The time has come for the under-represented to stand up and make their voices heard because for the first time since time began, lobsters, llamas and people with ginger hair will be able to fully express themselves in emoji form.
The new update will roll out on Tuesday, June 5, and will introduce bagels, cupcakes, lobsters, llamas, toilet paper and ginger people, among others, to the ever-expanding collection of expressive emojis.
It seems hair in general has been neglected since the dawn of the emoji, but the creators are gradually getting with the times as red, white, curly and bald-headed people will now be represented in the latest update.
There will also be new superhero and super-villain figures supporting different skin tones and genders. The new leg and foot designs will also support the various skin tones.
Among the newbies are a ‘woozy face’, a four-love-hearted smiley as well as activities like sewing, knitting, lacrosse, and skateboarding.
A total of 157 new symbols will be added, which are handily displayed in this video:
As it will take some time for operating systems to update and start featuring the emojis, users can expect to see the news guys popping up on their screens over the next few months.
According to Emojipedia, the new additions to the canon brings the total of approved emojis to 2,823. No wonder it takes so long for me to write a text message these days.
It’s fair to say that the world of emojis has got some work to do to redeem itself after the horror-show that was 2017’s The Emoji Movie.
As soon as the film was announced we all knew it just wasn’t going to be good, no matter who worked on it or what was done with it, but we weren’t prepared for just quite how bad it turned out to be.
Just like The Lego Movie, the film was designed to be a vehicle for product placement.
However, not only is Lego a toy, it is an immersive world and one loved by millions of people worldwide, so it lends itself well to a film adaptation, especially one so brilliant it never once feels like it is tying to sell you something.
The Emoji Movie, though, was a film full of product placement and sponsored content, so much so that it was almost embarrassing at how it so obviously took advantage of its young and vulnerable target audience, as the characters onscreen jumped between different apps and adverts.
Then again, the producers probably needed the cash, as the cast boasted Maya Rudolph, Anna Faris and Sir Patrick Stewart. Somewhat depressingly, The Emoji Movie represents a new kind of beast in Hollywood, one that is solely adverts without even an attempt to disguise it.
On the plus side, at least the the selection of emojis we actually use is expanding, meaning there’ll be less room for mis-interpretation of what, for example, the aubergine or anything else might represent…
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.