Use what you want to. Let others use what they want to. Don't overthink it.

Some people are thrilled with the fact that they can make their little online avatar closer to their reality, others don't give a damn, because they don't want to define themselves by their virtual presence. At the end of the day, though, they're just pixels. What you say and how you treat people is much more important than whatever little +1 icon gets attached.

I can give you a real answer, because I asked my wife this exact question (she's black and uses the skin tone closest to hers, I'm white and also just use yellow ones). She said it's so rare to get to choose a digital representation that matches her skin tone that she just thinks it's fun to get to do it for once.

Everyone simply saw the yellow ones as neutral toned. It's a nice contrasting color to show the emotion and they have always done a good job representing everyone while serving their goal: to convey emotion in text.

The push for representation in emoji's always struck me as weird since they already represented everyone. I rarely see people using them who aren't a bit too focused on skin color in their day-to-day life.

There's no significance because they are just fucking emojis.

Simpsons yellow

:D

The yellow should be the only one. I find it absolutely idiotic that they needed to include all different skin colors. I think that's similar to my native language (Finnish) not having gender specific pronouns (hän = he/she) and then someone wanting to come up with ones. That's "fixing" a problem that didn't even exist in the first place.

I kinda like using emoji that are similar to my skintone. Not really making a statement, but somehow it feels a little more "me." Hard to explain why it matters, it's not like I won't use the yellow ones if that's all they have. Just kinda like "hehe, that's a lil me in that message."

My immediate opinion upon skin tone emoji being introduced was the mildest frustration: we’d had unified emoji for all Homo sapiens!

Then after seeing someone use their own skin tone for an emoji, I realized… oh, dang. They can feel represented now, potentially in a way they did not before.

I use yellow 100%. But not bad folks have options.

One neat thing is on Slack you may be able to see a hint of your company’s vibrant diversity if folks are reacting with all colors of emoji. Admittedly it could also look a little cluttered though maybe they are grouping reactions by symbol now.

On a related note, I’ve seen two people with very light (though non-white) skin tones use significantly darker skin tone emoji. One of those times I brought it up with someone else and they’re like “yeah what’s with that?!” Self image or eyesight related perhaps…

I just use the yellow one as I feel like they already represent everyone. I would definitely not feel any better about using a white emoji, I'd just feel like a racist trying to convince people that I'm better. I also like the yellow ones as it makes the standard to be anonymous about your skin colour. Or you could just use the outlined one for everything 🫥. Also the hole emoji is awesome 🕳️

And that was a way longer ramble then I intended 😀

And finally, good by 🖐️🖐🏻🖐🏼🖐🏽🖐🏾🖐🏿

P.S. Typing them all out the yellow one is also by far the most readeble. The white ones work very good on the black background I'm viewing this on but they probably just blend in to the background if your using a light theme. Maybe we should just type out all the variants? 🤷🤷🏻🤷🏼🤷🏽🤷🏾🤷🏿🤷‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏿‍♀️🤷‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏼‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏾‍♂️🤷🏿‍♂️

Isn’t it weird that only the white people in The Simpsons are yellow? There’s other races that aren’t yellow. And the Simpson’s world mirrors the real word; a large number of yellow people migrated from Eastern Europe to settle in Springfield.

I guess it’s better than the Doug universe, with people being either Caucasian or blue or purple. Very weird choice of representation, Nickelodeon! 👀

There's at least two things going on here:

A) a very mild case of the "white as default" part of white privilege. White people see themselves as default and use the default emoji.

2] the (often accurate) perception that white people who highlight their race unnecessarily do so out of racial pride, making self-use of a "white" emoji suspect.

I'm not saying these are the only two things at play, just the ones that occurr to me on first examinstion.

All my emojis have jaundice

White dude here. I use the white skin emojis, but honestly I think it's just because I see my black and brown friends use their skin tones as a rule, and I feel like using the yellow tone is a bit weird when others are using the skin tone customization.

I'm not ashamed of my skin color or anything and the phone remembers my last tone selection so I don't really see a reason to not use it.

I just use the white as fuck guy because he has a green shirt (at least, on Android anyway) and I like green. Me being white as fuck is just a coincidence. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Emoji is a failed concept anyway, because what you send is not necessary what the recipient gets. Why the app developers don't get this, is one of the great mysteries of our century.

But when I do use them, I choose the yellow ones.

The original emojis were white before the yellow and darker tones were added in 2015. Look up Katrina Parrott for the backstory. In short, before yellow was the default, White was the only option, and that’s kinda racist, and was only 9 years ago.

Yellow was simply a neutral addition to emojis that matched well with the existing yellow smiley face (which that French asshole keeps charging people for).

Thanks for questioning your assumptions. Further reading if you’re interested:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/katrina-parrott-skin-tone-emojis-patent-office-warren

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=parrot+skin+tone+emoji+&t=ffip&ia=web

I have a white friend that uses the dark brown emojis, which I'm kind of uncomfortable with. I think he thinks he's showing solidarity. To me it seems like blackfishing. I haven't put any more thought into it though, as it is a pretty minor thing in a world with much more important things to be concerned with.

I'm pale and I use the pale emoji, feels more like me.

I never really used the yellow ones. 🤷🏼

I dunno, I mean they do it with LEGO men now, but Simpsons or LEGO yellow skin only belongs on people so jaundiced that it's a miracle they're not dead. Same with the more feminine Lego women. What ever happened to that same stupid smile and just switch the hair piece? I mean if it makes you happy I guess, it ain't hurting nobody. I feel neither represented nor unrepresented by a cartoon yellow face. Maybe it's just because I'm white, I dunno. You do you I guess.

It’s about personal preference for sure. I tried to start using the “white” emojis and it just didn’t seem to matter. If I do use an emoji, I tend to default to the Simpsons yellow because it requires no extra effort. I don’t see a ton of people using the skin-tone emojis at all. I also have no issue with people using them much like pronouns in emails/profiles.

I’m also on iPhone so if I am going to extra mile I’ll just use my little sticker guy who better represents me in general.

I think the idea is that the default yellow is symbolic (with some "white people are the default" connotation) and now that you can choose the skin tone of your emojis, many people now select one that matches their skin tone.

I leave mine stock yellow, but it is kind of a cool thing when you see a bunch of different color emojis liking a post. Feels nice and diverse lol.

In white as fuck ✌🏿

This is my favorite emoji 🖕🏻

I don't use emoji very much. The most I use is when I'm working and sometime asks me to take on a task in Slack. There is a thumbs up all emoji that is just the skin tone shifting to all the colors. I like it because then I don't have to give a fuck about it.