10-Year-Old Starts Petition for Apple to Change 'Insulting' Nerd Emoji
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2023-12-01 03:26
Do you find the nerd emoji šŸ¤“ offensive? One 10-year-old in England thinks it is,

Do you find the nerd emoji šŸ¤“ offensive? One 10-year-old in England thinks it is, and has decided to do something about it.

This week, the BBC reported on a petition from a child in the UK named Teddy Cottle, who started a campaign urging Apple to change the nerd emoji. Cottleā€™s problem is that nerd emoji is allegedly demeaning to people like him who wear glasses. ā€œI hate the teeth at the bottom (of the emoji) and the name,ā€ he told the BBC in a video interview. ā€œItā€™s making me feel sad and upset.ā€

Cottleā€™s solution is for Apple to change the nerd emoji into a ā€œgeniusā€ emoji, which would feature a round yellow face wearing glasses, still smiling over a smaller grin, without the buck teeth.

Cottle also published his petition online, which describes the current nerd emoji as ā€œoffensive and insulting to all those people in the world who wear glasses.ā€

ā€œI think people who wear glasses are cool and I am worried that people who are getting glasses for the first time will think they are going to look like rabbits or rats,ā€ he added. So far, the petition has received 386 signatures.

Apple didnā€™t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the company isnā€™t the only one thatā€™s adopted the nerd emoji. The Unicode Consortium, the gatekeeper for emoji across the tech industry, approved the symbol for release in 2015. Still, the nerd emojiā€™s original design, which featured two buck teeth, has faced criticism for evoking ā€œanti-Asian stereotypes,ā€ according to Emojipedia.

ā€œThe fact that the default color of emoji faces is yellow further pushes this emoji into racist ā€˜yellowfaceā€™ territory,ā€ it added. Both Google and Facebook have since redesigned the nerd emoji to remove the buck teeth in favor of a more generic-looking smiling face wearing glasses. In contrast, Apple, Twitter, and Samsung have kept the buck teeth on their nerd emoji designs.

(Credit: Emojipedia)

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