this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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  1. over time this might affect our collective consciousness in regards to the purpose & function of the eggplant; and

  2. can we please just get a straightforward penis emoji already?? Half the human population has a penis attached to their bodies anyway, why are we still so prude about incorporating actual penises into mainstream vernacular & daily life?

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[–] Drivebyhaiku 126 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

There's actually kind of a funny history behind the Eggplant emoji. Emoji are Japanese in origin and around the time they were taking off there was this Survivor like gameshow where one guy was confined to his apartment and he had to try and survive past the basics by applying for and winning sweepstakes items from various promotions from newspapers and magazines.

The participant's shortened form name was Nasu - which means "eggplant" so since the guy started the challenge with literally nothing including clothes they put a little Eggplant over his junk in post. That became a Japanese cultural meme that translated over once emoji became more widely adopted.

You probably won't see actual dick emoji in the actual set because emoji are an all ages access thing and exist on an international level. It's actually kind of funny how different cultures use the same finite set. Like in China how the angel emoji is construed as "I'm going to end you". One could see the things as becoming essentially a hieroglyphic set where they gain their own full individual linguistic meanings.

[–] pennomi 61 points 10 months ago (1 children)

emoji are an all ages access thing

Last time I checked, penises are an all ages thing too. But who knows, I’m no urologist.

[–] Drivebyhaiku 22 points 10 months ago (3 children)

They are an all ages thing for some... But remember when I said international? I don't particularly like puritanical prudishness but the conservative held belief as those things being inappropriate for all points of society is also pretty common.

I doubt those who keep the emoji want any hassle of the conservative European diaspora middle East, the Americas, facets of Africa and China getting their knickers in a twist.

In the world of stockholder retaliation some things people count as just above their pay grade.

[–] muntedcrocodile 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

U realise the unicode consortium only makes standards and describes the meaning the actuall image used is not up to them for instance a this🇹🇼 emoji wont show on most chinese devices if a country doesnt like a dick emoji then they can ban it.

[–] Drivebyhaiku 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nope, did not realize... But tell me that even my nice progressive Canada wouldn't have hordes of parents flipping the fuck out about little kids being exposed to cartoon porn and I wouldn't believe you.

To be clear it's not like I think there's any moral issue with an emoji set of genitals. I just don't think anybody wants to court that much bother for something already served by a cultural understanding about the eggplant emoji that already exists. In a vaccum of sex and penis innuendos an innuendo will always emerge. Even when we have the option to be explicit sometimes we opt for innuendo. I just don't see there being a lot of value particularly in a cartoon penis. Like okay, you have a cartoon penis, there's a moral outcry. Conservatives get mad and in the end... what exactly has been improved really?

The juice just doesn't seem worth the squeeze.

[–] muntedcrocodile -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I live to piss of all extremists and the extreme conservatives are right up there with the most entertaining to annoy. And hey there would be some dam fine jokes about the countries that ban it.

[–] Drivebyhaiku 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I don't think upsetting those people who are fence sitting into opinions that make them more likely to further solidify their support for conservatives is worth it for cartoon penises personally.

They are hard enough to try and reach for serious mind changing heart to hearts without them feeling like the world is falling to general moral bankruptcy.

[–] muntedcrocodile -1 points 10 months ago

Ohh the world fell to general moral bankruptcy long ago.

[–] running_ragged 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Are there not already words to represent the same thing to anyone old enough to read a message? A different representation of something they are already potentially exposed to isn't something that technology standards should be censoring.

Especially when the defacto replacement for this is a symbol of something that could very easily give young men a serious sense of inadequacy and insecurity.

edit: (you -> young)

[–] Drivebyhaiku 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I would countee that wouldn't any single depiction of a penis set an unreasonable standard? Color, size, circumsized vs not etc? At least with a euphemism it is fairly abstract. I don't think anyone looks at an eggplant as a goal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

There is already skin tone support for emoji. Size is not a problem because there is nothing to compare it to. Circumsized could be a separate emoji.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They could include it. Give it a spot. But blank. And then it would be up to each OS if they want to include the icon on their device. That way we could at least let those less prudish nations and companies start with a common code point.

Like flags for example. They got codepoints, but Microsoft has decided to not take sides and have ignored country's flags.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

The problem with leaving it blank is that it harms communication if the other party doesn't have that symbol. You may send it because it exists in your country but then they have no idea what you mean.

Maybe having a "tofu" missing character box is ok, but even then if a substantial amount of the world's population isn't going to have this character it maybe be best to leave it out.

That being said, I am still in favour.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is that the show where the contestant came out about how horribly abusive the production was? Like he was tricked/coerced into doing it and basically imprisoned the whole time?

[–] Drivebyhaiku 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oh yeah... It was horrible. Dude was traumatized.

[–] Agent641 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

What the fuck that sounds amazing and horrible!

[–] Drivebyhaiku 3 points 10 months ago

Yeah the ethics of Japanese game shows and reality tv more generally particularly in the 1990's is a fraught topic. Some of them were quite cruel.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's up to the app/os how emoji are rendered. You can hack your os to display whatever you want instead of 🍆 , or add support for 👨🍆 with zero width space between, but it's less likely to be used.

[–] thevoidzero 1 points 10 months ago

It's not even at OS level (unless you're thinking fonts are OS level). So basically you'd just need to define a font, with certain unicodes with images you want, and make sure it ranks higher than other fonts. So the application will search for any characters in that font, and then for those you didn't define, it'll search in other fonts.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Damn, after reading the first paragraph I really tought this was going to include masturbation by insertion of an eggplant. Now I'm a little disappointed to be honest.

[–] Drivebyhaiku 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I suppose there are worse things to insert but an eggplant, particularly the type being depicted in the emoji doesn't seem like a particularly prime candidate. Seems like a good way to end up in hospital looking for a manual extraction.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

A person I know used to work as a nurse in an operating room, stuff like this happens more often than you'd think. I haven't heard an eggplant mentioned by them though.