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posted by martyb on Saturday October 06 2018, @03:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the cream-cheese-or-lox dept.

Tacos, dumplings, bagels: the complicated politics of food emoji

Like all emoji, the bagel emoji is a tiny cartoon representation of its namesake, which is, again, a bagel. It is round like a bagel and brown like a bagel. It appears to be a plain bagel, which is not the best kind of bagel but also not the worst. It is a blank slate of a bagel —arguably, the bagel-iest kind of bagel, if not the most visually interesting. It is depicted sliced in half, and dry. Is this a good way to eat a bagel? No. Still, the image is very successful at doing its job, which is to communicate the concept of "bagel."

Bagel enthusiasts, though, were very upset. "Take a look at this clearly machine-cut monstrosity with its stiff and bready interior, which couldn't possibly be redeemed by a few minutes in a toaster," lamented Nikita Richardson at Grub Street. (Redemption is the only reason a bagel should ever be toasted, according to true bagel originalists; to toast a fresh bagel is a symptom of what former New York Times food critic and current culinary curmudgeon Mimi Sheraton calls a "decline in the craft of bagel making.")

[...] Part of the bagelmoji ire, explains Heather Schwedel at Slate, is a performance of discerning taste. "People want to demonstrate that they, unlike those emoji rubes, know from good bagels," she writes, noting that with much of the outcry coming from New York, "there may be some geographic snobbery going on too." A good way to prove you are a true New Yorker is to be extremely opinionated about bagels, whether real or pixelated.

[...] But as Jeremy Burge, the founder of Emojipedia and creator of World Emoji Day, told CNN, people want to see themselves in their tiny icons. "Some of the most vocal requests for new emojis are about representation," he said. The dumpling, the taco, and the pan of paella, for example, all had extremely popular backing. Linguists may not consider emoji a language, Jennifer 8. Lee, the driving force behind the dumpling emoji, told the Atlantic, but "for people who use them, it's almost like fighting for a word that [shows] you exist. When you come up with a word to describe your population, it's a very powerful thing."

Related: Apple's New iPhone X will let You Control the Poo Emoji with Your Face
Google CEO Drops Everything to Fix Cheeseburger Emoji
Microsoft Briefly Left Holding the Gun Emoji


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  • (Score: 2) by crafoo on Saturday October 06 2018, @02:38PM (5 children)

    by crafoo (6639) on Saturday October 06 2018, @02:38PM (#745038)

    What would a white supremacist emoji look like?

    A tree full of neo-marxists hanging from ropes.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday October 06 2018, @03:37PM (3 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday October 06 2018, @03:37PM (#745046) Journal

    Sounds like he hit a sensitive spot. Though, I believe the current meme is "helicopter rides." Bad alt-righter, no cracker (heh) for you! And thanks for revealing what I kinda suspected about you from the start.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:26PM (#745148)

      Well, given the precedent set by the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, it's not an incorrect answer.

    • (Score: 2) by crafoo on Monday October 08 2018, @10:12PM (1 child)

      by crafoo (6639) on Monday October 08 2018, @10:12PM (#746168)

      Didn't say I think they should hang, only that is what the emoji would probably look like. although I agree, an involuntary skydiver would probably be a better emoji choice.

      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday October 09 2018, @12:52AM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday October 09 2018, @12:52AM (#746227) Journal

        You're a real piece of shit...not that I didn't know that before but thanks for breaking cover in a more public manner :/ Goddamn, this place is getting more and more RWNJ by the day.

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @05:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @05:03PM (#745092)

    It's a shame. Ultimately why I have to agree with Aristarchus' larger hypothesis that lack of education is the root cause--even if he gets nutty in the details. There's also a lot of zero-sum thinking involved.

    Whites are justifiably upset because they are losing economic ground. The middle class is shrinking and disappearing. The illusion of meritocracy shatters.

    However, if we eliminate the blacks and the Mexicans and the Muslims and the Jews it doesn't change the fundamental dynamics of the system. Race is not a fundamental division of society in the modern age. Attempting to make it a fundamental division of society will solve nothing. It is about class, and it would still be about class.

    The numbers clearly show that wealth is being sucked from the working and middle class up to a handful of financial elites. This process greatly accelerated after the 2008 bank bailouts, paving the way for a surge of racialist thinking (both on the far right and the nominal "left," which is still very right-wing with deeply ingrained racialist thinking) desperate to look for a scapegoat. Instead, we must go straight to the root cause if we intend to fix this. We have to correct the systematic theft of wealth from the working and middle classes.

    Now, the neoliberals are preparing a new propaganda run. They will present their version of "socialism," which seeks only to save the capitalist system. Don't listen to the International Socialist Organization, and stay far away from the Democratic Socialists of America. And there was also something about the re-founding of the Fourth International, which is bullshit.

    Only the International Committee of the Fourth International has answers that will help us. The problem is the capitalist system itself, and the capitalist system is in crisis. We need authentic, democratic, international Marxism. International Marxism is the only effective way to counter neoliberal globalist capitalism. We must overcome the propaganda encouraging us to divide ourselves along lines of race and sex, and we must unite... before the capitalists make a Big Mistake such as global nuclear war.