On August 1st
2016 Apple released a new update to iOS 10, that introduced more than 100 new and redesigned
Emoji characters for the iPhone and iPad, in an effort to bring more gender options to existing characters and to add beautiful
Redesigns of popular Emoji, a new rainbow flag and more diverse and family options. This update included a change that
beautifully redesigned the pistol emoji to that of a lime-green squirt gun because let's be honest in the year 2016
Lime-Green squirt guns were criminally under represented in the emoji industry. 10 months after this alteration
I finally got around to updating my iPhone to iOS 10 and became aware of the change for the first time hence
why this video is just now coming out. This change first occurred to me during a textual conversation
with a friend of mine in which I, long story short, attempted to reply to him with what should have been
the most gangster Santa Claus of all time
but wound up being just a ridiculous image of Santa Claus holding a lime-green
squirt gun, although for the first time ever I could change Santa's skin colour which, I think we can all agree is a sign of
progress. Although I was practically a year late to the conversation
I was almost certain that there had been a great amount of controversy over this change, a quick Google search did not disappoint me.
USA Today, Wired and NPR all had extensive
articles about the subject and as you can imagine the comments added a real sense of maturity to the
discussion, which don't get me wrong there needs to be a great big grand discussion about the subject
of gun control in the United States,
but I'd find it both sad and a bit disconcerting that the desire for said dialogue eventually
took the form of a debate about smartphone Emoji.
But then again Emoji are a big deal to Americans because after all, they are getting their own
multi-million dollar animated movie next month!
Personally I can barely contain my excitement to see which incarnation ends up getting the cameo.
But you see, that's what's so interesting about this, Apple stood alone in their decision to make the change;
every other phone company has thus far stuck with the classic pistol design
so, if you view messages on anything other than an iOS device, you're still likely going to see the classic six shooter.
I get why Apple decided to make the change, gun fatalities in the United States saw a big uptick from 2015 to 2016,
although as is often the case with data as a whole gun violence can either be on the rise or on the decline
depending on how you choose to label the x-Axis on the chart. There is no doubt about it however, that media attention on the issue
Has increased dramatically. Gun violence is a big deal in America the latest mass shooting in Virginia which happened while I was editing this video
Is just another example of just how routine these kind of events have become for some Americans.
and I suppose Apple wanted to make a statement of sorts by turning what seen by many as an object of violence, into something that's
more palatable and less well... triggering.
But, I wonder is this statement by Apple actually doing something to fix the problem,
Or is it just an empty gesture?
I guess the world is that almost a year to find out, so I decided to do some research
and here's what I came across, the greatest effect that apple's change seems to have had is on social media where all the
Hardcore Gangster Rappers, I follow suddenly have profile bios that are a lot less threatening.
There have been 318 Mass shootings since Apple implemented the Lime-Green
Squirt gun, so it seems to me at the very least that the jury is still out on whether or not Emoji Censorship
can actually convince lunatics to stop murdering people. And, really the issue of Emoji Censorship is
Confusing to me, because for all the walk-and-talk Apple has done about wanting to keep things
family-Friendly and weapon free in their Emoji database it seems weird to me that among other things,
they still allow the use of: a bomb, a knife, a sword, the middle finger, heroin, prescription painkillers, bioterrorism,
the Black Heart of Death, a murderous clown, acupuncture, this man shouting obscenities at your mother, the door to the Netherworld,
anti-biking propaganda and Fire emojis to be used, without thought about the message that any of those send to today's youth. This whole thing
ironically opens up a larger discussion about Emoji as a whole and the problems that arise from a lack of uniformity,
see when an author of a message picks an Emoji to send to somebody else, that Emoji is
encoded and sent to that readers device and if the author of the reader does not use the same software or Operating System
for their devices, the readers device may visualize the Emoji in a different way than the author intended thus altering the message itself.
For this reason, representatives from tech giants like Google and officials from the Unicode Consortium, convened the first
International Emoji Conference in San Francisco, California on November 4th 2016,
by the way in case you needed to be convinced that we're living in the most absurd time in human history,
always remember that on November 4th 2016 the people of Earth, in an effort to establish a universal standard for Emoji communication
had to convene an International Emoji Conference to do so and ultimately it was unsuccessful.
Here's my solution: I guess if Apple wants to make a statement about gun violence in America,
that's their prerogative as a company at the same time
I think it would be prudent to still allow grown adults who are able to handle the option of using a pistol Emoji the
option to do so. So how about
initially setting the lime-green squirt gun as the
default emoji, but then allow users the option to turn the gun back to the original standard design.
I mean the whole point of the iOS 10 update originally was to introduce more gender and racial
options for the Standard Emoji keyboard through the use of the press and hold feature.
So you know why not use that feature in this instance,
and you can avoid the whole controversy altogether?
Of course if you're interested in exploring this
controversy more, you could just petition Hollywood for a spin-off entitled
"The Slightly Tan Santa Claus With a Lime-Green Squirt Gun Emoji Movie" for the summer of 2018,
of which I'd be more than happy to write the screenplay.
*music*