There's something I really don't understand about emojis. I see why representing a face alongside some written text can be very useful to convey facial expressions. For example, I often use the upside down smile to convey a bit of irony and scarcasm. What I don't understand is, why objects? We already have words to describe that.
Before emojis, I remember the smileys. They were almost all about facial expressions (aside from, of course, the ASCII genitals). Speaking about genitals, I fear that emojis are painting a very weird and incomplete picture of the world. The "food & drinks" emojis seem to be describing a very urban-american-centric way of seeing the world. We have the taco and the burrito, the falafel, the takeout box, the sushi, but just a "cheese wedge", and the only pasta are spaghettis. There's a birthday cake, a shortcake, a cupcake that all look professionally made, but there's no "regular cake", the kind you would bake at home. That's not the reality I live in.
Up until now I always saw unicode as a fundamental way to celebrate the diversity of how humans beings express themselves. Object emojis seems to achieve exactly the opposite.
Before emojis, I remember the smileys. They were almost all about facial expressions (aside from, of course, the ASCII genitals). Speaking about genitals, I fear that emojis are painting a very weird and incomplete picture of the world. The "food & drinks" emojis seem to be describing a very urban-american-centric way of seeing the world. We have the taco and the burrito, the falafel, the takeout box, the sushi, but just a "cheese wedge", and the only pasta are spaghettis. There's a birthday cake, a shortcake, a cupcake that all look professionally made, but there's no "regular cake", the kind you would bake at home. That's not the reality I live in.
Up until now I always saw unicode as a fundamental way to celebrate the diversity of how humans beings express themselves. Object emojis seems to achieve exactly the opposite.