this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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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.

  • Is there a significance to using skin-tone emojis, and if so, what is it?

  • 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 😝 !!

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[–] dhork 126 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 63 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I can give you a real answer, because I asked my wife this exact question (she's black and uses the skin tone closest to hers, I'm white and also just use yellow ones). She said it's so rare to get to choose a digital representation that matches her skin tone that she just thinks it's fun to get to do it for once.

[–] scutiger 11 points 4 months ago

Which is the same reason they make characters of different races, genders and sexualities in video games.

And people complain about these things "being forced on them" obviously without realizing that all those minorities are typically not represented in media. It's such a minor thing that should be easy to ignore if it doesn't apply to you, but when it does apply, feels good to know that someone was thinking about representing someone like you.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Does the skin tone modifier work on the peach emoji?

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[–] BombOmOm 58 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

Everyone simply saw the yellow ones as neutral toned. It's a nice contrasting color to show the emotion and they have always done a good job representing everyone while serving their goal: to convey emotion in text.

The push for representation in emoji's always struck me as weird since they already represented everyone. I rarely see people using them who aren't a bit too focused on skin color in their day-to-day life.

[–] dual_sport_dork 45 points 5 months ago (2 children)

That, and I think they trace a direct lineage back to the original Harvey Ross Ball smiley face, which was also yellow.

Me, I don't particularly care about matching emoji skintones to myself. Rather, I'm much more annoyed that I can't tune the 🏍️ emoji to match the color of my motorcycle. What a rip off.

[–] LilDumpy 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I don't feel represented. There isn't a badass chrome and black cruiser emoji that makes a loud-ass rumble when you open the message, so I'm stuck with the fast and quiet Supersport 🏍.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Everyone simply saw the yellow ones as neutral toned.

I use those ones because they're closer to the top of the list, therefore faster to scroll to when I'm choosing an emoji.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 5 months ago

There's no significance because they are just fucking emojis.

Simpsons yellow

:D

[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 months ago (6 children)

The yellow should be the only one. I find it absolutely idiotic that they needed to include all different skin colors. I think that's similar to my native language (Finnish) not having gender specific pronouns (hΓ€n = he/she) and then someone wanting to come up with ones. That's "fixing" a problem that didn't even exist in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Maybe you'd feel differently if your country wasn't 90+% homogeneous with a light skin tone

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (6 children)

There are no yellow skinned people where I live

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I feel this is like saying the Simpsons, and most of Springfield, aren't supposed to be white because their skin is yellow.

It's no surprise the default emoji color is so close to white skin, and it's no surprise that some people feel a lack of representation by this.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (10 children)

But emoji's are not derived from the Simpsons. They're derived from the yellow smiley face ideogram that originated in the 1960s, it was designed by the artist Harvey Ball.

It's yellow, not because it's supposed to represent whiteness, but because the company colors of the State Mutual Life Assurance Company it was designed for were yellow and black, and because it feels sunny, bright and positive. It's an anthropomorphized representation of the Sun, and does not represent a human with a specific skin color.

Image

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Why would someone want to add gendered pronouns to a language

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[–] Theharpyeagle 36 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I kinda like using emoji that are similar to my skintone. Not really making a statement, but somehow it feels a little more "me." Hard to explain why it matters, it's not like I won't use the yellow ones if that's all they have. Just kinda like "hehe, that's a lil me in that message."

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago

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 β€œyeah what’s with that?!” Self image or eyesight related perhaps…

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I just use the yellow one as I feel like they already represent everyone. I would definitely not feel any better about using a white emoji, I'd just feel like a racist trying to convince people that I'm better. I also like the yellow ones as it makes the standard to be anonymous about your skin colour. Or you could just use the outlined one for everything πŸ«₯. Also the hole emoji is awesome πŸ•³οΈ

And that was a way longer ramble then I intended πŸ˜€

And finally, good by πŸ–οΈπŸ–πŸ»πŸ–πŸΌπŸ–πŸ½πŸ–πŸΎπŸ–πŸΏ

P.S. Typing them all out the yellow one is also by far the most readeble. The white ones work very good on the black background I'm viewing this on but they probably just blend in to the background if your using a light theme. Maybe we should just type out all the variants? πŸ€·πŸ€·πŸ»πŸ€·πŸΌπŸ€·πŸ½πŸ€·πŸΎπŸ€·πŸΏπŸ€·β€β™€οΈπŸ€·πŸ»β€β™€οΈπŸ€·πŸΌβ€β™€οΈπŸ€·πŸ½β€β™€οΈπŸ€·πŸΎβ€β™€οΈπŸ€·πŸΏβ€β™€οΈπŸ€·β€β™‚οΈπŸ€·πŸ»β€β™‚οΈπŸ€·πŸΌβ€β™‚οΈπŸ€·πŸ½β€β™‚οΈπŸ€·πŸΎβ€β™‚οΈπŸ€·πŸΏβ€β™‚οΈ

[–] Noodle07 17 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I'm a guy and default to use the female 🀷most of the time because that's what my phone gives me on some apps

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think that one 🀷 is meant to be gender neutral. πŸ€·β€β™€οΈ & πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ are less ambiguous.

[–] vivavideri 8 points 4 months ago

I 🀸 FUCKING 🧘 LOVE 🏊 MY πŸ™† PERSON-EMOJIS

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[–] jiberish 18 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Isn’t it weird that only the white people in The Simpsons are yellow? There’s other races that aren’t yellow. And the Simpson’s world mirrors the real word; a large number of yellow people migrated from Eastern Europe to settle in Springfield.

I guess it’s better than the Doug universe, with people being either Caucasian or blue or purple. Very weird choice of representation, Nickelodeon! πŸ‘€

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] AlphaOmega 17 points 4 months ago

All my emojis have jaundice

[–] OlPatchy2Eyes 17 points 4 months ago

White dude here. I use the white skin emojis, but honestly I think it's just because I see my black and brown friends use their skin tones as a rule, and I feel like using the yellow tone is a bit weird when others are using the skin tone customization.

I'm not ashamed of my skin color or anything and the phone remembers my last tone selection so I don't really see a reason to not use it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

I just use the white as fuck guy because he has a green shirt (at least, on Android anyway) and I like green. Me being white as fuck is just a coincidence. πŸ€·πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

I'm on Android and that shirt is definitely blue πŸ€·πŸ»β€β™€οΈ

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[–] deafboy 14 points 4 months ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (6 children)

The original emojis were white before the yellow and darker tones were added in 2015. Look up Katrina Parrott for the backstory. In short, before yellow was the default, White was the only option, and that’s kinda racist, and was only 9 years ago.

Yellow was simply a neutral addition to emojis that matched well with the existing yellow smiley face (which that French asshole keeps charging people for).

Thanks for questioning your assumptions. Further reading if you’re interested:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/katrina-parrott-skin-tone-emojis-patent-office-warren

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=parrot+skin+tone+emoji+&t=ffip&ia=web

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago

Emojis evolved from the smileys we had in the late 90s, which were mostly yellow, but could be in various colours, like red for the angry face. Those smileys evolved from the text versions like these :) or :D

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[–] Anticorp 11 points 4 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Cryophilia 16 points 4 months ago

blackfishing

Oh god please not another buzzword

Stop before you wake the tabloids

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[–] Etterra 10 points 4 months ago

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.

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

I'm pale and I use the pale emoji, feels more like me.

I never really used the yellow ones. 🀷🏼

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[–] Ballistic_86 9 points 4 months ago

It’s about personal preference for sure. I tried to start using the β€œwhite” emojis and it just didn’t seem to matter. If I do use an emoji, I tend to default to the Simpsons yellow because it requires no extra effort. I don’t see a ton of people using the skin-tone emojis at all. I also have no issue with people using them much like pronouns in emails/profiles.

I’m also on iPhone so if I am going to extra mile I’ll just use my little sticker guy who better represents me in general.

[–] normalexit 8 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] NeptuneOrbit 8 points 5 months ago

I think the idea is that the default yellow is symbolic (with some "white people are the default" connotation) and now that you can choose the skin tone of your emojis, many people now select one that matches their skin tone.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

This is my favorite emoji πŸ–•πŸ»

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

In white as fuck ✌🏿

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

Yes, officer, this comment right here

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Is it considered poor taste to use darker emoji colors if you are white?

[–] Today 8 points 5 months ago

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.

[–] InternetCitizen2 7 points 5 months ago

Intentions matter in these questions. You'll know it when you see it if it is in bad taste.

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