"By the time your grandmother starts using the wilting rose emoji, it’s done, you’ve got to move on."

I'm reading "😭 or 😂: Do Your Emojis Make You Look Old? When it comes to emoji usage, we’re all just following teen girls" (NYT gift link).

Interesting, but I am old. I'm permanently freed from worrying over looking old. I am not the "your" in this "by the time your grandmother starts using it" test. I am the grandmother. I mean, I'm not a grandmother. I have no grandchildren. But I'm 75. I'm so far within the age group that there's nothing even to quibble about. It is therefore impossible for me to work on my emojis as a way to look young. My use of any emoji make not only makes me look old. It makes the emoji look old. Apparently, I have the power to make emojis look old.

Just as I'm drafting this post, I'm getting an emoji from Meade, answering a text I sent at 4:30 a.m.:

Being up at 4:30 a.m. makes me look old, as does the inability to watch a baseball game that begins at 9:10 p.m. But if you don't look, you can have a "live" experience in the morning if you're careful where you click, but...

Not being able to see the teeny tiny emojis is also making me look old. But this is my new freedom. Not to care about emojis. They're not for me. They are for teenaged girls.

The bankruptcy barrel.

I was amused by these "Exclusive Emojis from Elon Musk" drawings from Barry Blitt (in The New Yorker). Please check them all out. I'm just going to focus on one (and not because it's the best in the set of 12):

  

I just want to talk about the image — which I've seen all my life — of a guy wearing a barrel. I understand it means you're so poor you don't have even a shred of normal clothing and your only hope of modesty is wearing this very bulky, unwieldy object, the barrel.

"The agglomeration of legal talent on both sides of Twitter v. Musk is mind-boggling—as is the amount of money being billed on this case."

"But with stakes ranging from a $1 billion breakup fee on the low end to a $44 billion acquisition on the high end, with lots of room for a settlement in between, there’s plenty of cash sloshing around to cover the lawyers’ fees.... Who will prevail in the end? I agree with the conventional wisdom that Twitter has the upper hand. It seems to me that Musk simply got a case of buyer’s remorse, especially after the stock market (including Tesla’s share price) went south.... [T]he reasons given by Musk for walking away seem pretextual. Yes, specific performance is generally a disfavored remedy in contract law compared to money damages.... [but Delaware] Chancery has not hesitated to order specific performance of billion-dollar M&A deals in the past... [I]f Twitter v. Musk goes to trial, the spectacle will be incredible. I’m not big on scatology, so I tuned out Amber Heard’s testimony about poop on the bed. But Elon Musk testifying about his poop emojis? I’m here for it."

Writes David Lat (at Original Jurisdiction).

When are things melodramatic enough that we feel like watching? If we are lawyers, then maybe contracts worth a big enough amount of money are enough. I will never forget the way a partner — at the "biglaw" firm where I worked before I became a lawprof — overpronounced the "b" in "billions." If it's a "b" and not an "m," you'd better stand in awe. I wanted to work on cases that had interesting issues, and for that, in that place, I got called "an intellectual."

Speaking of "b" and "m," long ago, when I was growing up, the conventional word for the substance that is now called "poop" — when speaking around children and other delicate folk — was "b.m." At least in the region where I lived, the place with the famous Chancery Court, Delaware. People would say, "Oh, no, I stepped in dog b.m." or "This place smells like b.m." 

And as long as we are talking about Elon Musk and melodrama and scampering away from high finance to more lowly things, here's this new headline in the NY Post: "Elon Musk’s dad, 76, confirms secret second child — with his stepdaughter" ("Elon has not publicly commented on his father’s latest baby admission. The pair are still estranged, with Elon describing his dad as a 'terrible human being'...").

I've picked out 6 TikTok selections for you this evening. Let me know what you like best.

1. Speed dating.

2. He feels like he's the yellow moon emoji.

3. A list of "cool things you can say."

4. Hey, what are you eating?

5. Watch this one if you want to be persuaded to do 60 squats a day.

6. Watch this one if you care about Harry Nilsson.

Elon Musk is fat-shaming Bill Gates (and "moving on...").

I made this screen capture of the top 2 tweets in Elon Musk's feed:

 

The image next to Gates is the new "pregnant man" emoji from Apple.

I don't know what "Moving on..." refers to.

ADDED: The Gates/pregnant man image is only funny because of the happenstance of the blue shirt.

Also, on reflection, I think Musk is just "Moving on..." from the fuss over the pregnant Gates tweet — a fuss that he's mocked like this:

"I use the default emoji, the yellow-toned one for professional settings, and then I use the dark brown emoji for friends and family. I just don't have the emotional capacity to unpack race relations in the professional setting."

Said Jennifer Epperson, quoted in "Which skin color emoji should you use? The answer can be more complex than you think" (NPR).

But is the yellow emoji really a way to stay neutral and leave race out of your texting? One researcher, Zara Rahman, argues that skin tone emojis "make white people confront their race." But what are you supposed to do? If you're sensitive about white supremacy and you choose a white emoji, how does that distinguish you from white supremacist? But if you pick the yellow emoji, because it was the original emoji color and because you sort of identify with The Simpsons, how do you know that doesn't make you seem to be misidentifying yourself as Asian? Or worse, how do you know it doesn't seem to mean I don't want to confront my race.

Rahman says, "I completely hear some people are just exhausted," but emoji color selection is "one of those places where we just have to think about who we are and how we want to represent our identities." Why are social media companies subjecting us to "places where we just have to think about" some particular thing? They should be neutral platforms where we get to choose what to express and what to leave unspoken.

The 🤏 emoji — signifying penis smallness — has become a pivot point for anti-feminist activism in South Korea.

According to the L.A. Times in "What’s size got to do with it? Mocking a man’s manhood spurs a reverse #MeToo in South Korea" (L.A. Times).

“Men’s rights” groups have taken to searching for the image included in various posters and ad campaigns, in a McCarthyistic hunt for companies, organizations or their employees sympathetic to feminism, targeting them with boycotts or a barrage of complaints....

The pinching hand entered the gender debate in South Korea in 2015, years before it became an emoji. That year, a group of South Korean women fed up with widespread misogyny on male-dominated online forums decided the best way to push back was to give as good as they got. They began referring to men by their genitals, as men had often done of women. 

They created male versions of online slang that was degrading to women, and reverted sexist idioms — “A woman’s voice should never go beyond the fence,” “Women and dried fish need a pounding once every three days” — against men. They ridiculed and belittled men based on their physical appearance, and often, the size of their appendage. The group of women called itself “Megalia” and chose as its unabashed emblem the image of a pinching hand.

ADDED: Why would anyone think that telling men their penises are small — deriding them for this characteristic — functions as a good approach to achieving feminist goals?

On a crude level, one could say men have been awful to women, so women are returning awfulness, hitting them where it hurts, right in their masculine pride; we're fighting subordination with humiliation. 

There is also the old notion — and I'm speaking only of how I've experienced in the United States — that a male with a small penis compensates by behaving like an asshole. I haven't heard this recently, but it used to be standard humor to say — when witnessing an aggressive male jerk — "He probably has a small penis." This would exert some pressure on men to behave better, lest they be thought to have a small penis.

But to push that theory is to give priority to a person's physical attributes: You are what your body makes you. That way of thinking isn't helpful to feminism.

"'Now there’s an IQ test,' said another prominent Hamptons media figure. 'I’d have to be insane to let you quote me.'"

From "Newsrooms Are in Revolt. The Bosses Are in Their Country Houses/Those who can afford it left the city, shining a spotlight on class divisions in the media" (NYT).

Were media leaders in the right place to cover the horror of the early days of the outbreak, when they weren’t being kept awake by sirens? And did they overplay the violent fringes of protests, when they’ve been overwhelmingly peaceful and the city’s broader mood has been a kind of revolutionary good cheer? Walking with a television executive past boutiques on Newtown Lane in East Hampton last week, I tried to convince him that his teenage children would be fine walking around their native Upper East Side unaccompanied. During the protests, the city could look terrifying on television, and reporters on the scene faced violence, mostly from police; but the mood away from the police billy clubs was not exactly the Reign of Terror. (Though stay tuned: When The New York Times forced out the opinion editor James Bennet over a controversial column a week ago, two employees reacted in Slack with a slackmoji of the word “guillotine,” prompting internal complaints, a Times reporter said. “We encourage constructive, honest dialogue among our colleagues but there are lines that can be crossed, and this was one of them,” Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said in response.)

"I’m trying not to offend anybody. I did it for the purpose of being happy, being positive, and I think it’s cute and quirky and kind of funny, and certainly was a time for the emoji."

Said Kathryn Kidd, quoted in "'Emoji house’ feud erupts as frustrated residents urge Manhattan Beach to take action" (LA Times). Kidd had her house painted as you see below after she was reported by a neighbor for using the house as an AirBnB and fined $4,000.

View this post on Instagram

Rpost from the @thegoneman THE EMOJI HOUSE 🤐🤪 🎨 @ztheart #TheEmojiHouse #theemojihouse #emojiart #beachfrontproperty #art #beachlife #Manhattanbeach #artdaily #pink #emoji #selfie #eyelashextensions #eyelashes #ladypink #artcommission #comissionart #wallart #exteriordesign #funnyart

A post shared by Z the Art (@ztheart) on May 31, 2019 at 5:25pm PDT

The Instagrammer, Z the Art, did the painting. Now, neighbors have reported the paint job and are seeking action from the city, which seems cowed by the notion that Kidd has a free-speech right to paint her house like that. I'd need to know if there's some generally applicable law about murals to have an opinion about that.

One of the neighbors, Chris Strickfaden, is quoted saying:

“Besides the obvious ugliness — and no one believes this is just artistic expression — it has now become a traffic nuisance issue with people stopping by to take selfies in front of the emoji house. It’s nuts... I believe generally people should be able to do what they want with their property within the guidelines of the city, without governmental interference, including painting their exterior. However, this situation is not about the right of the homeowner. It’s about one homeowner saying F-U to the person she blames for her plight and F-U to the rest of the street.”

I wonder what he means by "just artistic expression." If you're expressing hostility, it's not artistic?! To single out the "fuck you" expression is viewpoint discrimination.

"Forty-nine people were killed in shootings at two mosques in central Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday..."

The NYT reports.

The police said that four people, including three men and one woman, had been taken into custody....

A 17-minute video posted to social media appears to show part of the attack. The clip, ... may have been taken from a helmet camera worn by a gunman.... “There wasn’t even time to aim, there was so many targets,” he says at one point...

Before the shooting, someone appearing to be the gunman posted links to a white-nationalist manifesto on Twitter and 8chan, an online forum known for extremist right-wing discussions. The 8chan post included a link to what appeared to be the gunman’s Facebook page, where he said he would also broadcast live video of the attack.....

In his manifesto, he identified himself as a 28-year-old man born in Australia and listed his white nationalist heroes. Writing that he had purposely used guns to stir discord in the United States over the Second Amendment’s provision on the right to bear arms, he also declared himself a fascist. “For once, the person that will be called a fascist, is an actual fascist,” he wrote.

ADDED: Why would a right-wing fascist want to "to stir discord in the United States over the Second Amendment’s provision on the right to bear arms"? I understand that the man is (he says) Australian and may not understand American ideology and politics and there may be something wrong with trying to make sense of the thinking of a mass murderer, but it seems to me that discord over the Second Amendment boosts the cause of limiting the right to bear arms. When Americans are not under stress, our resting state is to accept widespread gun possession.

IN THE COMMENTS: MayBee said:

Someone posted the video he took of his own shootings on a thread in Twitter. I didn't want to see it. It just started playing.

Twitter should disable autoplay.

ALSO: Daily Mail reports:

The gunman, who identified himself as Brenton Tarrant from Grafton, New South Wales, Australia, named [Candace Owens] as his biggest influence in his 74-page manifesto [posted on Twitter]. [He] said that Owens helped 'push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness' - but claimed some of the 'extreme actions' she calls for are 'too much, even for my tastes'.

Owens is getting attacked for reacting to that tweet with a laughing emoji. She also reacted in words (including "LOL"):

'I’ve never created any content espousing my views on the 2nd Amendment or Islam. The Left pretending I inspired a mosque massacre in...New Zealand because I believe black America can do it without government hand outs is the reachiest reach of all reaches!! LOL!' she said.

She continued to tweet over the next several hours that she refused to be blamed for the massacre. When followers pointed out the impropriety of her response, she was indignant.

'Laughter is not the response one would expect after these murders,' one follower said.

Owens shot back: 'No. But a bunch of racist white liberals flooding my mentions is almost exactly what one would expect. You guys will never de-platform me.'

It's a mistake to use laughter as opposed to straight outrage.

MORE IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:

I actually read his screed. He's not a right winger. He's an eco-fascist. He's not a fan of capitalism or conservatives or Marxists. He wants the United States to have a civil war and thinks that will come about by provoking people to fight over the Second Amendment.

A mysterious Facebook phenomenon — some people get a left-handed thumb's-up emoji and others get a right-handed thumb's-up emoji.

Observed and commented on in a Facebook thread (started by my son John) about the likelihood of Presidents to be left-handed:



What's going on at Facebook? Perhaps it's just an innocuous device to get people talking or to test if anyone notices, but I think it's very strange to have 2 different ways of displaying the most important emoji (the one used to signify a "like") and to have a right/left distinction (which is so meaningful in political analysis). I feel actively lured in conspiracy thinking, which isn't my thing at all, except as a joke, for idle fun.