T oday is the fifth World Emoji Day – a day to celebrate the tiny images on our phones that have transformed the way people talk online. Here are some things you should know about these fun little pictures [:
Why today?
The date was set on July 17th because if you look at the emojis on your Apple or Android phone, you will see that is the date displayed on the emoji calendar (?). The origin of this date is that Apple has used it for the first time in its symbol to commemorate the date on which the iCal feature of the Mac was announced.
Emojis exists since 1999
Invented by Shigetaka Kurita, the ability to send a heart symbol on the first Japanese pagers is the source of all emojis. Kurita was inspired by the brands used in the weather forecast and Kanji characters to design a set of 176 symbols that covered a range of emotions and human activities that could be used on phones in Japan. 1999. The rest belongs to history.
We were just designing for the Japanese market, "says Kurita. "I did not badume that emoji would spread and become so popular internationally, I'm surprised how widespread they have become, and then they're universal, so they're useful communication tools." who transcend language. "
There are many more now
Unicode, who oversees what is allowed to become an emoji, currently lists 1644 emojis, including smileys, people, sports, food, animals, flags and a myriad of other categories.
And we also send them a lot
Facebook said that every day on Facebook Messenger 900m replies sent consist of emojis. It also says 700m emojis are included in Facebook posts every day. The most popular emoji on Facebook in the UK is the "face with tears of joy" or "crying laugh" emoji – indeed Oxford English Dictionaries made it their 2015 word of the year
you deploy it:
Tony Shepherd (@ tonysheps)
The #WorldEmojiDay – a shoutout to my mom, who has just started using them and sent a ? to his friend who is a dog just died ?
The Emojis only became racially diversified in 2015
In 2014, Unicode proposed to add five skin tones different to the character set, allowing people to send messages reflecting their appearance. 19659007] Since then, other efforts have been made to improve the representation of people in the character set. In 2016, Google pushed to include emojis that showed women working in fields such as engineering, chemistry, plumbing, and agriculture. Apple used this year #WorldEmojiDay to announce some updates of the set available on its phones, including "more hair choices to better represent people with red hair, hair gray and curly hair "and a new emoji people.
Five skin tone options as presented by Apple. These are based on the Fitzpatrick scale, which is used to define different shades of skin tones. Photography: Emojipedia
Original emojis meet at MoMA
Gifted by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in 2016, the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquires 176 original 12 x 12 pixel designs for the original set of emojis, exposing them alongside its modern and enlarged counterparts.
"Emojis as a concept go back over the centuries to ideograms, hieroglyphs and other graphic characters, allowing us to draw this beautiful arch that covers all human history," said Paola Antonelli, curator in head of the museum's architectural department. and design. "There is nothing more modern than timeless concepts like these."
Not everyone has approved.
Some of the original emoji characters. Photo: Reuters
They have a strange unexpected use on Wikipedia
For reasons better known to nerdy developers, you can actually use emojis in Wikipedia's URLs. Yes, honestly. If, for example, you type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/? in your address bar, you will be redirected to the Wikipedia page for chats. Useful
With their use evolving mainly on social networks, there have been several attempts to launch applications of social messaging that focus exclusively on emojis. Perhaps the most extreme was Emojli, launched in 2014 by British developers Matt Gray and Tom Scott, where even the names of users had to be emojis.
You can read a decent novel emoji only
At least in translation, whatever that may be. In 2013, the Library of Congress accepted into its collection an emoji translation of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. A project overseen by Fred Benenson, head of the library, Michael Neubert, said: "What is striking about this work is that it takes a clbadic of known literature and converts it into a concept of our modern way of to communicate. "Is this still a literary clbadic when it is written in a kind of pidgin language on smartphone?" "
Although the ️?⛵??️?⛵??️?⛵?? is really the same impact with time that Melville's opening line "Call me Ishmael" remains The Emoji movie still wins money
Despite his criticism, he wins four Razzies including the worst film, the worst-case scenario , the worst director and the worst combo, and at one point, he gets a cumulative score of 0% On rotten tomatoes, the film Emoji still has more than 200 million dollars. ?
The Emoji movie won four Razzies. Photography: Allstar / Sony Pictures Animation
Workplace Emojis Are Not Always Fun
According to Unite Union, in 2017, Sports Direct employees were asked to press a touchpad displaying a happy or sad emoji to indicate whether they were satisfied with their working conditions or not. The union claimed that those who pressed the sad face were then identified by their fingerprints and asked to explain their grievances to management.
What is the easiest way to type ¯ _ (ツ) _ / ¯?
let's say that this is not strictly an emoji, Unicode includes the bullish gesture ¯ _ (ツ) _ / ¯ in its clbadifications. Ironically, the easiest way to type it is "How to type shrug emoji", so copy and paste it from the results page and do not type at all.
The last word on emojis
From their creator, Kurita, interviewed in 2016:
"I do not accept that the use of emoji is a sign that people are losing the ability to communicate with words, or that they have a limited vocabulary Some people have said the same thing about anime and manga, but these fears have never been realized. And it's not even generational … People of all ages understand that a single emoji can tell more about their emotions than text. Emoji have grown up because they respond to a need among mobile phone users.I admit that it is difficult to use emoji to express complicated or nuanced feelings, but they are perfect for conveying the general message. "
