This year has been very difficult for people around the world, as wildfires swept through the West Coast, hundreds of thousands died from the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and skin color problems in the United States, and the United States government reached a standstill, unable to take action against the economic, political, environmental, and medical devastation that threatens it.
Even for those who are not directly affected, the ongoing crises have turned into a kind of psychological devastation for them that goes beyond the limits of what we can express.
Fortunately, a new set of emojis has just been approved by the Unicode Consortium to help express the crises of 2020. The new emojis probably won’t arrive on your phone until 2021, but they’ve clearly been affected by the chaos going on around the world in general.
This is done by leaking some emojis such as “exhaling face” (clearly exhausted), “face in smoke” (smoke?), or “heart on fire”. See the attached image for more emojis
I was particularly impressed with the emoji as I saw “Face with snail eyes,” sent by Jennifer Daniel from Google Emoji, also known as “sick face” (mood), and includes suggested keywords like “oh no,” “problem,” and “whoa,” which can be used to trigger the code.
The general abbreviation is clear enough, especially from the included animation examples such as swirly eyes meaning dizzy.
While the 13.1 update is relatively minor, Unicode says it was put together by a group of volunteers so that users could at least get something new in 2021. The organization originally intended to release a larger 14.0 update in March next year, but due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the release date was pushed back to September. This means that different operating systems likely won’t be able to integrate the update until the end of 2021 or even some time in 2022, leaving the entire next year without new emoji.
As for Unicode 13.1, the package is scheduled to be released within the coming months, possibly after the current 13.0 version is fully released.
