World Emoji Day....

[Moonchild]

So apparently today, July 17th, has been declared "world Emoji Day"

What a pile of ??

[Night Wing]

Whoever or whatever group got the dumb idea to declare today, July 17th, to be "World Emoji Day", they are about as useless as "teats on a wild boar". This has got to be straight from "millennials" who have got nothing else better to do than to dream up crap like this.

[Moonraker]

I have seen and discovered in these strange days that most things are declared a world day for something or another.Its heading to the madness where all 365 days will be declared a world day for some reason.just confirms that the world has indeed lost the plot entirely.

[Isengrim]

As a "millenial" myself, I am disgusted with this obsession over emoji. They may have their place, but the written word will always be more powerful and precise than any pictographic system.

To sum up for people who only read in emoji:

[Moonchild]

Human emoji are terrifying...

[Moonraker]

Human emoji are terrifying...
human emoji are terrifying.jpg

Not so terrifying.
Have you visited london lol...?

[Latitude]

At least, they didn't forget about including the middle finger emoji. ? ?

[hujan86]

At least, they didn't forget about including the middle finger emoji. ? ?

Best emoji.

[SpockFan02]

So much hate for emoji!

I used to think they were a bit silly, but I've been using them more recently. I think I'm a member of "Generation Z."

[Moonchild]

There's nothing wrong with emoji (or emoticons as us old folks know them), when used in moderation.
But if you have a "conversation" that is 90% emoji tossed back and forth there's something wrong ;P

And.. does it need a special attention/remembrance day? Heck no.

[Phantom]

Yeah, I saw this crap on Facebook. So I posted a couple of emoticons (as I call them) that were humping and tagged it Mark Zuckerberg.

I don't know about other countries, but in the U.S. we have a flipping day for everything. Ice cream day, donut day, just to name a few. It's all Fing stupid. But I guess it's a marketer's paradise. Just like how Hallmark ( a very old greeting card company) single-handedly came up with Mothers Day/Fathers Day. So now in the U.S. on those days they run sales and everyone and their uncle are buying flowers like no tomorrow. It's all -- so -- -damn -- STUPID!

[back2themoon]

As if they weren't annoying enough already... What's irritating me lately on several forums is that while all basic smileys/emoji, emoticons/whatever like the simple smile or cry are missing (you are supposed to know them by heart I suppose?), they have tons of random -and usually huge and useless) ones like film/tv characters, various types of death/puking etc. and whatever pointless thing you can imagine.

[SpockFan02]

Off-topic:

... emoji (or emoticons as us old folks know them)...

Hiss! No, emoticons and emoji are different things! Emoticons re-purpose characters to make faces, expressions, etc., and emoji are their own characters that are rendered like little images. Both have their place, I think, but they are different.

But if you have a "conversation" that is 90% emoji tossed back and forth there's something wrong ;P

And.. does it need a special attention/remembrance day? Heck no.

I agree.

Off-topic:
I would call ;P an emoticon, and I don't think there's a good emoji equivalent because all the stuck-out-tongue emoji are smiling.

[Moonchild]

Hiss! No, emoticons and emoji are different things! Emoticons re-purpose characters to make faces, expressions, etc., and emoji are their own characters that are rendered like little images.

I disagree.
Unfortunately it's not that simple. Emoticons started out as pure text-based, but became graphical representations in many chat clients and textual communication media like fora (way before "emoji" was a known word), which became the basis of emoji. So they are one and the same, just at different stages of evolution -- the only difference you could draw a line for is if an emoji no longer has a textual source, but that's a blurry line at best.

[Latitude]

TIL the word "Emoji" is a Japanese word.

Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e (絵, "picture") + moji (文字, "character"). The resemblance to the English words emotion and emoticon is purely coincidental.

Originating on Japanese mobile phones in 1999, emoji became increasingly popular worldwide in the 2010s after being added to several mobile operating systems. They are now considered to be a large part of popular culture in the west.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji)

[Moonchild]

So you really want to argue?

The origin of the word is completely irrelevant.

Pictographic images of characters in different emotional states predate 1999, have been part of all instant messenger clients before the term "emoji" was used, and HAVE been sourced originally as a graphical representation of text emoticons. See AIM, Yahoo messenger, ICQ, etc.
The "emoji phenomenon" may indeed be sourced in Japan where it has taken flight to the extreme, but the roots remain in graphical representations of emotions (despite the coincidental nature of the soundex) that have existed since the 1960s[0]. ASCII emoticons were a translation to the limited system at the time and became in popular use in the early 80s [1]. From there, it's spread, and eventually returned back to graphical representations in Unicode 6.0 as "emoji" (which is broader than emoticons and just, as pointed out, are pictograms) with an "emoticon block"[2], although a smiley and frowney face have been part of graphical font representations much before then. The smiley is the printable version of characters 1 and 2 of (black-and-white versions of) codepage 437 (1981) of the first IBM PC and all subsequent PC compatible computers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon#Unicode

[gracious1]

I used to think they were a bit silly, but I've been using them more recently. I think I'm a member of "Generation Z."

Off-topic:
According to Pew Research Center, these are how the generations are defined (or, I guess I should I say, how Pew defines them):
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... lsdefined/
Just sharing FWIW, kind of interesting.

[SpockFan02]

Off-topic:
Interesting indeed. I'd be Post-Millenial, then (although not 16 to 20 in 2017).