Apple Nixes Pistol Emoji, Replaces With Water Gun
Social Justice Warriors killed an emoji, because they’re known for tackling the important things in life
I would say this is THE dumbest thing I’ve seen in a long time, but that’s impossible to determine in 2016. Regardless, it’s one of the dumbest things I’ve seen lately.
Social Justice Warriors killed an emoji (the irony is not lost on me), because they’re known for tackling the important things in life.
Apple has replaced its pistol emoji with a less threatening water gun. Because using a water gun in a text message is less threatening? Equally as dumb is yet another emoji update that will show women doing jobs typically done by men. SO PROGRESSIVE.
From CNN Money:
The gun swap is just one of a number of emoji changes the company announced on Monday. It will also introduce new and revamped emojis that show women doing stereotypically male jobs like detective, construction worker, and police officer. There are new female athletes, a pride flag, and family options for single parents.
The water gun swap is not Apple’s (AAPL, Tech30) 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.
FEELINGS. FEELINGS EVERYWHERE.
The pistol and other weapon emojis have landed people in trouble with the law. A 12-year-old in Virginia was charged after allegedly threatening her school in an Instagram post that used a gun, knife and bomb emoji. A teen in Brooklyn was arrested for posting a police emoji with pistol emojis pointing at his head. The charges were later dropped.
A French court ruled a pistol emoji could constitute a death threat, sentencing a man to three months in prison for texting the gun to his ex-girlfriend.
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.”“Apple has stood up to the bullying tactics of the NRA and gun industry by showing that there are many more life-affirming ways to express oneself than with a gun,” said Leah Barrett, NYAGV’s Executive Director on Monday.
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Comments
OMG ROFL 🙄
Do they have one for the Taliban? A special squirt-gun filled with acid for school girls or wimmins showing too much ankle?
Not a good choice. Given some time water will dissolve a battleship but there is no handgun that has the power to ruin a battleship. Water is dangerous. I think it was W.C Fields that said he would never drink the stuff because fish f..k in it.
I don’t mind, because it points away from you now, so it’s more useful. It’s still recognizably gun shaped, I mean if you can use an eggplant emoji to represent a peen, squirt gun is fine to represent a gun.
Yeah, right.
Because nothing screams free speech like mandating how people can “express oneself”.
Not really off-topic at all. Everyone should read this…
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/08/u-of-houston-student-leader-punished-for-all-lives-matter-post.php
Day after day, they are changing America into a stalinist banana republic.
Soon it’s going to be too late to undo the damage.
Rags,
Even worse, sick, and even absurd about the story link you posted …
I checked online. Shane A. Smith, the student body president, is a white male enforcing the heinous penalty on Rohini Sethi, the vice president, who appears to be a woman of color.
George Wallace is smiling in his grave.
So now I can be a female construction worker (do those steel-caps come in stiletto?) with a pride flag in one hand and a squirt gun in the other.
I’m not sure the 21st century is turning out quite like my parents and grandparents had hoped.
Tim Cook runs Apple as if it were his personal SJW slush fund. Not just the emoji (and other things besides), but the car project itself is to my mind nothing but progressive virtue signaling with the shareholder’s money. Apple can no more solve the physics barriers that make electric cars a dud than experienced auto manufacturers could.
This is actually something bigger… an outright attempt to redefine language, and in a way which will have unexpected consequences for many.
Words are wonderful things, they have specific meanings. Lawyers will tell you that even Bill Clintons’s question of “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” is legitimate in such a context multiple meanings exist.
A gun emoji is like a cat emoji or a carrot emoji… the meaning is clear as all parties involved have the same vocabulary and meanings.
What then happens a year from now when an excited student looking forward to the end of their school year, from their iOS device sends a friendly message a classmate or teacher saying “I’m going to (squirt gun emoji) you after school tomorrow!!!” ?
If the receiver has an iOS device, then perhaps the joke will come through in context and things will be ok, if they have something else, then they will receive what they will perceive as a threat and law enforcement will be involved.
Turn it around, you’ve an estranged couple who is trying to work through things. One night, one of the parties sends the other a message saying “I’m going to (pistol) you and the kids tomorrow” from a non-iOS device. The receiver, having an iOS device thinks it’s just bit of harmless fun of family togetherness seeing the water pistol so assumes there is no threat so does not contact law enforcement or attempt to defend themselves.
Letters and words can be used to form the phrase ‘I am going to shoot you’ – does that mean that letters and words should be banned from texts?
Better yet, let’s just ban smart phones so the young folks would be forced to get an actual life.
What a great idea! I all ready feel so darn safe now!
With out a doubt this idea came from a snowflake. 🙂
A. The pen is mightier than the sword.
B. yet the mere thought of a weapon is taboo.
C. ergo: more thought crimes
I have to agree with Kemberlee about being THE dumbest things, dumb is not a badge of dishonor among the sjw’s, it’s a challenge to lower the bar even farther.
Amazing how they continue to succeed being dumber than the day before.
I still have the gun, and it’s a gun gun, not a water gun. I’ve been stalling on updating to the new OS.
I wonder if Apple will also at the same time move up The American flag from the back of the line more near the front. I won’t hold my breath…