[HN Gopher] Unicode uses elephants as baseline comparison of cul...
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Unicode uses elephants as baseline comparison of cultural frequency
for emoji
Author : thunderbong
Score : 67 points
Date : 2024-10-15 03:28 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.unicode.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.unicode.org)
| brudgers wrote:
| Direct to criteria:
| https://www.unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#frequency-evide...
| dang wrote:
| I put that URL above. Thanks!
| scrps wrote:
| As much as it is meant to be a serious document for proposals I
| started cracking up at:
|
| _The commercial petitions for taco played no part in its
| selection; the taco was approved based on evidence in its
| proposal, not the petitions._
| bombcar wrote:
| They say this as the committee shovels thousands of "free
| chalupa" coupons from Taco Bell into suitcases.
| scrps wrote:
| Turns out Big Taco's (/s) fingers were in the guac:
|
| https://www.change.org/p/unicode-consortium-the-taco-
| emoji-n...
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Elephants are fine animals, but the Unicode standard features a
| distinct and disturbing lack of guinea pigs -- as well as
| capybaras -- severely limiting the range of my digital
| expression.
|
| (I mean, if we can have 'taco'...)
| tmnstr85 wrote:
| 2nd
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| you should start a petition!
|
| (/s because from TFA "Petitions are not considered as evidence
| since they are too easily skewed")
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Boat owner: "We have a new boat and we need a name, let's
| have the internet vote! It can be the people's boat!"
|
| Internet: "Boaty McBoatface."
|
| Boat owner: "Democracy is a mistake."
| akira2501 wrote:
| "Democracy is fine. You tried to cheap out on marketing and
| you got what you paid for."
| netsharc wrote:
| Reminds me of the Priiiiillll debacle:
| https://heideblog.com/2011/05/12/eine-abstimmung-fur-
| raserei... (the title is in German and is unconnected)
|
| TL; DR: washing-up-detergent maker Pril does online
| competition and promised to put the winning design on
| shelves, the design that got most votes:
| https://heideblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/screen-
| shot...
|
| Somewhere online there's a pic of these things on the
| shelves/they did make them as collectibles.
| bombcar wrote:
| I'd buy it. I love stuff like that.
|
| Boaty McBoatface is the most famous boat behind the
| Titanic, so it definitely worked.
| Retric wrote:
| If I saw that Peil design on store shelves I'd likely buy
| it, so it likely worked quite well as a limited edition.
| Really click the line and ask yourself if you'd do the
| same. https://heideblog.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2011/05/screen-shot...
|
| The inherent issue with these campaigns is the select for
| initial response not how long you're going to like some
| design.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| That is awesome.
| dustyventure wrote:
| If marketers found that any vote spontaneously creates the
| invested interest a democratic process needs then we all
| would have starved during the subsequent storm of pointless
| elections.
| notatoad wrote:
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=elephant...
|
| capybara and guinea pig are both far less popular than taco or
| emoji
|
| interestingly, the spike of taco in google trends seems like it
| might be correlated to it's addition to emoji - that spike
| would be about a year after iOS got the Taco emoji.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Capybaras are a rising trend in the last few years. There's a
| ton of fan pages with cute capybaras pictures and videos. You
| need to invest early.
| squidgedcricket wrote:
| Capybaras don't have shit on hyraxes. I'm trying to be an
| early adopter, but like all hot new products that seem to
| be out of stock everywhere.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyrax
| rsynnott wrote:
| They're disadvantaged in the cute-animal stakes by their
| name, I think. The name implies something large,
| dangerous, and possibly mythical; it really doesn't fit
| with "round fuzzy thing somewhat smaller than a cat".
| itishappy wrote:
| Solid market analysis. I'd like to subscribe to your
| newsletter.
| bombcar wrote:
| Capybara are being artificially held down because there isn't
| a confident and convenient emoji for them!
|
| I suppose you could start a popular open source project and
| name it the word you want to become an emoji.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Without any relative scale, can you even tell the difference
| between a capybara and a guinea pig?
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Certainly. Capybaras are semi-aquatic mammals, and their head
| as a consequence is positioned significantly higher than
| their bodies, resulting in a general pose which can only be
| described as 'regally aloof'.
|
| Cavies on the other hand look like adorable furry idiots with
| a much less angular -- in fact, rotund -- outline.
|
| Aside from both being rodents and (apparently) delicious,
| these are quite different animals.
| latexr wrote:
| The head shape is also quite different, as are the ears and
| eyes. I'm struggling to understand how someone could mix
| them up.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| My implication was "at the resolution of an emoji" - you
| can clearly tell the difference in real life, but what
| about when you only have 18x18 pixels to work with?
| Freak_NL wrote:
| If you can't tell the difference between a capybara and a
| guinea pig, you won't be able to tell the difference
| between a cat and a dog either. The former pair differs
| more in terms of their silhouette than the latter. 18x18
| probably means you won't be able to tell quite a lot of
| emoji apart, but don't blame these rodents for that.
| bombcar wrote:
| This annoys me so much - squirrel on iPhone offers you an
| emoji that is clearly a chipmunk.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Chipmunks are squirrels though. 'Squirrel' is the family
| name for a bunch of these rodents.
|
| > Any of the rodents of the family Sciuridae distinguished
| by their large bushy tail.
|
| (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/squirrel)
| bombcar wrote:
| I don't care who they send, prairie dogs and squirrels
| are different and deserve different emojis!
| ygra wrote:
| Maybe after Han unification we also need a squirrel
| unification and leave this distinction to the font which
| is picked based on the region you're in ...
|
| That being said, I already cannot parse many emoji and
| would love tooltips what they are supposed to represent
| in all places.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yep, that's how I learned you can directly google an
| emoji and find the emojipedia page for it.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| These guidelines note that emoji proposals for "specific people,
| whether fictional, historic, living, or dead" will be rejected
| outright, but most versions of the rockstar emoji are an obvious
| Bowie homage!
| Cyberdog wrote:
| David Bowie transcends history and fiction, life and death.
| saalweachter wrote:
| He was an archetype, and therefore not a specific person.
| shervinafshar wrote:
| Aladdin Sane persona, to be precise: https://david-
| bowie.fandom.com/wiki/Aladdin_Sane_(persona)
| jerf wrote:
| While a perfectly reasonable request on its own terms, it also
| definitely reminds me of the brown M&M story, which if you are
| one of today's 10,000 [1], is https://effectiviology.com/brown-
| mms/ .
|
| No elephant -> toss immediately. Save time.
|
| [1]: https://xkcd.com/1053/
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| I'm one of them! It's a great read, thanks
| dmonitor wrote:
| > There is already an emoji for frog, which can be used to
| represent all amphibians.
|
| I'm not a big fan of this example. Does "lizard" represent all
| reptiles? "dog" all mammals? I suppose salamanders are
| taxonomically similar enough to lizards that specific amphibian
| emoji aren't necessary for them, but that's not the reason given.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Lyra Belacqua would have been a master emoji texter.
| bombcar wrote:
| We already have combining characters (for example you can make
| emojis with various skin shades) and they should enable
| "alternates" for other emojis.
|
| Let there be ten thousand cat breed emojis via combining
| characters!
| rsynnott wrote:
| This is, IIRC, how the lime works; according to the Unicode
| consortium, a lime is a green lemon.
|
| (It would be much more fun if they'd just represented them as
| citrus hybrids with ZWJs.)
| rsynnott wrote:
| Once they open the door to other amphibians, they will end up
| getting drawn into the whole "do toads exist" debate, and it
| frankly just isn't worth it.
| m-hodges wrote:
| Google has a lot of power over emojis, huh.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| It is actually something more of reducing the number of faulty
| submissions, because the popularity _alone_ doesn 't get emoji
| registered. Everyone should look at the L2 register to see a
| (very tiny) portion of emoji proposals that clearly motivate this
| section and others. (Most proposals are directly sent to the
| Emoji subcommittee, so the L2 submission is relatively rare.)
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Yet we have an emoji for pregnant dude.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| That's a subset of a larger emoji family, not a standalone.
| pico303 wrote:
| Taco is my zsh prompt, but I'm now tempted to switch to elephant.
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(page generated 2024-10-18 23:02 UTC)