Emoji
Maker Finds Muse in a Kim: Jong-un, Not Kardashian West
By
HANNAH OLIVENNESFEB. 12, 2016
LONDON
— Kim Kardashian West faces a new challenger from the east in the battle for
online emotive supremacy: “#Kimunji — The Real Kimoji,” a set of emojis that
represent the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
An
app of emojis based on Ms. Kardashian West, released in December and called
Kimoji, allows users to send hearts, kisses and doughnuts, but also Ms.
Kardashian West with blond hair, crying, in a bra, and even her famous
derrière.
The
app proved to be highly popular and is in second place in the United States
paid app chart on iTunes.
“The content is
pretty crass — I don’t even want to mention some of the images that are on
there,” said the American designer of the Kimunji set, Ben Gillin, 32,
referring to Kimoji. “Lots of kids look up to the Kardashians. As far as I
gather, most of the people using these are under the age of 20.”
The
Kimunji set uses imagery based on the North Korean ruler, who most recently
antagonized the United States and its allies with a rocket launch on Sunday, a
development that was followed by reports that another senior official had been
executed.
The
set, released on Monday, allows people to send one another pictures of Mr. Kim
smiling, crying and walking, as well as rockets, North Korean flags, and a
nuclear mushroom cloud.
There
is also an emoji of Dennis Rodman, the eccentric former N.B.A. star who visited
North Korea in 2013 and 2014. Mr. Rodman described himself as Mr. Kim’s
“friend” and he sang “Happy Birthday” to the authoritarian leader before an
exhibition basketball game in Pyongyang. But he later said, “If you don’t want
me to go back there ever again, I won’t go back.”
Mr.
Gillin’s creation received in three days nearly as many votes as the Kimoji app
on the website Product Hunt, an online community that allows designers to post
their products and get feedback from other developers.
“The reaction has
been great, over all,” Mr. Gillin said. “There are people who are angry, who
think it’s honoring Kim Jong-un, which is in no way the intent.”
While
the Kimunji icons mock Ms. Kardashian West’s emojis, Mr. Gillin conceived them
with the more serious goal of drawing attention to the influence that comes
with the Kardashians’ omnipresence in pop culture.
“She has 60
million followers on Instagram” said Mr. Gillin, who noted that the figure
dwarfs the population of North Korea. “The point of my product was to show how
silly the Kim Kardashian emojis are, like holding up a mirror at the other
Kimojis.”
This
is not the first time that Kim Jong-un has inspired pop culture: There is a
Tumblr page dedicated to photographs of him “looking at things.” He has become
an Internet meme, and he was the basis for the movie “The Interview,” a comedy
about a fictional C.I.A. plot to assassinate him.
The
North Korean leader apparently didn’t approve and declared “war” on the film
(maybe next time he can send rocket emojis).
With
the small icons increasingly being used to communicate, the emoji menu is ever
expanding.
The
Unicode Consortium, the agency that regulates emojis, announced on Thursday
that it was thinking of developing a new set of icons, for dumplings,
chopsticks and fortune cookies. An online campaign has raised $12,478 to push
the dumpling emoji.
In
April, the consortium released racially diverse emojis, giving users the option
to choose from five different skin tones, and updated its international flags
database to 257 flags.
Emojis
started appearing on cellphones in Japan in the mid-1990s and were integrated
into Apple’s operating system in 2011.
The
Oxford Dictionary named the crying-out-laughing emoji its word of the year in
2015. In October, the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, came under
question in her country’s Senate for her liberal use of emojis.
Structure
of the lead:
Who-
The Oxford Dictionary
When-
in 12, 2016
What-
emoji icon
Why-
not given
Where-
the Internet
How-
not given
Keywords:
1.
emotive-感情的
2.
supremacy-主權；優勢
3.
doughnut-甜甜圈
4.
crass-愚鈍的；粗魯的
5.
antagonize-引起反抗；反對
6.
eccentric-反常的；古怪的
7.
conceive-構思
8.
omnipresence-無所不在
9.
assassinate-詆毀
10.
consortium-聯合
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