Apple Replaces Pistol Emoji With Water Gun

Megalith

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While some of you couldn’t care less about emoji and would merely accuse Apple of pussification, I suppose there is the potential for some real miscommunication here. We should just ban all emoji.

All other vendors display this emoji as a real gun. Even if they all decided to follow suit and change to a water or toy gun (which could happen, if Apple sticks with this), the change would take a considerable amount of time. By comparison, if you tell people to bring a snack using the cookie emoji, and Galaxy users bring you saltine crackers, that’s a shame, but nothing more.
 
They should have added the water gun, not replaced the regular one, or give users the option (for kids or something).
 
This is yet another reason not to use emoji, too much is left up to interpretation.
 
I can't think of a single instance where a text I've sent would have been improved by the inclusion of a gun or a watergun emoji.
That's because all you think about is yourself, and not those with disabilities. Bank robbers with a severe speech impediment for example would surely find the emoticon very useful.

"Muh... muh... muh... m.. mmm.. muh..."

*Sends Text*

$ in the bag!!! *gun emoticon*
 
To be fair, Microsoft's used to be a some sort of strange laser pistol. They just recently changed to the standard pistol.
 
OMG it's a gun!!!!! It's a weapon of warfare and death!!!! Run for the hills!!!! We're all gonna die!!!
That sums it up. Just a form of PC.

Micro aggression. lol
 
Rush Limbaugh was talking about this, but I just didn't see the big issue.

It's still a gun. There is still bombs, knife, syringe, pills and every combination of gay couples and families. Everyone is still offended.
 
People should look around. If apple changing this emoji upsets you in any way, there is likely something more important going on around you that you will not notice because of this distraction. Not tin-foiling this because I do not believe it is intentional, just saying anything taking focus takes away awareness. It is an emoji, the creators of it changed it, in other news some pizza place is putting pepperonis under the cheese instead of on top!

But, there still is a middle finger emoji and a turd.......
 
In other news some pizza place is putting pepperonis under the cheese instead of on top!

That's bullshit man. I didn't sit around and let others defend this country just to live a world where pepperoni is hidden out of sight beneath the cheese. I have rights you know.....constitutional right!
 
I'm what many would consider "Liberal / progressive" and have no problem with a "gun" emoji, at least as much as any other emoji. I think a bigger issue may be that it seems emoji can represent different icons on different devices, even within the same "default" icon set. Its one thing if there is a user defined change for a new skin/sticker/icon pack, but it seems odd that the "default" set has grown large and includes a lack of specificity; it seems to me something like "snack" shouldn't even exist since its way too general a term?

I admit that I don't have a lot of experience with current emoji - I should likely look into the technical side as well as more common usage. That said, and this might just be my age or perhaps more "PC enthusiast / hacker era" talking, but it seems to me that today's emoji are more varied and yet less effective at communication compared to the "old school" elements. In the old days, most emoji / emoticons were developed using typical unicode character combination and sprung up as a cultural change. That is to say " : ) " ": \ " ": - D" , "< 3 " (spaces inserted so that the board doesn't turn them into the built in smiley! ") were all nonsense punctuation that users culturally agreed look enough like a smile, displeased look, happy grin, or heart . Japanese users generated their own cultural take, such as " ^_^ " ^_- " , " O_O" " :_; " and many while Eastern and Western users alike started to make more complicated pictures (ie Kirby Table Flip!) which grew up alongside things like multi-line ASCII art and the like. However, all of these were basically part of a shared language and culture - the ability to look at all of those characters, see more than each individual character's meaning and agree upon the ideas communicated; something that might be missing today with a sea of pictographs of nebulous meaning

Now, I grant it is logical that replacement of those characters with little pictures meant to confirm/enhance the sentiment in greater artistic detail would come (ie the board replacement smiley bank), but that kind of thing existed for a very long time before the "explosion" of smartphone-era emoji that brought in more specific pictures and less specific terms to govern them. Its one thing for there to be custom icon / sticker / emoji packs, where a user specifically chooses which icon they wish (with the knowledge that what they're seeing is different from what others are sending or see themselves) , or commonly visibility such as how Steam has a wealth of emoji yet all of them appear the same to every user, but if modern communication is going to have a huge bank of emoji like on most means of text communication enabled by default, it seems we need to do better with more accurate descriptors and better communication overall. Without it, there is the possibility for all kinds of miscommunication. Most of it will be mundane with no consequences save for some interpersonal drama, but even with the change discussed here there could be some rather serious repercussions in a few edge cases. For instance a "Lets hit the streets at 8! " message can be interpreted very differently depending on if it is next to a water gun or a firearm. Now reflect on the increasing surveillance, machine analysis, and flagging that are becoming more prevalent. There may be enough potential for misunderstandings, accusations etc... based on these emoji and other icons where sender, recipient, and any third party looking over their shoulder (even retroactively, much later!) are seeing exactly the same icon, but this is only amplified if there is variation between them
 
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Back in my day, we had to drive over and show the gun in person. Kids.....
 
If you need a text message 'Meet at the park bring a handgun' then you're seriously fucked up already and need not complain.
 
As long as they don't take away my poo emoji, then we're cool.

And no - it's not ice cream - it's poo. Else it would be in the food section.
 
As long as they don't take away my poo emoji, then we're cool.

And no - it's not ice cream - it's poo. Else it would be in the food section.

Well that explains why people thought I was rude by telling them to "eat ice cream"....
 
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