X replaced the water pistol emoji with a regular gun, for some reason

Jul 24, 2024 07:05 AM - 5 months ago 137450

The awesome has been a h2o weapon connected astir devices for years.

By Wes Davis, a play editor who covers nan latest successful tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and much arsenic a tech journalist since 2020.

Jul 24, 2024, 12:05 AM UTC

Image: The Verge

Years aft Twitter replaced nan pistol emoji pinch a green-and-orange h2o gun, X has decided to alteration it backmost to a regular handgun. An X worker announced nan alteration in a post past week.

The institution hasn’t explained nan change, but it feels on-brand for Elon Musk’s societal network. Twitter originally switched its emoji to show a h2o weapon successful 2018, pursuing others for illustration Google and Facebook. (Apple made nan move successful 2016; Microsoft was a little hold-out.)

We’ve embedded a screenshot of nan X post, truthful you tin spot nan weapon image. (On immoderate devices, nan existent station still shows a h2o weapon erstwhile embedded.)

We’ve embedded a screenshot of nan X post, truthful you tin spot nan weapon image. (On immoderate devices, the existent post still shows a h2o weapon erstwhile embedded.)

Eventually, nan Unicode Consortium, which decides which emoji get made successful nan first place, followed nan platforms’ lead and officially renamed nan pistol emoji arsenic “water pistol”:

The Unicode website shows h2o pistol is nan charismatic short sanction for emoji #1121.

The existent introduction for nan “water pistol” emoji. You tin besides find references to it here and here.

Emoji are cosmopolitan insofar arsenic they stock communal designations crossed platforms (U+1F52B is nan h2o pistol), which are decided by nan Unicode Consortium. But it’s up to each level proprietor to determine really they’re visually represented. That’s really we sewage nan Great Cheeseburger Emoji Debacle that was resolved successful November 2017.

You’ll only spot nan weapon if you’re looking astatine X connected nan web — arsenic of this writing, it doesn’t look to person updated successful mobile versions of nan app, though that’s apparently connected its measurement astatine immoderate point.