A whole new set of emoji will soon be on your smartphone for all of us to creatively entertain ourselves and — let's be honest — waste time.
Unicode — the company that standardizes text across the software industry — announced more than 2,800 new characters it's adding in Version 7.0. That includes about 250 new emoji, which if you don't already know what they are ...
AZIZ ANSARI AS TOM HAVERFORD, NBC / "PARKS AND RECREATION": "Emojis are little cartoons you text instead of words. Instead of saying, 'What up, Boo?' — you can say, 'What up?' and then a cute little ghost. Because that means boo. There's even a little Indian guy with a turban on, which I think is racist."
All kidding aside, race issues really did play into this move to release more emoji. The Washington Post reported in March Apple believed there needed to be more multicultural options in the emoji library and said it was working closely with Unicode.
Unicode noted the Russian ruble and the Azerbaijani manat among the characters and emoji it added. You can see some of the new additions highlighted.
But the new emoji grabbing the most headlines?
The middle finger. Yes, Unicode IF595 is an emoji of a fist with that middle finger blasting whoever you send it to — playfully or otherwise.
But if you're offended, don't worry. Unicode simply standardizes the basic body of its characters. It doesn't choose how the finished product looks.
The Washington Post points out, "That’s up to developers like Apple, who decide how to render Unicode characters … as well as which characters to render, at all. Just because the middle finger shows up in the Unicode charts, for instance, doesn’t mean it’ll be coming to an iPhone near you."
