Android gives in to pressure and adapts gun emoticon

[robin1991]

For the next Android OS, the gun emoji will be changed to a water gun. Emojipedia is already showing a preview of what the new emoji will look like. With this action, Google is following in the footsteps of Apple, that already changed the gun emoji in 2016.

During the 2016 IOS 10 introduction, Apple changed the gun emoji to a green water gun. Officially, they didn't want to make a political statement, but insiders say that it's a way of protesting against the widespread shootings in the US past couple of years. Months later, Twitter, WhatsApp and Samsung announced they would change to water guns as well.
The graph below gives a clear overview of the gun emoji evolution since 2013.

Source: VRT News

Comments

[funbobby51]

For the next Android OS, the gun emoji will be changed to a water gun.

Wow, Orwell would have to be impressed by that, lets turn our language into a bunch of pictures and then eliminate all of those that don't express "acceptable" ideas, then people don't have to worry about things that are not acceptable to Google or Apple.

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles of the Times were written in it, but this was a tour de force which could only be carried out by a specialist, It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. Meanwhile, it gained ground steadily, all party members tending to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their everyday speech. The version in 1984, and embodied in the Ninth and Tenth Editions of the Newspeak dictionary, was a provisional one, and contained many superfluous words and archaic formations which were due to be suppressed later. It is with the final, perfected version, as embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the dictionary, that we are concerned here. The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc -- should be literally unthinkable, a least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever. To give a single example, the word free still existed in Newspeak, but could only be used in such statements as "The dog is free from lice" or "This field is free from weeds." It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free," since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispenses with was allowed to survive.

1984

I like how Microsoft made their gun more realistic. That must be how Internet Explorer kills people.

[robin1991]

I loved that book, very heavy theme he creates, but Orwell was a true visionary avant la lettre. You should certainly read 'The Circle' from Dave Eggers, a modern day version of 1984.

[dbooster]

In terms of message, a water gun is still a gun, so does this change really accomplish anything—beyond giving a graphic artist a few extra bucks? Ah well, interesting to watch as they all dance. The more interesting part of this story is that everyone seems to be following Apple's lead. I wonder how long this Apple dominance will last.

[robin1991]

In Dutch we have this saying 'For money, the bear will dance' ;)

[pbgreenpoint]

Give me a break. Banning cartoon guns?...

[robin1991]

Not sure if Google is authentically choosing sides here, or just felt pressured because competitors are doing it.

[jayjes]

curiosa informacion amigo, por lo visto microsoft y facebook se resisten.

[robin1991]

jaja, si es un infografico extraño pero interesante. Creo que Facebook y MS lo cambiaran en los proximos 6 meses tambien ;) Para léer mas sobre los emojis, visita https://emojipedia.org/

[mckeever]

Wow...

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[redlambo]

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