99% Invisible did a great podcast episode about emojis a while back.
"Tech analysts estimate that over six billion emojis are sent each day. Emojis, which started off as a collection of low-resolution pixelated images from Japan, have become a well-established and graphically sophisticated part of everyday global communication.
But who decides what emojis are available to users, and who makes the actual designs? Independent radio and film producer Mark Bramhill took it upon himself to find out and, in the process, ended up developing and pitching his own idea for a new emoji."
Apple has released a new version of its forthcoming bagel emoji. Now including cream-cheese, this aims to address concerns raised about the previous design.
I agree. Almost seems lazy to take a photo and call it an emoji. It might not actually be a photo, but the effect is the same. No style, no interpretation.
Imagine if the face emojis were just head shots of various stock photo models.
Bikesheding. Not many know of or understand the complicated politics of the Middle East and even many of those who do might not have strong oppinions.... but everyone understands bagels.
I cannot believe that a Twitter designer was actually proud enough of that bagel emoji to claim credit for it and "walk them through" the design process.
Me neither. It reminds me of a post I saw a while ago where a Google employee was super excited to announce the redesign of their salad emoji. The only difference was that they removed the hard boiled egg from the emoji because they said it wasn't inclusive enough of vegans and vegetarians.
No, really, I would like to cosign with your comment. Who in the f--k needs a bagel emoji? Who is picky about that emoji? How did I even lose 15 seconds to commenting about this?
Because you care enough to make it about you and signal to the rest of us how little you ostensibly care. You found a way to feed your ego from a silly post about bagel emoji.
I know that's a hard take, but that's exactly what just happened, disgusted under a thin veil of protest. We do it all the time. ;)
I wonder how many nouns will eventually get their own pictogram. How abstract can you go? Or verbs and adjectives, for that matter. After all, there's plenty of room in Unicode.
I mean, emoji was never meant to be serious. Why would I wanna send my friend bunch of yellow faces or a tiny image of bagel if I'm being serious? Just entertainment.
I don’t consider myself a jaded individual; but that this is #3 right now on HN’s front page bewilders and confuses me.
I feel like I could go into /new/ and find at least a couple articles more relevant and interesting than this.
The average HN’er may tolerate this post, and maybe 5-10% might actually care, but there’s a huge amount of the developer community I’ve seen that mostly just looks down on emoji as a frankly immature way to communicate. Emoji-related news is often beleaguered with comments akin to this one, and this time it’s my turn, I suppose.
This news may matter to my partner and I, to have another meme to screw with. It may matter to a perhaps younger or less tech-centric group.
But developers, hackers, and startup folks? Really?
How does the front page pick it’s content? I assume algorithmically?
We can have light-hearted pieces that are actually relevant to tech or science in an interesting, or meaningful way.
Also, again, my partner and I use emoji all the time, but I absolutely certainly do not when communicating with other developers, clients, or anything with an air of professionality.
Case in point: HN does not support emoji. Or, if it does, certainly nobody uses them. And it is certainly not a feature I’ve seen requested here.
I don't think you understand what "light-hearted" means...
The whole point is that it doesn't have to be relevant to tech or science in a meaningful way.
I also don't use emoji when communicating with clients or in anything that should carry a professional tone. But I'm also a person with a personal life and personal friends and so on.
mostly just looks down on emoji as a frankly immature way to communicate.
When you see something popular that you don't understand, the answer is never that people are stupid/immature/etc. It's that they have incentives and impulses that you don't yet understand. Choosing to dismiss those people, instead of seeking to understand why they're doing what they're doing, means that there are motives in play you don't comprehend, which means that there are opportunities you can't take advantage of because you don't understand what's actually happening.
but there’s a huge amount of the developer community I’ve seen that mostly just looks down on emoji as a frankly immature way to communicate
You know, I was willing to just scroll to the bottom of the comments, then go find something else to read between builds. But if it pisses off those Grumpy Gus's, well, I guess I'll scroll baaaaack to the top and click the up arrow just to help make sure it stays at #3.
I found it interesting to learn that all these companies are re-drawing all of these emoji in different ways, that there is actually a site that writes news about emoji, and that people turn out to hold strong views on these matters.
I basically hate emoji, and this is sort of why; when my ascii smilie faces started getting translated into, frankly, horribly ugly emoji that looked nothing like what I wanted to convey, it changed the meaning of what I was 'saying', and in a different way for each platform.
I recognize that this is naive; just because I 'see' an ascii smilie one way doesn't mean others interpret it the same way, but I prefer that illusion to someone else's version being forced on me.
At least in something like Slack, I know the user is getting what I'm choosing.
Developers, hackers, and startup folks are people. People like to be entertained.
This is quite entertaining especially as someone who lives in the west coast and has a few east coast friends with strong bagel and pizza preferences. It's entertaining because it's a discussion about culture, which is easy to miss if you don't accept that Emoji are quickly becoming culture.
Entertainment has value, humor has value, and silliness has value (clearly, something HN may not get). This is the difference between something sterile and something human.
