You know the world is going to Hell when . . .

The world’s most-used statistics software concerns itself with the width of emojis.

from http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/R/CRAN/ .

Conversation 23 comments

  • navarac

    02 April, 2021 - 4:03 am

    <p>Don't know about "going" – more like "gone". Surely there are better things to sort out rather than emojis, icons, excess space in File Explorer etc? Crap, in other words.</p>

  • beckoningeagle

    Premium Member
    02 April, 2021 - 7:17 am

    <p>Dude!, Emojis are important to let our capable world leaders know how they are doing in an upcoming election. Instead of percentages, you put a frowny face or a happy face. The width is important, the world leader in question could become offended if the emoji is too wide. </p>

    • dftf

      02 April, 2021 - 4:05 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#621288">In reply to BeckoningEagle:</a></em></blockquote><p>Maybe they'll ban any negative emojis before-long, like how YouTube are testing removing public-visibility of how-many downvotes a video gets…</p>

      • pecosbob04

        02 April, 2021 - 5:02 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#621380">In reply to dftf:</a></em></blockquote><p>Already happened here.</p>

  • Paul Thurrott

    Premium Member
    02 April, 2021 - 8:57 am

    <p>lol ah well</p>

  • anoldamigauser

    Premium Member
    02 April, 2021 - 9:46 am

    <p>For roughly 5000 years or so, humanity has been evolving writing and communication. Now, with a smiley face, we are devolving. Time to dig out the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devo&quot; target="_blank">yellow coveralls and flowerpot hat</a> from the 80's.</p>

    • beckoningeagle

      Premium Member
      03 April, 2021 - 7:02 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#621307">In reply to AnOldAmigaUser:</a></em></blockquote><p>In 10000 years aliens will be trying to understand our hieroglyphs and getting it wrong.</p>

      • anoldamigauser

        Premium Member
        04 April, 2021 - 2:52 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#621456">In reply to BeckoningEagle:</a></em></blockquote><p>No, I fear they will only get it too right.</p><p>In another life, I spent a lot of time on business in St. Louis. One weekend, I decided to visit the Cahokia Mounds, which are worthwhile if you are there. On the way out, I passed a huge mound, that was not on the map, and wondered…until I saw the vent pipes and realized it was a capped landfill. All I could do was remember an old Calvin and Hobbes strip, where they were archeologists and found only trash. The final quote was, "I bet future generations learn a lot more about us than we would like."</p>

  • ruivo

    02 April, 2021 - 12:27 pm

    <p>Well, writing doesn't convey body language, and emojis are just that, body language cues. I think they are in essence very useful. Of course, people can abuse it just as people can abuse facial expressions and body language on face to face conversations, but the problem is not emoji, is lack of restraint :-)</p>

  • ghostrider

    02 April, 2021 - 1:12 pm

    <p>Humanity is generally in reverse. You only have to look at the younger generation these days – they're so wrapped up in meaningless emoji-driven brain-dead 'conversations' over absolutely nothing, it's actually really scary when you wonder where the next generation of scientists and engineers is coming from. Many of today's humans have a life goal of becoming a Youtube Influencer (is that even a job?). I truly despair sometimes.</p>

    • angusmatheson

      02 April, 2021 - 11:24 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#621345">In reply to ghostrider:</a></em></blockquote><pre class="ql-syntax" spellcheck="false">"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for
      authority, they show disrespect to their elders…. They no longer
      rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
      chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their
      legs, and are tyrants over their teachers."
      </pre><p><br></p><p>That was from about 2500 years ago. Heaven knows the kids back then all wanted to be chariot racers, whatever good that did them.</p>

  • dftf

    02 April, 2021 - 4:09 pm

    <p>Not sure if the link you posted is broken, but it just takes me to a download-page, but nothing about emojis?</p><p><br></p><p>But on the general-subject: I don't really get "emojis" thesedays. When they were "smilies" back in the SMS days, or "emoticons" back in the IM days, like MSN Messenger, they made sense — add some emotion into casual, text-only chat.</p><p><br></p><p>But thesedays aren't they essentially just ClipArt? The vast, vast majority of the icons aren't even faces now… I mean, instead of asking "fancy going for ?", why not just actually write "fancy going for pizza"? It must take more time to actually search for the emoji and insert it than write the actual word!</p>

    • hrlngrv

      Premium Member
      02 April, 2021 - 7:18 pm

      <p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/forums/general-discussion/health-of-tech/thread/you-know-the-world-is-going-to-hell-when#621381&quot; target="_blank"><em>In reply to dftf:</em></a></p><p>Thanks for the heads up. I fixed the url. Oddly, in Firefox, when I click the <strong>what's new</strong> link in the url displayed above, the location bar doesn't change to the new url.</p>

    • Greg Green

      04 April, 2021 - 11:28 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#621381">In reply to dftf:</a></em></blockquote><p>The attraction many have for communicating with emojis and memes is disappointing.</p>

    • cuppettcj

      05 April, 2021 - 7:58 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#621381">In reply to dftf:</a></em></blockquote><p>Back when I used to have a Windows Phone, one of the cool features is that when I started typing something like "pizza", I would type the first 3 letters and then the keyboard app would automatically bring up the pizza emoji and suggest that I click on it. It made using emojis very fun and easy to use.</p><p><br></p><p>Since being forced to migrate to Android, I have yet to find a keyboard or texting app that replicates that ease of use, so I end up using emojis a whole lot less.</p>

      • Paul Thurrott

        Premium Member
        06 April, 2021 - 8:39 am

        I see this all the time in Android. In fact, I kind of want to turn it off. 🙂

        This can’t just be on an app by app basis, can it? If so, I see it in Instagram all the time.

  • pecosbob04

    02 April, 2021 - 5:00 pm

    <blockquote><em><a href="#621346">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>"Whatza madda wit kidz today?"</p><p>"Get off my lawn, ya kid yah!"</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    02 April, 2021 - 7:19 pm

    <p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/forums/general-discussion/health-of-tech/thread/you-know-the-world-is-going-to-hell-when#621346&quot; target="_blank"><em>In reply to lvthunder:</em></a></p><p>Now that I'm decidedly past my own half way mark, I can accept that older generations have been more correct than not in this assessment for generations.</p><p>Technology may advance, humanity not so much.</p>

  • thejoefin

    Premium Member
    02 April, 2021 - 7:39 pm

    <p>I count my blessings that I am not so sensitive to change and difference. </p>

  • Greg Green

    04 April, 2021 - 11:30 am

    <blockquote><em><a href="#621346">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>But so much of the current generation doesn’t even tinker anymore. I remember a tech school teacher raised on radio shack mentioning his tech school kids haven’t taken anything apart to see what makes it work. They’re not even interested in the parts in their smart phones.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      05 April, 2021 - 8:50 am

      This is like an auto enthusiast complaining in the 1960s that no one tinkers with cars anymore and they don’t know how these things work. Right. Because the tool is now mainstream and used by everyone, and not just by enthusiasts.

      I bet there are just as many tinkerers today as ever. It’s just that they’re outnumbered by normal users now by a wide margin.

    • Craig Smith

      05 April, 2021 - 8:30 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#621587">In reply to Greg Green:</a></em></blockquote><p>Exactly the same extremely small percentage of young people tinker as previous generations. I know quite a few. It has always been a hobbyist thing. Whole YouTube channels are dedicated to tinkering with technology to a degree that regular users do not. It still exists, but it's different. It's messing around with home automation, for example. The tinkerers are definitely still out there. They've just always been a minority.</p>

  • Daekar

    05 April, 2021 - 8:17 am

    <p>What cracks me up is that we've had emoji since at least the AOL Instant Messenger days, the only difference was that they hadn't yet included pictures of 1000 random items. I use emoji all the time, but it's always the same 5 or so that I have always used despite a concerted effort to figure out how to work in others. The vast majority are useless. </p>

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