I’m asking because as a light-skinned male, I always use the standard Simpsons yellow. I don’t really see other light-skinned people using an emoji that matches their skin tone, but often do see people of color use them. Maybe white people don’t naturally realize a need to be explicit with emoji skin-tone or perhaps it’s seen as implicitly identifying or requesting white privilege.
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Is there a significance to using skin-tone emojis, and if so, what is it?
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Assuming there might be a racial movement attached to the first question, how does my use of emojis, both Simpsons yellow and light-skin, interact with or contribute to that?
Note: I am an autistic white Latino-American cis-gendered man that aims to be socially just.
Autistic text stim: blekh 😝 blekh 😝 blekh 😝 blekh 😝 blekh 😝 !!
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Blackfishing?
I thought we already had a term for when someone takes on someone else’s skin color something something cultural appropriation
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blackfishing
Oh god please not another buzzword
Stop before you wake the tabloids
I’m pale and I use the pale emoji, feels more like me.
I never really used the yellow ones. 🤷🏼
I use the one with my hair color. For things like thumbs up I stick with yellow
Isn’t it weird that only the white people in The Simpsons are yellow? There’s other races that aren’t yellow. And the Simpson’s world mirrors the real word; a large number of yellow people migrated from Eastern Europe to settle in Springfield.
I guess it’s better than the Doug universe, with people being either Caucasian or blue or purple. Very weird choice of representation, Nickelodeon! 👀
Matt Groening said he made the characters in the Simpsons yellow with oddly colored hair so that people would be confused by the colors and try to adjust the knobs on their TVs to fix it only to never get it quite right.
Wait until you hear about Sesame street!
Didn’t doug have a green dude too? And he was supposed to be white?
#Simpsonsdidit
White dude here. I use the white skin emojis, but honestly I think it’s just because I see my black and brown friends use their skin tones as a rule, and I feel like using the yellow tone is a bit weird when others are using the skin tone customization.
I’m not ashamed of my skin color or anything and the phone remembers my last tone selection so I don’t really see a reason to not use it.
I dunno, I mean they do it with LEGO men now, but Simpsons or LEGO yellow skin only belongs on people so jaundiced that it’s a miracle they’re not dead. Same with the more feminine Lego women. What ever happened to that same stupid smile and just switch the hair piece? I mean if it makes you happy I guess, it ain’t hurting nobody. I feel neither represented nor unrepresented by a cartoon yellow face. Maybe it’s just because I’m white, I dunno. You do you I guess.
What do you mean with autistic text stim?
I was feeling a bit uncomfortable with asking about this topic because I was worried that I would inadvertently be offensive somehow, so I typed my actual verbal stim into the post. Making weird noises when I’m overwhelmed is a way for me to get the energy out sometimes.
It’s some tiktok cringe thing about autism being a quirky and fun trait instead of a challenging mental disorder.
In white as fuck ✌🏿
Yes, officer, this comment right here
🫱🏻🫲🏿
The yellow should be the only one. I find it absolutely idiotic that they needed to include all different skin colors. I think that’s similar to my native language (Finnish) not having gender specific pronouns (hän = he/she) and then someone wanting to come up with ones. That’s “fixing” a problem that didn’t even exist in the first place.
Maybe you’d feel differently if your country wasn’t 90+% homogeneous with a light skin tone
There are no yellow skinned people where I live
It’s still pretty light if we’re considering the array of skin tones that are throughout humanity. If you weren’t Finnish, but instead African or Indian or South American for example, maybe you wouldn’t feel that yellow was representative of you and your people. Saying yellow is fine for everyone because you feel it’s fine isn’t taking into account the other billions of opinions in the world.
I quess we need a billion more variations of those emojis then. Lets keep paying more attention to the skin color of people. That seems like a great idea.
Something people living in almost entirely racially homogenous countries don’t often get is that you can’t help the problem of racism by trying to ignore it. The only way to correctly address racism is to realize that it exists, that people do have biases based on race & ethnicity, that there are groups that are underrepresented, and to actively work to provide more ways for people to represent themselves and their identity. The fact of the matter is that more representation, even in seemingly minor ways like more emojis which they can identify with more, helps normally underrepresented people feel more comfortable with themselves and their identity and helps alleviate societal pressures for them to mask their identity/culture. Even small changes play a part.
Acting “colorblind” just makes the problem of racism worse, as it means you’d be acting blind to obvious biases based on race/ethnicity… including people who are part of a certain in-group (or multiple in-groups) being overrepresented and people of an out-group being underrepresented or represented poorly/highly stereotypically. There is no morally just approach to discrimination which attempts to pay no attention to the traits being discriminated against.
It’s pride month, this is like one of the most relevant times of year to this… It may be easier to see from that point of view instead – what purpose does queer pride exist even in places where queer people are “legal”? Why are there pride flags and events and characters and such to represent LGBT people? A similar answer may be applicable to racial minorities.
I was raised in the part of the United States with likely the most racist/racially tense history in the nation, possibly one of the most in modern history (it was the heart of the Confederacy after all, one of the most significant historical events of our nation was burning down half the state and presenting my city to the president as a Christmas gift, I’m sure it’d make a top 10 list of the big racism or something), a place that still has extremely bad problems with racial discrimination, and I used to think the “colorblind” approach and avoiding race as much as possible was the solution to racism, but I’ve realized over time that this approach is a tool that racism uses to thrive – it makes people refuse to acknowledge the racism in the first place, and it causes people to be unable to find out what racism really means and how many minor things can have major affects on minority groups. It’s a very common approach by (often conservative/“libertarian”) people here who haven’t subscribed to the whole calling people racial slurs and committing hate crimes, but still can’t face the fact that racism is alive, everywhere around us, and that they’re likely participating in it or propogating it regularly despite not actively trying to be racist.
Basically… let them have their variously skin-colored emojis
Yeah you don’t get it and never will, that’s a shame
Ad hominem is not an argument to the contrary
No, but having a blindfold on doesn’t suddenly make it okay to punch someone
I really don’t care what colours of emojis exist. Use them or don’t use them, it’s not that deep.
Actually spending time thinking about coloured emojis is a little strange to me. If someone wants to use a black one, white one, or yellow one just let it be.
You sound like the kind of people that would have proclaimed it’s idiotic to give women rights, or let them vote, or give LGBTQ+ people rights of marriage or whatever. Change is inevitable and just because something has no bearing on your life doesn’t mean it has no bearing on anybodies life.
You sound like the kind of people that would have proclaimed it’s idiotic to give women rights, or let them vote, or give LGBTQ+ people rights of marriage or whatever.
You’re insane.
Care to expand on that?
Why would someone want to add gendered pronouns to a language
Why would someone want to add gendered pronouns to a language
For adding specificity to lamguage. If you are talking about several people, the disambiguation can be handy.
We could have add pronouns that distinguish by size, or age, etc.
The really stupid feature of most indo-european is the arbitrary gendering of most nouns.
I like how Japanese does it, just call people by names and titles instead. 2nd person and 3rd pronouns exist but are only rarely used.
For a same reason they want to add emojis with different color skins? Stupidity, thoughtlessnes and virtue signaling.
I feel this is like saying the Simpsons, and most of Springfield, aren’t supposed to be white because their skin is yellow.
It’s no surprise the default emoji color is so close to white skin, and it’s no surprise that some people feel a lack of representation by this.
But emoji’s are not derived from the Simpsons. They’re derived from the yellow smiley face ideogram that originated in the 1960s, it was designed by the artist Harvey Ball.
It’s yellow, not because it’s supposed to represent whiteness, but because the company colors of the State Mutual Life Assurance Company it was designed for were yellow and black, and because it feels sunny, bright and positive. It’s an anthropomorphized representation of the Sun, and does not represent a human with a specific skin color.
I neither said nor implied they were.
My point is that everyone, who is being honest at least, interprets the Simpsons as being white. Do you think they’re white?
Groeing chose yellow because it jumps out, but the characters are all supposed to be white. He could have chosen other colors that pop as well, but settled on yellow, for white people.
As I said, it’s no surprise the default emoji is closest to white skin. Even if that association comes from the Simpsons, emojis didn’t come out until decades after the Simpsons became a cultural mainstay.
My point is that everyone, who is being honest at least, interprets the Simpsons as being white. Do you think they’re white?
Yes, from the context it’s crystal clear that they’re white, they could be purple or green and they’d still be “white”, but I think it’s not relevant in a discussion about emojis.
As I said, it’s no surprise the default emoji is closest to white skin. Even if that association comes from the Simpsons, emojis didn’t come out until decades after the Simpsons became a cultural mainstay.
My point is that yellow smiley faces have been a cultural mainstay independent of the Simpsons, and that you grossly overestimate the worldwide cultural impact of the Simpsons. Most of the non-US world didn’t even get the Simpsons on TV until the mid 1990s, while smiley face t-shirts and pins were all the rage in the late 1980s and 1990s. Source: I wore them myself when I was a kid, and from your comment I’m guessing you weren’t born yet.
And decades? The Simpsons started in 1989, while the first instant messengers already had smiley face emoticons in the mid 90s.
Yes, I think they’re white but I think it’s not relevant in a discussion about emojis.
If we are talking about “why are there different skin tone emojis” it’s absolutely relevant to point out examples of how the alleged “neutral” emoji color is typically interpreted as a white skin tone.
Most of the non-US world didn’t even get the Simpsons on TV until the mid 1990s
The Simpsons came out in 88. You are saying most of the world got the Simpsons about half a decade later. I would say this proves the exact opposite of your point and that it is a huge world cultural phenomena. I’m shocked that I’m having the defend the Simpsons as one of the most important and impactful TV shows of all time.
And decades? The Simpsons started in 1989, while the first instant messengers already had smiley face emoticons in the mid 90s.
Emoticon != emoji. Characters don’t have skin tone colors. The first emojis didn’t come out until 1999. It wasn’t until mid 2000s when they gained popularity world wide, and it wasn’t until 2010 that they were accepted into unicode. It may be a fair point to claim that decades is too long, but it’s at least a decade.
Source: I wore them myself when I was a kid, and from your comment I’m guessing you weren’t born yet.
I was born in 1978. I remember the smiley face pins being a quick passing fad, not some mainstay. Certainly not even remotely on the level of the Simpsons. But regardless of how popular they are, it doesn’t detract from my point: the yellow is close to white and interpreted as white. It might even further drive home my point because (although it’s a bit circular here) probably part of the reason it gained such widespread financial success is because of it’s proximity to whiteness.
The Simpsons came out in 88. You are saying most of the world got the Simpsons about half a decade later. I would say this proves the exact opposite of your point and that it is a huge world cultural phenomena. I’m shocked that I’m having the defend the Simpsons as one of the most important and impactful TV shows of all time.
My point is, I didn’t even hear about the Simpsons until I was in Uni, which puts it around 1995-ish, but I sure knew what a yellow smiley was.
Emoticon != emoji. Characters don’t have skin tone colors. The first emojis didn’t come out until 1999
I meant smileys really, because that’s what they were initially called. Emojis is a more recent retroactive rebranding/appropriation of smileys by Apple when they launched the iphone.
Anyway ICQ had yellow smiley faces 1996-ish. AIM had them 1997-ish. Yahoo!Pager, later Yahoo!Messenger, had yellow smileys in 1998. And MSN definitely had them in 1999.
And then there’s friggin minesweeper that had a yellow smiley face all the way back in 1992:
I guess they all watched too much Simpsons?
My reference to the Simpsons has nothing to do with claiming this is where yellow emojis came from. My reference to the Simpsons is to point out that yellow skin tone is clearly adjacent to whiteness and this was well established before emojis caught widespread support in the mid/late aughts.
The fact that others also used yellow emojis financially successfully does not contradict the claim that it’s clearly adjacent to whiteness. If anything, it reinforces the claim.
I believe emoji was a Japanese creation, not a Apple creation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji
interestingly, according to one study im half-remembering, people from countries with an ethnic majority see the Simpsons as part of their ethnicity. ie Asian people perceive The Simpsons as Asian.
I’d be curious to see that. I also find it hard to believe because every famous white person who makes a cameo on the show is also yellow.
My immediate opinion upon skin tone emoji being introduced was the mildest frustration: we’d had unified emoji for all Homo sapiens!
Then after seeing someone use their own skin tone for an emoji, I realized… oh, dang. They can feel represented now, potentially in a way they did not before.
I use yellow 100%. But not bad folks have options.
One neat thing is on Slack you may be able to see a hint of your company’s vibrant diversity if folks are reacting with all colors of emoji. Admittedly it could also look a little cluttered though maybe they are grouping reactions by symbol now.
On a related note, I’ve seen two people with very light (though non-white) skin tones use significantly darker skin tone emoji. One of those times I brought it up with someone else and they’re like “yeah what’s with that?!” Self image or eyesight related perhaps…
Emoji is a failed concept anyway, because what you send is not necessary what the recipient gets. Why the app developers don’t get this, is one of the great mysteries of our century.
But when I do use them, I choose the yellow ones.
I would agree that emoji have basically failed. They confuse communication rather than facilitate it.
Why are there 😀 and 😃 ? “Grinning face” and “Grinning face with big eyes.” Why? There are so many of them with subtle details like this that A. choosing between them is a bigger chore than it should be and B. they have to be rendered at such a high DPI that “bro just increase your font size” becomes the bullshit workaround everyone tells you to do. I can read the English text just fine, but on most screens emoji are indistinct blobs.
Emoji are subject to all the variation that fonts are. You know how there are two lowercase “g” glyphs? There’s the one you probably do when handwriting which is an O and a J, and then there’s the loop over a loop that basically no one hand writes, it looks like the font Lemmy uses has that g. Well, emoji are like that. Like how they had to add “male dancer/female dancer” the the standard because Google rendered the “dancer” emoji as a lame disco man, Apple rendered it as a woman in a red dress.
They don’t get used the way we used to use emoticons. I don’t see people say things like "I can’t go to the park today ☹️ " I see people say "Hey guys 👬 I just got back from the store 🏪 with some groceries 🥫 and took a picture 📸 of my dog 🐕 " Which to me demonstrates a failure to grow past the Sesame Street book with 6 thick rigid pages reading level.
Finally, there are so many symbols that have alternate meanings that you just have to know. Like you can send white or tan or brown faces, but all eggplants are purple and all peaches are pink.
And yet eggplant and peach are obvious enough.
But when I do use them, I choose the yellow ones.
Scrutinizes profile pic emoji avatar
That one is from The Stick of Truth character editor
I just use the yellow one as I feel like they already represent everyone. I would definitely not feel any better about using a white emoji, I’d just feel like a racist trying to convince people that I’m better. I also like the yellow ones as it makes the standard to be anonymous about your skin colour. Or you could just use the outlined one for everything 🫥. Also the hole emoji is awesome 🕳️
And that was a way longer ramble then I intended 😀
And finally, good by 🖐️🖐🏻🖐🏼🖐🏽🖐🏾🖐🏿
P.S. Typing them all out the yellow one is also by far the most readeble. The white ones work very good on the black background I’m viewing this on but they probably just blend in to the background if your using a light theme. Maybe we should just type out all the variants? 🤷🤷🏻🤷🏼🤷🏽🤷🏾🤷🏿🤷♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏼♀️🤷🏽♀️🤷🏾♀️🤷🏿♀️🤷♂️🤷🏻♂️🤷🏼♂️🤷🏽♂️🤷🏾♂️🤷🏿♂️
I’m a guy and default to use the female 🤷most of the time because that’s what my phone gives me on some apps
I honestly didn’t know the emojis were gendered until now.
I think that one 🤷 is meant to be gender neutral. 🤷♀️ & 🤷♂️ are less ambiguous.
I 🤸 FUCKING 🧘 LOVE 🏊 MY 🙆 PERSON-EMOJIS
cishet male, I use yellow for face emojis and yellow gender neutral people for physical language standins.
I want to represent the mood, not myself.
Exactly! I guess I grew up with MSN so I’m used to having few emojis with specific mood rather trying to match myself
This came up in an anti-racism group I belonged to many years ago, where I learned to try to be aware of my acceptance of whiteness as “default” or somehow raceless. I also learned not to jump in and center myself in conversations about how race is (or worse, should be) perceived by those negatively affected or sensitive to it—or at least I thought I learned that, but here I am about to press send.
I came away from that conversation with an understanding that while I may feel that my race is immaterial to my identity and my point of view, it is nonetheless a real component of the context of my attitudes and online presence, so it’s valuable to ask if there’s a reason I’d want to hide it.
This is my favorite emoji 🖕🏻
I think the idea is that the default yellow is symbolic (with some “white people are the default” connotation) and now that you can choose the skin tone of your emojis, many people now select one that matches their skin tone.
Is it considered poor taste to use darker emoji colors if you are white?
Like emoji blackface?
In one app I’m a girl with medium skin tone and dark hair. In another I’m a pale boy with red blond hair. No idea how either one was chosen.
Without necessarily offering an opinion myself, there’s absolutely a chance someone views it as being in poor taste, thus at the least I would avoid doing it outside of conversations with those you know well.
Intentions matter in these questions. You’ll know it when you see it if it is in bad taste.
Other responses are kind of fence-sitting so I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say yeah it’s poor taste, but forgiveable. I think it just boils down to why would you use a skin tone that’s not yours? Some people like having an emoji that’s they share with others of their color, so why intrude on that?
Only if you are using them to convey some kind of racist message or pretending to be someone of color.
