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Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by qwerty456127 on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @03:19AM (#27047082)
IMHO adding different skin tones to emojis is racism, just like if we added multiple skin tones to letters and everybody was only allowed to use their own. And this also introduces unnecessary complexity and clutters the screen space. Is a field to set your skin color in the app/browser/OS settings so the proper handshake emoji would be chosen automatically according to that and that of the counterpart the next thing to come?
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by dang on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:47AM (#27047620)
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by enriquto on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @06:55AM (#27048372)
I don't understand whats flamebaity about the OP. This is an article literally about skin colors; thus it is somewhat natural that the word "racism" will appear in a harmless way, as here.
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by dang on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @03:45PM (#27054731)
It wasn't in a harmless way; it was making an inflammatory accusation of racism; not only that, but in a form which is repeated so often as to be a flamewar trope ("that's racist"), and in a way that clearly signalled ideological battle. That is exactly the sort of thing the HN guidelines ask commenters to avoid.
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by gundmc on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @03:40AM (#27047203)
I don't think it's racist, but I do find it a little odd when someone takes the time to purposefully select a non-default skin tone. As a white person, it feels weird to go out of my way to send a white emoji and feels even weirder to use a black or brown emoji.

I'm all for inclusion, but it's not like anyone's skin is the yellow color of the default faces.

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by iainmerrick on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @03:56AM (#27047295)
I'm all for inclusion, but it's not like anyone's skin is the yellow color of the default faces.

Instinctively I agree with you, but: does that yellow color remind you of the Simpsons? On that show, the white people are yellow but the brown people are brown. The yellow isn’t really neutral.

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by 1337shadow on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:11AM (#27047414)
Exactly why I want Cyan, but it's not available, I feel excluded, apparently the community needs to be more inclusive to people who want to identify with Cyan colored emojis.
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by TeMPOraL on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:24AM (#27047485)
Jokes aside, the programmer in me wonders why there are individual skin tone code points in the first place, instead of generic (colorless) "skin tone modifier", which would then be followed by a color codepoint from a palette of named colors, say 256 of those. So I'd write: Rightward Hand + Generic Skin Tone + Green, ZJW, Leftward Hand + Generic Skin Tone + Blue, to express a handshake between an Orion and an Andorian. Or, if 256 colors are not enough, you could write a combination of RGBA Color Modifier + eight characters in [0-9A-Fa-F] range...

This would also help with hair colors and bunch of other stuff that has separate code points at the moment. I have a feeling we'll end up with an approximation of this at some point, maybe a decade from now.

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by niceairport on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:10AM (#27047410)
Ah yes, the Simpsons, the source of truth for all things life.
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by throwaway210222 on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:15AM (#27047438)
> On [the Simpsons], the white people are yellow but the brown people are brown.

To be fair, the asians are yellow in the Simpsons :) [1].

[1] https://tokyofox.net/2015/02/13/japan-related-references-in-...

I'm truly disappointed the woke haven't pursued this.

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by iainmerrick on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @05:24AM (#27047848)
What kind of response are you hoping for?
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by avhception on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @03:53AM (#27047272)
It's even weirder with some apps that seem to default on the black or brown emojis instead of the yellow ones. I guess they try to be extra-inclusive, BLM and all that? Dunno, but as a white person I sent the "wrong" skin color by accident multiple times and kept wondering what this actually means. Am I appropriating a skin color? Am I being extra inclusive? I just wish we would have kept real skin colors out of the emojis.
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by sildur on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:06AM (#27047374)
I see it like customizing player aspect in video games.
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by Blikkentrekker on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:06AM (#27047379)
> I'm all for inclusion, but it's not like anyone's skin is the yellow color of the default faces.

Have you ever noticed how in The Simpsons all the “white” characters have an unrealistic skin tone in a primary color as well as often unrealistic hair textures and colors but all the other races have realistic skin tones and hair textures and colors for their races?

There's also a rather interesting cultural difference in this. U.S.A. viewers often wonder why Japanese cartoon characters look what they consider “white”, whereas Japanese viewers consider them what they consider “yellow”.

The lesson to be learned from this is that a not insignificant number, perhaps majority, of viewers replaces “nonrealism” with what it considers to be the default, unmarked expectation of the world. For U.S.A.-men, that is “white”, for Japanmen, that is “yellow”. It doesn't so much seem to be one's own “race” but the “race” one most frequently encounters in life, as U.S.A.-men of all “races” seem to do so.

The end result is that for many, the amber skin tone is not true neutral territory, even though objectively speaking it is, for they perceive it as replaceable with whatever race is the most frequent in their milieu.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ek5MqILXIAEdC3k.jpg

This image is most interesting and ironic to me. The auctor of said image seems to strongly imply that the stick figures that has the same color as the background are “white”, but it is not even clear whether they are transparent or simply the same, unnatural color as the background, whereas the other characters have a realistic, plausible human skin tone rather than a primary color such as perfect black. The “white” characters are not a realistic hue of beige, for instance. — I find such to have an interesting influence on the discussion, in that I often see that some people seem to perceive fictional characters that are raceless, due to for instance being of alien origin, to essentially have the “race” they consider the unmarked default of their milieu.

In particular, I had a discussion once where there was complaint about “changing the race” of the character of Tyrael. This character is a angel, who like all angels in that universe is faceless, nothing of his body but a vague humanoid shape clad in full body armor was ever shown, but when he was given human form, he had to be given such human features as a gender and a race, so they choose a “black adult male”, and some complaint that his “race was changed”; it seems to me that the character that had no race, age, or gender was consider a “white adult male” by them, which is the unmarked default in their milieu, that which they most frequently see and interact with.

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by Chris2048 on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @07:39AM (#27048647)
> The lesson to be learned from this is..

Is it possible that some other explanation for the discrepancy in perception is correct, and that it has nothing to do with "default substitution"?

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by Blikkentrekker on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @07:53AM (#27048755)
Possible, but this seems the simplest explanation to explain the discrepancy.

Regardless of what the explanation is; I'm merely remarking upon the asymmetry and the fact that many persons seem to not perceive the unnatural, amber-colored emoji as neutral territory, but I don't believe this ia a universal human trait either.

I often encounter that various cognitive defects are suggested to be universal in the literature and research that investigates them, and notes it exists, but the research's methodology can often not discriminate between that, because there is no possible negative effect. — it's entirely possible that only half of persons has the asymmetric perception, but that's enough to create an average positive measurable effect.

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by realusername on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @03:30AM (#27047153)
I do agree with that, adding skin colors was at best of very poor taste, additional unnecessary information nobody needed, emojis already being the most universal concept you can get. If you really want to look them different, add a system-wide setting to change all of them, I personally would like to remove them all.
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by Hoasi on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:02AM (#27047345)
This is an interesting way to look at it. Indeed, as innocuous as it is, it forces a person to somehow identify with a skin color or at least make a choice.
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by tashi on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @03:49AM (#27047255)
It would probably be racist if you were only allowed to use the one most closely matching your skin tone. Fortunately we get to choose, so it's not.

I like getting to pick colors for things. It's fun. I use colored fonts too sometimes.

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by murderfs on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:06AM (#27047373)
It's vaguely amusing to me that there's nothing even vaguely resembling an East Asian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Skin_color

When are the hair color or epicanthic fold ZWJs getting added?

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by galgalesh on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @06:00AM (#27048072)
Note that the skin tones are based on the six tones of the Fitzpatrick scale, a recognized standard for dermatology.
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by dqpb on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @11:31AM (#27051192)
Fundamentally, racism is the belief in race. It's bad because the whole concept of race is flawed and therefore applying it to anything else is flawed.

However, skin tone is real and skin tone does not equal race. So I don't think skin tone emojis are racist.

Rather, I think your argument should be that skin tone emojis will be "triggering" for racists.

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by X6S1x6Okd1st on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @03:45AM (#27047230)
How do you define racism?
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by thinkingemote on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:01AM (#27047336)
The real issue is threefold in nature: definitions of racism have and are changing rapidly, secondly its not any personal (or dictionary) definition that counts but a kind of collective acceptance of a definition which carries the most weight, and thirdly, if someone says they are offended or says that it is actually racism, then they should be listened to.

It might not be a problem now, but it could be.

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by austinjp on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @03:42AM (#27047211)
Emoji are pictures, alphabetical letters are not.

Racism how?

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by dagurp on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:04AM (#27047353)
What was the motivation behind adding skin tones other than racism?
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by mnd999 on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:10AM (#27047406)
Inclusivity, people wanted emojis that looked liked them. If that makes them happy, then why not? Of course it can be abused, but then you could just as easily send racist words.
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by dagurp on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @06:08AM (#27048113)
I wouldn't call the default yellow color non-inclusive because it's equally wrong for everyone
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by enriquto on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @06:54AM (#27048364)
> adding different skin tones to emojis is racism

Sure. And people with vitiligo are shamefully discriminated against.

Bright yellow "skin" was an obviously impossible color that did not identify anybody, and that was beautiful. We have lost this beauty.

Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by McGlockenshire on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @11:41AM (#27051346)
You have lost nothing. The old emoji are not going away.
Re:The handshake emoji is more complicated than you might think by grenoire on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @03:31AM (#27047156)
That's basically what you already do with quite a few apps. Discord have a total override on the default skin colour, for one.