Further to "Unicode emoji aren't a universal language, they're literally by definition those symbols accepted by a bureaucratic committee stuffed with American tech corps":
emoji were literally hijacked by Apple, and the set of them consequently massively bloated in an still-ongoing process, purely as a driver for the early iPhone upgrade treadmill. As always, fuck Apple
Remembering the feverish status-symbol mania of the iPhone, and just how many endlessly proliferated but-everybody's-got-one-now models it lasted for, makes me feel deranged. The not-really-joking sneering of people who didn't want to talk to their "friends" any more because they had a phone for lesser people, as helpfully designated by iMessage text bubble colours and the deliberately janky breakdown of proprietary Apple messaging features if you dared have friends among The Outsiders.
How can this have been reality. How can I not have imagined this ridiculous shit.
