
      - uxellodunum 4mo ago
        Sable has opt-in embeds though I haven't tested the extent of supported websites, seems to work fine for Youtube for instance. Commet has an open PR for this but not yet implemented.

brikym 4mo ago

Seems like a conspiracy. Also it's so silly that pistol turned into water pistol.

turblety 4mo ago

Did they give a reason why it was declined? Was it some bureaucratic "form not filled in correct" thing, or are they actually against the concept of it?

lifthrasiir 4mo ago
Vendors-have-no-capacity-to-handle-more-than-handful-number-of-emojis-per-each-release thing. To elaborate: it should be plain obvious that not every Emoji proposal can be accepted even though all of them are correctly filed, as there would be too many Emojis there then. So there has to be some threshold, and that threshold is mostly stipulated by vendors' willingness to process new Emoji characters for designing fonts and updating softwares in time.
zyx321 4mo ago
That list only includes suggestions that were seriously considered and voted on. Since it's a vote, there is no single official 'reason' for rejection. If I had to guess: it would be confusing to anyone who didn't grow up with American TV shows.
- pwdisswordfishq 4mo ago
  Eh, it's not like there are hundreds of emojises pretty much exclusively tied to Japanese culture.
  - maxbond 4mo ago
    They were grandfathered in, not voted on. Or rather there was a vote that resulted in adopting the character sets developed by Japanese telecoms en masse.
    - Ekaros 4mo ago
      Weirdly this is in line with Unicode in general. Widespread (and not even widespread) historic use in say print results in characters getting included.
  - mananaysiempre 4mo ago
    > emojises I don’t protest the coinage here (goodness knows my native language did worse things to English words), but I can’t stop saying it in Gollum’s voice.
- throawayonthe 4mo ago
  what's the connection to american TV shows? i'm only aware of the tinfoil hat through cultural osmosis i guess, something about shielding from radio waves it's a popular image/byword/archetype for conspiracy theorists, idk if it's a common enough symbol to justify emoji inclusion. the submitted proposals probably have analyses of that though :p
wodenokoto 4mo ago
Generally Unicode is for encoding all existing encodings/writing. So you generally can’t add something because it would be cool or fun or useful, but only because it is currently in use and cannot be encoded by Unicode.
- chordbug 4mo ago
  If this were entirely true, we'd never see new emoji added, and yet we do.
  - goodmythical 4mo ago
    That's not at all the case. Unicode began as a standard for making things like string(':)') in to a single character. Consider all of the languages it supports. Consider: ﷽ (which isn't an emoji, but the point stands) which is an entire sentence. It was already in use in certain places and unicode decided they wanted to support it, so now they do. Previously, one would have to type out the entire sentence in the original characters, but now it is a single unicode, just like u+263a () used to be alt+1 (). The emoji was already in use long before unicode existed, and in seeing it in common use, they decided to support it.

account42 4mo ago

The entire notion that emoticons should be limited to what a committee approves (which is then mangled by corporate PR even further) is ridiculous. Just retvrn to images.

brikym 4mo ago
This. But more work is needed. I tried a bunch of Discord alternatives like Matrix but very few have a fun experience with things custom emoji images that really make a chat server feel like a home.
- uxellodunum 4mo ago
  There are clients on Matrix that support custom emojii, such as Sable and Commet. Neither are absolutely perfect, but I know people who daily-drive one of the other (or both, which is where I'm at depending on the device). For the most part, now that Matrix is merging those Matrix 2.0 specs finally, and the 2.0 features are already out in the wild with excellent results, it has a really good base, and as expected we've started to see clients build more into the average-consumer space to pose as alternatives to both niche and mainstream audiences such as Discord, Whatsapp, etc - Which it just wasn't/isn't able to do on Matrix 1.x (legacy).
  - brikym 4mo ago
    That's positive. I think the other feature I wanted was embeds. I know prefetching content can be a security risk but it's super convenient.
    - uxellodunum 4mo ago
      Sable has opt-in embeds though I haven't tested the extent of supported websites, seems to work fine for Youtube for instance. Commet has an open PR for this but not yet implemented.