TODAY IS WORLD EMOJI DAY!!!
Yes, it’s a thing and I for one love it.
The date — July 17 — is displayed on the ? Calendar Emoji, which is why it was chosen as the actual date for World Emoji Day — a day to celebrate all emoji.
The folks at WorldEmojiDay.com have all sorts of ideas for ways to celebrate: Have an emoji party, communicate only in emoji, speculate about people born on July 17 — like David Hasselhoff. What does it all mean? ?
Apple is even previewing some new emoji in celebration of the day.
Later this year, Apple’s emoji set will feature people with a variety of hairstyles and colors, including curly hair, red hair, no hair and white hair. Other new fun emoji include a peacock, a mango, a lobster, a cupcake, superheroes, a kangaroo and a new smiley with eyes that are glazed AF. (I can’t find a fair use image of that one, but trust me it’s coming.)
And what about expanded inclusivity? Is there any of that on the emoji plate?
Back in March, Apple proposed several new emoji to represent people with variable physical abilities, ideally debuting in Unicode’s next batch of emoji. (The Unicode Consortium’s Emoji Subcommittee is basically the boss of all emoji.)
Then, in May, Unicode announced some of the draft candidates for its next emoji release in early 2019. Their announcement included some of Apple’s proposed emoji — a guide dog, an ear with a hearing aid and more.
Those are all coming soon — so for now, we get Romaine lettuce. Finally.
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Erika is a sex positive people watcher (and writer). Email her at erika@ynotcam.com.
