I used an emoji yesterday, in a text message to my daughter. She praised me for, in effect, beginning to enter the 21st century.
But rebus-as-communication is not a new thing. Anyone who can recall the 1980s plague of I-heart-my-dog-head bumper stickers knows that.
What is new, in the world of talking in little pictures, is the consolidation and centralization of power. And by this I mean Unicode Inc., and the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee.
In any case, this short post is about finding the Island of Misfit Emojis, that is, the list of rejected emojis. Figuring that if a literal pile of 💩 is OK, how bad do you have to be to get rejected?
You can find all the winners anywhere, including Emojipedia. I want to know what didn’t make the cut, and why.
I assume we all know that:
- Emojis are transmitted just like any other unicode character, as a binary number.
- Each device then interprets that number as it sees fit. That is, the picture you see on your phone is generated by your phone’s software, not by the sender of the picture.
- Emojis are voluntary, in the sense that manufacturers are not required to provide a picture for every formally-approved emoji.
That formal-approval process? Well, that’s something in and of itself, as evidenced by the multi-page rules for submitting a proposed emoji, right down to the strict standards for the artwork. That also includes guidelines for what’s likely to be approved. As well as a list of forbidden images.
Amongst the no-nos are deities, specific landmarks, specific people, signage, and text of any sort. (Although, my wife notes that the Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty are, in fact, emojis, so perhaps they made the cut under some earlier, less restrictive set of rules.) They’ll also reject an emoji if you can get the same idea across with a string of existing emoji.
And yes, they do keep a list of the ones they’ve rejected (at least, rejected lately), so that you’re not tempted to re-submit the same idea. The rejected emoji list can be found at this link. This is not, however, the exhaustive list of all rejected emoji because, apparently, emoji can be rejected by another part of Unicode, Inc.
Unfortunately, they only give a brief text description and do not show the artwork. Nevertheless, I found the list of rejected emoji to be an exercise in the unfathomable.
For example:
- Black cat? Approved.
- Black sheep? No go.
- Broccoli? Yep.
- Brussels sprouts? Nope.
- Dolphins? A-OK.
- Orcas? Uh-uh.
I can almost see a new party game in it, where you are given a list of three related items, and you have to guess which one was arbitrarily denied emoji status.
Then make up a reason for the rejection, because Unicode, Inc. does not appear to explain the reasons for emoji approval or rejection publicly. They’re a private entity, so they aren’t subject to any sort of sunshine law that would require that. (Plausibly, you might be able to find that in the UTC document registry, but if there’s an efficient way to search that, I have not yet figured it out.)
The upshot is that you may freely insert a flamingo into your text message. You can give me the dodo bird. But — and apparently this is for some good reason — your messages must remain stork-less.
Just another part of the modern world that I completely fail to grasp.
