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 😝 !!
I have a white friend that uses the dark brown emojis, which I’m kind of uncomfortable with. I think he thinks he’s showing solidarity. To me it seems like blackfishing. I haven’t put any more thought into it though, as it is a pretty minor thing in a world with much more important things to be concerned with.
Blackfishing?
I thought we already had a term for when someone takes on someone else’s skin color something something cultural appropriation
That’s something different, and it’s not a new term.
blackfishing
Oh god please not another buzzword
Stop before you wake the tabloids
All my emojis have jaundice
I am caucasian, get sun burnt easily… I left the emojis (faces) its Simpson color (are there other?) but hands… I cannot stand the cirrhotic yellow hands/arms, and need to switch their color at first occasion… I also tend to select black hair people though I am slightly brown… and many caucasian friends of mine use black hands… so I would say that in my environment your hypothesis is rather a background underfluctuation than a potential valid one…
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.
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 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.
There’s no significance because they are just fucking emojis.
Simpsons yellow
:D
I don’t use emoji very much. The most I use is when I’m working and sometime asks me to take on a task in Slack. There is a thumbs up all emoji that is just the skin tone shifting to all the colors. I like it because then I don’t have to give a fuck about it.
I leave mine stock yellow, but it is kind of a cool thing when you see a bunch of different color emojis liking a post. Feels nice and diverse lol.
What do you mean with autistic text stim?
It’s some tiktok cringe thing about autism being a quirky and fun trait instead of a challenging mental disorder.
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.
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.
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…
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.
Only if you are using them to convey some kind of racist message or pretending to be someone of color.
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?
There’s at least two things going on here:
A) a very mild case of the “white as default” part of white privilege. White people see themselves as default and use the default emoji.
2] the (often accurate) perception that white people who highlight their race unnecessarily do so out of racial pride, making self-use of a “white” emoji suspect.
I’m not saying these are the only two things at play, just the ones that occurr to me on first examinstion.
Ugh. What a load of horse shit. 1) People are lazy, 2) often don’t realize that they /can/ change them, 3) care to.
All true as well!
Then what is your explanation for black and brown people more likely to use the skin toned emojis, as has been mentioned so much in this thread? Are they less lazy than white people, or care more about it? If they care more about it, then why?
Use what you want to. Let others use what they want to. Don’t overthink it.
Some people are thrilled with the fact that they can make their little online avatar closer to their reality, others don’t give a damn, because they don’t want to define themselves by their virtual presence. At the end of the day, though, they’re just pixels. What you say and how you treat people is much more important than whatever little +1 icon gets attached.
Based
Indeed
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
If they’re over the age of 16, there’s no significance to anyone that uses emojis.
👆🤣
