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Apple Replaces The Pistol Emoji With A Water Gun (cnn.com)
Apple has a announced a number of new emoji changes on Monday, but the most controversial new change is that the pistol emoji will be replaced with a green water gun emoji in the company's upcoming iOS 10 operating system: The water gun swap is not Apple's first foray into cartoon gun control. Earlier this year the governing body in charge of emojis nixed a proposed rifle emoji. It was one of a number of possible new additions, but Unicode Consortium members Apple and Microsoft argued against the Olympics-inspired gun, according to Buzzfeed. Last year, an organization called New Yorkers Against Gun Violence started a campaign to get Apple to replace its version of the pistol emoji. It launched a site, disarmtheiphone.com, and sent an open letter to remove the firearm emoji "as a symbolic gesture to limit gun accessibility." As it stands, Microsoft is the only major software company to use a toy gun emoji instead of a pistol emoji in Windows -- Google, Samsung, Facebook and Twitter all use realistic pistol emojis. Apple's iOS 10 will be released in fall, but you can download the iOS 10 public beta to be one of the first to wield the toy gun emoji.
Fight Social Justice Warriors with a water pistol.
They're all wet anyway.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Honestly, what did you guys expect? Apple is an image based company and the image they portray is "hip". Currently in the largest population centers its hip to be super liberal.
Having an emoji swap doesn't seem to be something that really matters in my life. I have quite a few rifles and handguns, but I don't know that I would have ever even looked for that emoji if it made it on to my phone. Seems more like something a teenager would use to look cool or something.
>"Last year, an organization called New Yorkers Against Gun Violence started a campaign to get Apple to replace its version of the pistol emoji."
This is really just so sad.
Oh, there is an "explosion" emoji on my Android- I suppose that should go. And the bomb one too- that is far scarier than a gun. And the one of fire- fire is dangerous and bad. Better throw in the lighting one. Oops, just found one of a knife- that is a no-no. Snakes are scary, make that one a toy snake, somehow.... well, still scary, just make it go away. Wow, there is a syringe- oops, that could be drugs, that should go....
So grateful to not be hip. It seems hip is synonymous with stupid.
In 1984 Orwell wrote of Newspeak, a language and culture designed to wipe out concepts that were unpopular.
Apple can remove gun emojis all day long. All that will mean is people's messages to each other won't contain gun emojis.
It won't change people being killed daily by rogue cops, crazy lunatics, terrorists, or others.
If Apple wanted to REALLY make a change in violence involving firearms (not to be confused with "gun violence" since guns by themselves aren't violent...) they should take some of their hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars and dedicate it to help stop crazy people from killing other crazy people.
Note 1: OJ Simpson did not kill Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman with a firearm. He used a kitchen knife -- Nicole's kitchen knife.
Note 2: The French suicide bomber killed lots of people with his vehicle. Vehicles are available to everyone.
Note 3: The Newtown school shooting was done by a guy who broke in and stole his mother's weapon (then killed her with it). He was not a "gun owner".
But yes, do let's remove the emoji. I'm sure we'll never see or hear guns discussed on the news, in the media, on FB, and everywhere else.
Because emojis or not, ISIS creates a new death every 84 hours. I'm sure the lack of emojis won't change that. http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/31/...
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If you can't win, censor.
If you don't like reality, do what you can to disrupt the language.
If people lack the ability to communicate an idea, you've already won.
If emojis are meant to be speech, then this is ludicrous. If they are not, then this is petty and dumb. There's no excuse for this kind of shit.
Who finds emojis pointless, stupid, waste of space? They serve two functions 1) A means of communication for ignorant people who can't put emotions and thoughts into words. 2) Job security for unicode consortium employees
Lets fix the real problem: the conditioning people've gone through that makes them think calling cops over a chat program image is rationally justified.