Yes, it sounds a joke, but Weasel Zippers assures us it’s true. And has an adorable picture to prove it.
Apparently, Apple is going to expand its offering of emoji (little cartoon emoticons) in the interest of diversity. In addition to emoji resembling different ethnicities, there will be some wearing religious headgear such as the hijab.
Apparently, diversity advocates have complained about the “staggering lack of minority representation” among emoji. Good. If the political correctness police are down to complaining about emoticons, they must finally be running out of things to become outraged about.
I guess I’ve never spent much time exploring the wide world of emoticons. I’m old school, and my simple needs are generally met by just a few ASCII-character ones: :-), ;-), and 🙁 are really all I need. I’ve encountered emoji libraries in some apps/contexts. Based on those few casual glances, I thought they were pretty much all yellow circles or blobs with different expressions whose distinctions in meaning were far too subtle for me.
UPDATE: Weird. The WP editor translated my sad ASCII emoticon, but not the other two, into the corresponding emoji graphic. Never noticed that before (I don’t use sad much).
