Recently in the Bureau Slack, a conversation took place about emoji usage among employees. Emojis are part of our language now. And just like words, they matter. So listen as Gene and Carl talk about the history, evolution and impact emojis are having on how we communicate.
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Gene: The show has begun my friends... Not that show.
Carl: Nobody wants to see that show since college. Even then I'm pretty sure it was only the people who were locked in that ward with me. Gene, we haven't actually seen each other. Has it been three weeks?
Gene: Three weeks. It's crazy. Right?
Carl: Wow. We prerecorded some stuff.
Gene: We've been pumping the episodes out though.
Carl: I know. We're doing it. And you know what? More and more people are watching numbers are going-
Gene: By the twos and threes.
Carl: They're going up. The last episode did really well, man.
Gene: That's awesome.
Carl: The is this worth it episode? Actually, there was a comment on that that said, "Thank you. I really needed to hear that today." I think it was Robbie Russell from Planet Argon. I was like, "Yeah, I'm with you brother."
Gene: It turns out it's not.
Carl: The thing I'm going to talk about today is going to seem weird. I'm just going to go here for a second. Okay?
Gene: Yeah. You sent me the link and I was like, "Weird."
Carl: Most of the people who are watching this are white. And for our BIPOC viewers and listeners, thank you. We're going to basically just acknowledge some things we've got to work on today and it may even be eye roll worthy for non-white listeners.
Gene: Maybe.
Carl: But I found something out the other day that I was ignorant to, and I'm just going to out myself here. I didn't realize that there were issues with emojis. Did you know Gene?
Gene: No.
Carl: And so here's the thing, I read this great article about using emojis respectfully, because a conversation happened in the bureau Slack where somebody was wondering about around emoji usage and should they default everyone to the yellow color.
Gene: Wow.
Carl: Well, and this was a really interesting question. And I said, I use the white emoji because I'm white and then somebody posted that article that I shared with you, why most white people don't use the white emoji. And I felt once again so ignorant to what is evidently this kind of silent removal of the white emoji usage, most white people default to the yellow emoji.
Gene: I do. I didn't actually realize I was doing it.
Carl: Well, here's the thing. I was too lazy to figure it out in Slack how to change it.
Gene: Well, that's partly it.
Carl: And I ended up with the white one to start but it's funny because like, especially in Slack you'll see three different colors and then yellow or white or you'll see all yellow and then there's one white or whatever. And I was always that one and it was one of those things where at first I was like, "Does this matter? Am I overthinking it?" But then the more that I read about it, shit matters.
Gene: Yeah. It matters.
Carl: I've been trying to write the newsletter on this one for awhile and it's really tough because-
Gene: It really is.
Carl: It's one of those things... Let's just say this, if you become sensitive to how you're using emojis, you will feel one little sliver probably of what BIPOC people feel all the time. And that has been this thing. So anyway, that's what I wanted to talk about today. And I think it gets to gifs a little bit. It's basically, this is part of our conversation now, this is part of how we talk to each other. This is our language. And if we're not being aware of how things work and not just here in the states, because I will say the one thing I found was that around the world, most white people use the white emoji. Here in the states is where we normally don't. I know, right? It's all [crosstalk 00:05:33]
Gene: Well we do you have a history.
Carl: Well, that's it.
Gene: Other countries necessarily don't have in the modern.
Carl: So you read the article.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: And the one thing they say is most white people don't use the white emoji because choosing a skin teller. Skin color, excuse me, skin teller? That's where we're going. Now it's a new evolution.
Gene: What's about skin teller?
Carl: Choosing a skin color is supposed to be about representing who you are.
Gene: Right, right.
Carl: Now first of all, it's got to be really difficult. Look at any makeup line for women right now. There are no successful makeup companies that have five skin tones available. Basically there are hundreds of hundreds. Think about it. There are five different shades of people.
Gene: Right. There's thousands, right.
Carl: Probably even-
Gene: Unlimited.
Carl: Unlimited. Yeah. So these makeup companies allow people to choose whatever makeup they need to. They can even go online and figure out exactly what it is and get custom makeup. But with emojis-
Gene: You can't.
Carl: You kind of get stuck. And here's the craziest thing to me. And this shows, you talk about privilege. I was not aware of it. Do you remember when emojis first came out?
Gene: No. Not really, but I'm sure.
Carl: And I prepared for the episode.
Gene: Okay, cool. Awesome.
Carl: Excuse me. So in the late 90s, in Japan. In 99, Shigetaka Kurita. I got a little note card here.
Gene: You did prepare.
Carl: I did.
Gene: Oh my gosh.
Carl: Kurita. Created the first emoji. And he created a set of emojis and then Unicode took over. And the thing is, when the first emojis were released, you got the smiley face and the frowny face and all those little circle faces-
Gene: Now those are all yellow.
Carl: Those are all yellow.
Gene: You don't get a choice on skin tone on that.
Carl: No. But with-
Gene: It really just comes up. Right?
Carl: But with the thumbs up and those sorts, do you remember what color they were when they were first released?
Gene: Mm-mm (negative).
Carl: They were white.
Gene: Oh, like the first Facebook-
Carl: The thumbs up, the high-five.
Gene: The Facebook logo is like that.
Carl: It was white, but it was almost like paper white.
Gene: Right, right. Like [crosstalk 00:08:16]
Carl: That probably still counts. But can you imagine being a non-white person?
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: And having the thumbs up as a white person.
Gene: Like, "Eh." Yeah.
Carl: I know there are people out there listening right now going, "Are they really talking about this?" Yeah.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: We are because privilege is not having to talk about it. But then you think about, so then 2015, they released the five different skin tones and they also release more human options. You've got I think the transgender flag-
Gene: Oh, right.
Carl: You've got an ear with a hearing aid in it. So you've got things for people with disabilities. You've got just different diverse emojis come in. They also start working on a handshake that can have two different shades. But the thing is, if you look at it and this is what's kind of crazy. Let's talk about Legos.
Gene: Okay.
Carl: 40 years ago, Legos decide, "We're going to use bright yellow for all the faces." Right?
Gene: Right.
Carl: And again, Gene... There got be note cards. Today there are 3,257 different color faces of Legos.
Gene: That's insane.
Carl: Not all of them are realistic.
Gene: Well sure.
Carl: You've got-
Gene: They're like Darth Maul.
Carl: Space aliens. Yeah. Yeah. You got all kinds of stuff, but they were like, "Okay." But then you look at the Simpsons.
Gene: They're all yellow, yeah.
Carl: They're not. Go into that 7/11.
Gene: Oh, right.
Carl: Any nonwhite character in the Simpsons, has a realistic skin tone. So they have also shown us that-
Gene: What's the most is lack skin tone. Is that like liver disease, alcoholic skin tone?
Carl: Oh yeah. No, you're right. No, that's-
Gene: You're not representing my group properly without the disease anemic skin tone.
Carl: Exactly. So yellow becomes white people not having to promote being white. This blows my mind. And I know a lot of people are like, "Geez, Carl, welcome to the party." Well, you know what? I'm glad I'm here. And-
Gene: We got to get there sometime. Come on.
Carl: But the thing is, it's something we can just say, "Okay, let me go over here." I don't think there's anything wrong with using the white emojis. This one may be an issue. The one of just the hand being raised in a fist with the finger showing. But to me it's like, using white emojis doesn't make you a racist, being a racist makes you a racist. And I think it's in the context of who you are and how you use it. You should never use a skin tone that you're not.
Gene: Well, they never came with instructions.
Carl: No, but common sense. Right?
Gene: Well see, and here's... I don't want to derail you if you had more.
Carl: No, no. Go, go.
Gene: So I did unofficial fast poll by polling some of my friends and one of the more interesting ones was someone hit me back and said that in the past they used the darker skin tone when they were speaking to someone who was darker in skin tone, thinking that, "I should speak to you in how you represent yourself." Reverse that in the confusion. And then they would get a comment back with like, "Did you get a tan?" And it's like, "Oh, I did that wrong." But like, "Shit, I didn't know."
Carl: No, no. You're right. And it's interesting in that Anti-Racism Daily is this great newsletter and it's super accessible. It does not bash white people. It's a helping hand. It's saying, "Hey, come here-
Gene: We need it.
Carl: "I need to talk to you." But it basically says, never use a darker skin tone emoji to appear woke. It's like, don't do it because you think you're trying to let them know. Because most of us see it as the individual that's speaking. And then there's sometimes in marketing. Somebody is putting up a job posting in social media and they want diverse candidates. So like, "Oh, I should use a darker skin tone emoji." And what they say there is, "Put them all up." Put all five up and see how many bright yellow people you get applying. But no, that's definitely one of the things. But they call it-
Gene: After reading the article and thinking about my own usage and then I was talking to some people. I began to realize that there's implied usage right on the other side. Why are they doing it that way? But then there's also confused usage. Just this morning, I'm watching my relative. One of my uncle. He's been married for 50 something years. He's like, "Married today." He said it today. He doesn't even know it's public. This is technology. Some people are just don't know how to use it much less know how to use it enough to dig down into what color emoji I should use. But I don't know that you're talking about those people necessarily. I just-
Carl: No. I think it's fair. I think that-
Gene: If we are being inclusive, we need to be fair to people that don't know what the fuck they're doing.
Carl: No. That's true. Technology is tricky for some people. I know for whatever reason, Apple Pay. Is that a thing? I'm just kidding. I love it. Or do I? But to your point, there's going to be confusion. There's going to be mistakes. There's going to be all these things. There's going to be people who just didn't even know it was a thing until hopefully they hear this or they see the newsletter. I know I was one of those people, but now I'm thinking about it. And that's the thing. The married today thing is just funny.
Gene: It was like, "All right."
Carl: But when you see somebody else do it, like this conversation that happened in the bureau Slack channels. It's like, "Okay. I just want to talk to you about this. It looks a little different than I think you're thinking it look.", But here's the other one that really got me. When you look at the emojis that are actually faces, are trying to be realistic, they all have European hair. So basically they've changed the skin tones-
Gene: But it's just as is.
Carl: But they've pretty much left the... So it is kind of digital-
Gene: What the hell is that?
Carl: It's kind of digital blackface in a way.
Gene: A little bit. Yeah.
Carl: And not in a way-
Gene: Probably everybody uses them.
Carl: Well, and that's the thing. And then somebody actually made a comment that because all of the white ones have blonde hair, but she has darker hair, she uses a slightly different shade so she can get the darker hair because it looks more like her. Which is where you start to think about memojis.
Gene: That's got to be where Apple is trying to address a lot of this.
Carl: Well, and obviously that's a totally different technology. And for Unicode is embedded in everything with emojis. So it's on them and on us. But one of my favorite things was, in that conversation somebody said, "You just don't have to use those. If you agree with somebody put up the 100."
Gene: Right. There are other options. Yes.
Carl: Or go back to the circle faces. The circle faces, there's a ton of them and they work and everybody accepts them and that's way back to the smiley face. Let's forget Lego. Lego didn't decide that the default skin color was going to be bright yellow, that was going to represent everybody. It was for a scam. Right?
Gene: I guess.
Carl: But it was that yellow face.
Gene: It's definitely fascinating. I'll tell you one of the things that for those that might be thinking that, "It's such a small thing." And I'm guessing-
Carl: We're going to keep apologizing for this, but damn it we shouldn't.
Gene: In the grand scheme of things, yeah it's a small thing. But-
Carl: This is not police brutality.
Gene: Right. But what it did for me is it made me think about the fact that there are biases that I might have that I didn't consider that I have. And I think that's the key to most of this and you don't know the you don't know the shit. And just to be open to it and realize-
Carl: You think-
Gene: That somebody might be putting up with shit you don't really realize.
Carl: And flip it. Flip it for a second. Imagine being a black person, getting ready to use an emoji and they have to say-
Gene: Wait, what?
Carl: No. But they have to say... Well, first of all, I get that there aren't the bright colors to represent everybody. So you're going to have to say... And colorism, people treating people differently based on their shade, all of this stuff is real. But when you look at what the options you have, when you decide, "Okay, I am the darkest emoji." Or, "I'm the second darkest." Or whatever, then you have to decide, "Do I want to be a black person showing emotion on this or a yellow person and not show that I'm black when I show this." That's a totally different-
Gene: It is.
Carl: Thing than I... Because when a white person does it, we're saying... Well, I'm not saying this as a white person.
Gene: Well, here is the thing-
Carl: Because we're feeling defensive. They're saying, "Is it going to... And I don't know this for sure. Just things that I've read, but is this going to say that I'm not proud of who I am? so different.
Gene: There's so much to... Reuben. I did an interview with Reuben.
Carl: I saw it earlier.
Gene: Probably about two years ago now. Wow. I need to talk to him again. It's been a while. And he spoke about... He's running his business, a web design shop. He spoke about when he speaks to people on the phone, he has two different voices.
Carl: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gene: And I'm sure you've talked about that in older episodes-
Carl: He talked about it at Owner Summit.
Gene: Yeah. Some kind of an-
Carl: He got up on stage and-
Gene: I forget what he called it.
Carl: It's code switching.
Gene: Yeah. Thank you. Code switching. It's fascinating. And I'm sure that applies to this kind of stuff too. It's just fascinating and it's something that we don't have to deal with because we're white people and we're always white people, but-
Carl: And think about this-
Gene: He doesn't want to appear to be a certain thing to maybe not get the business from someone who might be slightly judgmental about giving. It's just ridiculous.
Carl: We'll link up his talk that he gave at Owner Summit, all about code switching and different things because again-
Gene: I think this touches on that though.
Carl: The more ignorant I am and the more I can learn and the more I can share with other people in the community and the more we can get better at this stuff. And that was one of the things about when Reuben got on stage and shared all that stuff. And I'll tell you what, that took a hell of a lot of courage, I think. But it was so valuable for everybody. Reuben N' Sherri Fly duo, amazing shop. I don't know if you saw the branding they did recently. Somebody actually got a tattoo of the brand.
Gene: I saw that.
Carl: That's the definition of branding by the way.
Gene: Yes. Literally.
Carl: So that was amazing. But you just made me think about something. So before emojis and obviously they show up before 2010. The internet was not race free. It wasn't like you couldn't identify or tell, but for the most part, if somebody sent an email, you didn't know.
Gene: Right. It was hard enough to use it in the first place. Yeah.
Carl: What I'm saying is, it was almost a place where we could just be humans and I'm not saying that's better. Because I think understanding color is really important and there's all. There's so much that's beneficial if we're paying attention. But if you think about it, it was for a while, just this place where we had conversations. Obviously Facebook, LinkedIn, all these things change. What's the first thing somebody links when they're going to do an introduction is LinkedIn. So as soon as you click on that person, you're going to see a picture of them. Not that it's good or bad, but it's just where we are. I think getting back to the idea of emojis and the way that they work, I think they're super important because they do. They allow us to take this flat conversation and emoticons were great but it lets us really put a little more humanity into it. But that has its own challenges. So you know the law angel emoji?
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: The halo. I just call it the halo emoji.
Gene: The halo. Yeah.
Carl: What does that emoji?
Gene: Oh, I don't know what they all mean. Especially that one.
Carl: If you were to see that one or use that one.
Gene: If I were to use it or send it, I would think it would mean I'm not guilty. Whatever was done, it wasn't me or apologizing or something or I'm a saint whatever.
Carl: Or I'm a good person.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in China, it means death.
Gene: Oh shit.
Carl: So-
Gene: And hey, we're only addressing the African-American versus white person emoji. We're not talking about all-
Carl: It's BIPOC. It's a whole bunch.
Gene: There's a whole thing.
Carl: And then you start to look at gender fluid emojis. There's the two dads and a baby now. You've got multiracial families. I don't think that's happened, but I think it's supposed to be happening. So all these different things. Now, at some point, it's got to keep going but it's also got to be a place where we can customize it. And I know it's frequently used or whatever, but we're going to have thousands and thousands when we get to a point where they actually can represent. But even then I just think thinking about it culturally beyond the States is so important.
Gene: Right. I do too. We have to.
Carl: I appreciate you me letting me go on this today.
Gene: It's fascinating. It's fascinating and I learned a lot about myself just simply reading that article and asking my friends about it.
Carl: I'm with you on just thinking about the way we ask your friends, talk to other people find out because it matters. It just matters. It just matters Gene.
Gene: Awesome.
Carl: There you go.
Gene: So, is this part of the newsletter or is this a standalone? Do you have any hot takes that you're going to throw in there?
Carl: The whole hot take is just this, every time you have to slow down to think about the emoji you're going to send, think about all the other people who aren't you. If nothing else, let this be a little trigger every day so that it doesn't have to be the murder of George Floyd. We need to pay attention every single day. There are going to be huge things that happen. But if every time we go to show a little emotion in a message or a reaction or something, we can just realize there are other people out there who don't have the privilege that we have. I think it's a great way to just approach it.
Gene: Yeah. I'll second that.
Carl: All right Gene. Next week?
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: All right. I'll see you then.
