Finland Releases National Emoji Collection (theguardian.com)

jones_supa writes: Finland has rolled out images of a couple in a sauna, a legendary Nokia phone (the 3310) and a heavy metal music fan as part of a set of official national emojis to be used in communication. Billing the use of national symbols for themed emojis as a world first, the government plans to publish the full set in December – for anyone in the world to download on its promotional website. "The Finland emojis were designed with a tongue in cheek approach, but I hope that they will tell the world not only about our special features but also something about our strengths," said Petra Theman, director for public diplomacy at the foreign ministry.

Comments

Official? Hah.

[locoluis]

They're not official until they get their own Unicode block.

I applaud the idea as a jab against the many emoji that are specific to Japan that got through Unicode's standardization process (*cough*U+1F5FF*cough*). Because if Japan could do it, why Finland can't?

Re:Official? Hah.

[gstoddart]

Are emojis even characters? Or just graphics?

Occasionally I'll know someone who wants to send me a text using their stupid custom emojis. It comes into my phone as blank, mostly because the whole fucking point it to make me download their shit, and probably track me.

As far as I can tell, most emojis are just graphic files, and used in such a way that I am supposed to give a shit you wanted to send "champagne champagne monkey poop rhinoceros" like that's some form of language.

Except for old school text-driven emojis, I generally find the prevalence of emojis is inversely proportional to my giving a damn about what is being said.

Like that one lady in the office who always insists on changing the background and font of her emails so they all look like they were sent by a 12 year old.

I see "official national emojis" and I want to shoot someone.

For official communcations?

[SeaFox]

Another sign Idiocracy is the way we are going: the government feels using cutsy pictograms is an alternative to real sentences.

Finland's strengths ...

[Obfuscant]

but I hope that they will tell the world not only about our special features but also something about our strengths

Finland's strength is in abandoning modern human languages and reverting to a hieroglyphic method of communication similar to the ancient Egyptians. Their strength is also in eliminating the need for language or spelling classes in their educational system, thereby saving tons of money. 0xffe3 0xf329 0x3f87!

Coat of arms 'special' lion

[Stavr0]

Is it going to have satwcomic's 'special' lion with a sword thru the forehead?

Re:Only morons use emoji

[Anonymous Coward]

and by culture you mean the chikan culture or the vomiting porn.

Re:Only morons use emoji

[Coren22]

Why is it that when something bad is said about a nation, the automatic reaction is to compare it to the US like the US is the gold standard of everything.

I would tend to say that the US has high crime rates mostly because we have multiple cultures living in one country. Finland and Japan are pretty much homogeneous.

Re:Finnish Taxes

[PopeRatzo]

Still beats good ol' US SJW-ism

My new drinking game for Fridays is that every time someone mentions "SJWs" in a post, I have to take a drink.

I think we're off to a good start here.

Not really new

[PopeRatzo]

Egyptians had emojis like over 4000 years ago. The rest of us are just now catching up.