Friday, July 17, 2015

Why I don't like coloured emojis




I have always enjoyed using emojis to explain my emotions and feelings without words, yet in an obvious manner. Because of my enjoyment, I didn't appreciate the introduction of "colour emojis." I understand that many people felt left out before when there was only one colour option, yet I find this change unnecessary.
Emojis were created in Japan and were streamlined to their culture. Now that emojis have become an international smartphone staple, the emojis had to be altered in a way, to be useful to more people of cultures different from Japanese. This is something completely natural, because it is obvious that the "product" needs to be relevant to the "market" it is on. And even though emojis had to be altered to the different market, I still don't find the coloured emojis good. I believe that the purpose of emojis is to share emotions of people, emotions that don't differ with different races, but make us human.
With the implementation of coloured emojis I found lots of room for racism. The original emojis had yellowish skin tone, which could be calculated as the average skin tone on Earth, population count wise. Secondly, coloured emojis could not only portray emotions, but certain racial stereotypes. If I used a pale skin tone, which is my real tone, I could be just be matching my skin tone, or portray a stereotypical emotion of "teenage white girls." Even if my intention may be good, it may not be interpreted that way. So what colour should I use?

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