The emoji train is not slowing down. They are present in the virtual keyboards we use in our smartphones, embedded as default in various chat apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger and are slowly creeping in tests like Facebook Reactions or on the Twitter like button. An emoji became the word of the year according to a respected dictionary so they are here to stay.
Unicode Consortium is tasked with developing and maintaining the Unicode standard, which includes emojis. They receive applications for new emojis and their latest submission includes 67 emoji, which features the largely ignored bacon emoji.
Interestingly, there is no condom emoji among the list of over 800 emojis and Durex wants to change that. From a charming video they released, it describes their cause for the campaign in detail.
Thanks to the emoji crazed world, the eggplant ? and peach ? emojis are now “suggestive” and Durex wants to make the whole chatting activity “safer” by the addition of the condom emoji. Durex argues that there are emojis that suggest sex but not safe sex and that is why they want people to support the petition for the inclusion of the condom emoji.
Durex wants people to use the hashtag #CondomEmoji as much as possible so that it could implore the Unicode consortium to include it in the next release. This campaign is also timed around the time when the world celebrates World Aids day (December 1) , probably to make it a part of the discussion on social media.
The next bunch of emojis that were submitted for approval will be assimilated to the list by June next year, so if the campaign is successful, it may take a while to see it among the official list of emojis.
