I mean, I don't dislike the concept personally. I actually really hate how HN strips them.

But the technical implementation? Yeah, that could have gone a lot better IMHO.

One must also wonder if some things really had to be added in the first place, e.g. for people kissing it's:

  (person|man|woman)(skin-tone)? ZWJ <heart> ZWJ <kissing lips> ZWJ (person|man|woman)(skin-tone)?

This is NOT a complaint about that they added diversity as such, in principle I'm all for that, it's just that few seem to actually use these emojis, and both in terms of code and UI it all gets pretty complex; there's 98 combinations to choose from here.

I don't really get why <heart> or <killing lips> or <kissing face> isn't enough. That's actually what most people seem to use anyway, because who finds it convenient to pick all the correct genders and skin tones from the UI for both people?

> I actually really hate how HN strips them.

Oh. So that's why HN discussion always looks sane. They strip the pollution.

> there's 98 combinations to choose from here.

Less than that since a default skin color can be set in most apps. I'm sure setting a gender will come soon so the entire first part of that emoji can be auto-guessed. Then its just showing the other options in the UI. Really all of this is UI design as even with the 98 combinations you can still display it as 4/5 options you drill down.

> who finds it convenient to pick all the correct genders and skin tones from the UI for both people?

I just checked and searching "kissing" in my iOS emoji keyboard inside Messenger showed just 4 of the emoji's your describing - defaulting both skin tones to my settings and then the four M/F pair ups. Plus some non-related kissing emojis like the cat kissing.

> defaulting both skin tones to my settings

But that's kind of wrong, no? The entire point is that you can choose both sides individually. What if you set it to black and want to kiss some white bloke?

If anything that only underscores my point that it's too complex and that no one is using them (certainly not as intended anyway).

That's on Apple not on emojis.

In the Windows 11 emoji picker it works like this:

1. Search "kissing". See two generic yellow people kissing. Notice a blue dot in the bottom right corner.

2. Clicking the emoji brings up previously used versions of the kissing emoji, with a + button.

3. Clicking + brings up a dialog like I described previously. Two generic figures at the top, then a row of skin tones.

4. You can click on each generic person and choose a gender, then select a skin tone. You can do this for each person in the group.

5. Click done. This emoji is now in your default emoji list and you won't need to recreate it again.

That seems like a lot of effort when you could have sent <kissing-lips>, <kissing-cat>, <kissing-face>, <heart>, or any number of other emojis, which is what my point was.

You still can! People who want more customizations can do so too. Plus it only takes the initial setup per emoji at least.