During this year’s Pride Month, Adalberto Robles was not overwhelmed-on the contrary, what they were overwhelmed was the emoji.

Robes, 34, is a customer service representative from Phoenix, Arizona, USA. He uses his/he ??and their/their pronouns at the same time. He provides the pride flag and cross-prudence flag emojis. But what they want is the progressive LGBTQ pride flag, a redesign of the traditional rainbow pride flag in 2018, with a black, brown, pink, white, and blue striped chevron symbol.

This flag was designed by designer Daniel Quasar in Portland, Oregon, to pay tribute to blacks and browns and people who identify with transgender.

Let’s break it down #ProgressPrideFlag colour #Pride2021 Version (one thread) pic.twitter.com/Xr7ZKrpFam

-Daniel Quasar (@danielquasar) June 5, 2021

Robles believes that the emoji options should be more inclusive, and the progress indicator will be a step in this direction. To this end, Robles created a Change.org petition to add emojis, and has received nearly 200 signatures so far.

Robles is not the only one who is dissatisfied with the current situation More than 3,500 emoji options under the Unicode standardUnder Emoji 13.1, another 217 will be released in 2021, including a woman with a beard and a couple of different skin tones.

However, although the use of emoji is at the highest level in history (statistics from Emojipedia estimate that more than one-fifth of tweets Contains emoji) Many people and companies still feel that current choices cannot adequately represent their life experiences.

A 2019 Polls A survey of 1,000 people by software company Adob??e found that 76% of emoji users want more emojis to use, and 73% of emoji users want more customization options to reflect their personal image.

Our face, our own

Emojis are not just a digital shorthand for our emotional state-they also represent our core.

“Emoji are a powerful tool in computer-mediated communication,” Isaac Tourgeman, a neuropsychologist and professor of psychology at Albizu University in Doral, Florida, told Al Jazeera. “It adds context and tone.”

Tourgeman added that in the digital world, emojis have become a powerful substitute for body language, tone, and facial expressions.

The use of emoji may also have an impact on the real world: research has found that using emoji in interactions can Improve doctor-patient communication It can even be used as a tool to assess certain mental health disorders. This may be why it is more important for users to see themselves and their experience in the emoji options.

Studies have shown that emojis are not just a digital shorthand for our emotional state, but also have practical uses [File: Eugene Tanner/AP Photo]

Emojis have also become a shortcut to transcend language in our global society-this can lead to cultural confusion.

For example, as Fast Company Report, The Unicode Consortium has received multiple proposals for emojis for people on one knee to represent Black Lives Matter protests across the United States.

But the proposal was rejected, probably because it was too broad and caused confusion about the “reasons” for kneeling.

Is it an emoji used for protest, rest, or religious or cultural customs? This particularity—how the emoji is both single and universal—may be a challenge for the final approval of the proposed emoji.

Powerful marketing symbol

Emojis have also become big business. The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development and maintenance of “software internalization standards”, including the Unicode standard that deals with “text representation in all modern software products.”

This Unicode standard is why smiley faces look the same on all devices and all countries-and a Unicode Emoji Subcommittee Review proposal And scroll to add emoji.

In 2015, Apple added more than 300 new emojis, including people of different skin tones and depictions of same-sex parents and their children [File: AP Photo]

Proposal templates are open to the public and people are encouraged to send proposals.

Individuals can then also create petitions and groups to further promote their emojis and prove that potential emojis have audiences, such as Robles.

However, this democratic process is not without challenges.

In 2020, the Unicode Consortium temporarily approved a pickup truck emoji, after which the Emoji Subcommittee learned that Ford Motor Company had hired a marketing company to create the proposal.

Although this practice is allowed, the Unicode Consortium prefers to be public. Other companies—such as Butterball and Taco Bell—have launched their own petitions. Taco Bell scores the taco emoji they want, but the Thanksgiving turkey on the plate emoji is still elusive.

Non-profit organizations have also joined this trend. House of Kurds is a non-profit platform representing Kurds. It is currently petitioning to use the Kurdistan emoji flag, and its petition has received more than 90,000 signatures.

Stay here

As emojis are increasingly adopted in daily life-Adobe’s survey found that more than 60% of people use emojis in work environments-these roles are likely to continue to be the core of our lives.

“I don’t think emojis are a trend, I think they are really developing our language,” Dan Levine, a business trends expert, told Al Jazeera. “The world has become less formal.”

Levine also believes that this language will continue to change in the next ten years, which may open the floodgates for new emoji options.

But others emphasized that emojis are not a new way of communication.

“Look at the cave picture,” Tourgeman pointed out. “In many ways, painting and characters have always been our primary means of communication. We are visual animals, and history often repeats itself.”