About 250 new emojis are being added to library

Updated
New Emojis, Middle Finger On The Way
New Emojis, Middle Finger On The Way


A whole new set of emojis (including a middle finger) will soon be on smartphones for all of us to creatively entertain ourselves and -- let's be honest -- waste time.

Unicode, the company that standardizes text across the software industry, announced more than 2,800 new characters that it's adding in Version 7.0. That includes about 250 new emojis.

As Business Insider reports, the list includes (but is not limited to):

  • Weight lifter

  • Golfer

  • Racing car

  • Racing motorcycle

  • Desert

  • Stadium

  • Admission tickets

  • Sports medal

  • Studio microphone

  • Beach umbrella

  • Film frames

In addition to these, The Washington Post reported in March that Apple believed there needed to be more multicultural options in the emoji library and said it was working closely with Unicode.

Unicode noted the Russian ruble and the Azerbaijani manat among the characters and emoji it added. You can see some of the new additions highlighted here.

What new emoji is grabbing the most headlines, though? The middle finger. Yes, Unicode IF595 is an emoji of a fist with that middle finger blasting whoever you send it to -- playfully or otherwise.

If you're offended, don't worry. Unicode simply standardizes the basic body of its characters. It doesn't choose how the finished product looks.

The Washington Post points out, "That's up to developers like Apple, who decide how to render Unicode characters ... as well as which characters to render, at all. Just because the middle finger shows up in the Unicode charts, for instance, doesn't mean it'll be coming to an iPhone near you."

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