Minority rules
What’s new in emojis
‘‘Tinder advocates for the freedom of people to live how they want to live and love who they want to love.’’ Jenny Campbell Tinder’s chief marketing officer
Interracial couple emojis will soon be available following a campaign launched by Tinder. Unicode – the company that creates and approves new emojis – released illustrations for 59 new emojis and 171 gender and skin tone variations, which will be rolled out to all devices that use emojis.
The dating app began petitioning for the inclusion of the emojis in 2018 with the Interracial Couple Emoji Project because they believed it was ‘‘time for interracial couples to be represented in our universal language’’.
‘‘Tinder advocates for the freedom of people to live how they want to live and love who they want to love,’’ Tinder’s chief marketing officer Jenny Campbell said.
A campaign asking people to share their interracial love on social media with #representlove, garnered more than
800 participants on Instagram and more than 52,000 supporters of the online petition.
Following the response, Tinder put the petition to Unicode and was recently given the green light.
The petition was launched after a study, conducted by Cornell University, attributed the rise in dating apps’ popularity to an increase of interracial marriages.
In 2012 – the year Tinder was launched – interracial marriages in the United States accounted for just under 16 per cent of all marriages recorded. After that, it increased to just under 18 per cent in 2015.
In addition, Tinder conducted a global survey based on interracial relationships and found 52 per cent of participants believed interracial couples aren’t represented enough in tech language – emojis, GIFs and memes.
It also found 53 per cent of
respondents who dated someone of a different race said they became more engaged with social and political issues.
Since 2015, tech language has been growing to be more inclusive after the introduction of same-sex couple emojis and skin tone variations.
Happy tears, salutes, the transgender flag, and a disco ball were also some of the most requested emojis, according to Emojipedia.
In addition to the interracial couple emojis, new yawning, wheelchair, hearing aid, and guide dog emojis were developed.
The new emojis will be rolled out to devices in September and October.