To commemorate World Emoji Day 2020 (17 July), I submitted an application to the Unicode Consortium for the inclusion of a new emoji — the guillotine.
The full proposal can be viewed below and/or downloaded here.
Excerpts from the proposal include:
“In a time of global unrest and revolt against rising inequality and authoritarianism, the Guillotine Emoji would serve as a reminder to states and elites to not take for granted the Hobbesian monopoly on violence they have been entrusted with by their peoples.”
“It is time for our global visual language to leverage the representation of this historic object in the global digital commons, before it is too late and real guillotines are erected in our public squares.”
“Interestingly, there are multiple symbols of unmistakable violence and instruments of mass death in the very same category of Objects -- from the medieval weaponry of the Dagger (🗡), and Crossed Swords (⚔), to the more modern Bomb (💣) and Cigarette (🚬).”
“A guillotine is completely new to the current emoji lineup. It has distinct functionality from the knife, swords and dagger emojis - indeed, the creation of the guillotine was specifically intended to make capital punishment less painful in accordance with Enlightenment ideals. Previous methods had proven to be substantially more painful and prone to error. It is a merciful object weighted with centuries of meaning, and deserves inclusion in our digital realm.”
“The guillotine has been one of the longest recognised symbols in the history of humankind over the past 8 centuries. Its relative absence since the last execution by guillotine in France in 1977, has “coincided” with the collapse of wage growth across much of the western world.”
Done in accordance with their strict guidelines for submissions, Unicode’s voting members are made up of companies that include Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, Netflix and SAP.
Perhaps it’s no wonder that the proposal was rejected just 11 days after my submission:
Oh well.