Gender neutral smilies?

[Octo]

Dunno if you want to merge this with the regular smiley thread or what...


Anyway, given our recent discussions, I was thinking maybe we should change some of our smileys, specifically these ones:




I mean, its not a huge deal to me, I'm not going to lose sleep over it, but y'know...every little helps? As far as I can see it doesn't matter if they're both the same colour, all the other smileys are pale blue so like, I'm a female - does that mean every time I've used a non-pink smiley I'm impersonating a man?

TLDR I think they should be sexless....or genderless...or whatever. I mean if it's not going to be a huge ball ache to do it?

If it's easier maybe just tinker with the hue slider enough so that they're not blue/pink - maybe purple/green or some other colours?

Just throwing it out there as something to ponder

 

[Ⓐaron]

I don't think I have the ability to edit .gifs anymore (unless someone provides me with a program that can do that), nor do I know if I have the ability to overwrite existing files on the server, but given the power to do both I'll do so It might be awhile though because of class things.

 

[Fangu]

....huh?


What I mean is, are we to assume the pink smiley is female? I never did...

 

[Octo]

Cool, theres no rush. I'm not totally devastated or anything using those smileys, just that if I'd created them, it wouldn't have even occured to me to create any kind of distinction

I haven't turned into a tumblrite nutter or anything! Honest!

What I mean is, are we to assume the pink smiley is female? I never did...

I never really did, but I think that was probably the intention by whoever made the smileys in the first place, and all the discussion about gender and stuff lately just made me think, what are we losing by changing it y'know? the distinction between the two doesn't really serve any purpose, and I think subconciously many people would think it was a sex/gender thing

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Exactly how are we supposed to tell different smilies apart then? Like it or not, pink stands out well from green. To me this is just splitting hairs and going into Political Correctness Gone Mad territory.

 

[Octo]

I don't know what you mean by telling them apart? Theres two smileys hugging...two entities?

 

[Cthulhu]

Pink used to be a manly color, you know, .

I'm not going to apply fear of SJW's all over the smileys; if you'd like smilies (of various colors or variations or whatnot) to be added, then feel free to make and post them in the relevant thread.

Also seeing smileys is ableist as fuck

 

[Octo]

Edit: here's what I mean:

That was just after arsing about on PS, from a screen cap, I don't know how to do anything with gifs.

Theres enough shading to tell them apart even if they are the same colour. But like I said, It was just something that occured to me.

EDIT: and yeah, neutral smilies in addition to the existing ones would be fine.

 

[Rydeen]

Working on some right now; it's simple enough. Making them purple.

 

[Octo]

Working on some right now; it's simple enough. Making them purple.

Cool, out of interest what program are you using? I wouldn't mind trying to have a go myself, but when I looked up emote specific programs they all seemed like they'd be riddled with adware and stuff.

 

[Rydeen]

Photoshop

 

[Octo]

They're beautiful! Thanks.

 

[Rydeen]

GIMP has become quite a beefy freeware, and I'm pretty sure you can create animated gifs; maybe give GIMP a try if you want to dabble in gfx stuff. With Photoshop, the options are to be obscenely rich or to find some other way, me matey.

 

[Cthulhu]

...Subtle,

 

[Ⓐaron]

GIMP can do animated .gifs, yeah.

And yeah, well done.

 

[Masamune]

I think this place just officially jumped the shark.

 

[Octo]

I find it odd, that such a small thing gets met with such resistance. Even when I said it was fine to keep the existing smileys if people want to use them. People still have an option.

I dunno maybe the trans/genderqueer individuals here don't give a shit anyway? But I tend to have a butterfly effect view of these things, small changes innit? Be the change or some shit.

 

[Tetsujin]

all the other smileys are pale blue so like, I'm a female - does that mean every time I've used a non-pink smiley I'm impersonating a man?

[...]

If it's easier maybe just tinker with the hue slider enough so that they're not blue/pink - maybe purple/green or some other colours?

Not sure if I'm color blind but I was under the impression our smilies are already a Lifestream green.

Although is randomly in classic ACF blue. What's up with that?

 

[Cthulhu]

I think this place just officially jumped the shark.

I, as a shark-kin, am offended by that. Jumping is ableist as fuck, too.


:trollface:

 

[Masamune]

I find it odd, that such a small thing gets met with such resistance.

I get that a lot.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I find it odd, that such a small thing gets met with such resistance. Even when I said it was fine to keep the existing smileys if people want to use them. People still have an option.

I think the reaction is more "why redo something that no one was complaining about anyway just because pink is seen as feminine, which no one here thinks anyway".

My pet peeve with a lot of things done for non-discrimination purposes is that doing those things reinforce the stereotype (in this case pink=female) that they're trying to be rid of (colors are gender neutral).

 

[Ⓐaron]

In this case, though, I'd think that the smilies were redesigned as both being purple would reduce that tendency somewhat.

I should clarify: I don't much care for my own sake what colour the smilies are but if they bother other people I don't see any reason not to change them.

 

[Kai Schulen]

I just think it's strange that the normal smilies are being seen as potentially offensive because of their colors and gender associations with said colors when we have emoticons like , , and the like.

Or are we gonna get rid of them too for the sake of gender association/oppression or whatever? [/strawman argument or whatever]

I'm all for changing emoticons because the basic colors are pretty drab and dull, so that being said...can we has orange/yellow/light blue/purple/white/gray/black or is that too much to ask for? (or is someone going to suddenly burst into this thread and scream that I'm a racist?!)

(I'm having flashbacks to when there was with a limp wrist and there was a bunch of drama about that about that too.)

 

[Ⓐaron]

There was one and it was removed. I don't think anyone cares about the link monster though

If people want other coloured monsters I can try to make some and see what other people think.

 

[Selphie Tilmitt]

I totally care about the pink monster!