‘It would be like having a butt on your forehead’: Apple under fire for ‘upside down’ squid emoji
- Apple is facing backlash after its squid emoji seems to have a misplaced siphon
- The siphon is supposed to be on the rear side of the squid’s mantle, but instead, Apple placed it between the squid emoji’s eyes – resulting in a ‘weirdo nose’
- Controversy stemmed from a series of tweets by the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Apple is under fire for a blunder on its latest emoji.
The iPhone maker is guilty of designing a squid emoji that, according to several experts, is anatomically incorrect.
The error stems from the placement of the squid’s siphon, a muscular structure that helps with respiration, propulsion and excreting waste.
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Apple is under fire for a blunder on its latest emoji. The iPhone maker is guilty of designing a squid emoji that, according to several experts, is anatomically incorrect
Siphons are usually located on the rear side of a squid’s mantle.
But in this case, Apple placed it in between the squid emoji’s eyes – resulting in a ‘weirdo nose,’ as the Monterey Bay Aquarium put it.
The controversy stemmed from tweets published by the Monterey Bay Aquarium late last week, which took issue with the emoji.
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In a series of clever tweets, the aquarium wrote: ‘Apple’s squid emoji is upside down.’
‘The siphon should be behind the head…It just looks like a weirdo nose,’ the Monterey Bay Aquarium added.
Siphons are located on the rear side of a squid’s mantle (pictured). In this case, Apple placed it in between the emoji’s eyes – resulting in a ‘weirdo nose,’ as the Monterey Bay Aquarium noted
The original tweet calling out the emoji was retweeted hundreds of times and was liked by nearly 2,000 users.
The emoji was subsequently scrutinized by a variety of experts, including one who said the design goof would be akin to if a human had a ‘butt on [their] forehead.’
‘The way they move is with jet propulsion,’ Sarah McAnulty, a squid expert and PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut, told Gizmodo.
‘So basically, they take a bunch of water into their mantle and then use their muscular torso muscles, kind of, to squeeze it through a hole that’s called the siphon, or the funnel.’
McAnulty added that she and other squid experts made fun of the anatomical error.
‘I didn’t want to say anything for fear of it getting taken away,’ McAnulty said.
Many users took Apple to task – a few with some particularly cringe-worthy puns – on Twitter.
As Gizmodo pointed out, per the Unicode Consortium rules, this emoji will stay the way that it is for a whole two years before it’s fixed.
It also seems that one of Apple’s designers is to blame for the error, as other emoji representations of the squid don’t feature siphons.
For example, Google, Facebook and Microsoft’s squid emoji emit a siphon entirely.
It’s not the first time Apple has encountered some backlash with its animal emoji.
One of Apple’s designers is to blame for the error, as other emoji representations of the squid don’t feature siphons. Pictured is Microsoft’s squid emoji (left) and Facebook’s emoji (right)
Pictured is Google’s squid emoji. As Gizmodo pointed out, per the Unicode Consortium rules, Apple’s squid emoji will stay the way that it is for a whole two years before it’s fixed
Many are frustrated over the fact that Apple’s octopus emoji only has four legs, while a previous version of its lobster emoji featured six legs, before it was later corrected to have the correct number of eight legs.
And that’s after Apple just overcame its infamous ‘bagelgate,’ which involved the outrage over its bagel emoji which many claimed looked too ‘stale.’
The firm went on to correct it by adding an appropriately realistic smear of cream cheese.
WHAT WAS APPLE’S ‘BAGELGATE’?
Apple was forced to change its bagel emoji after it faced widespread outrage.
The firm changed its bagel emoji to include cream cheese and more realistic details after a widespread outcry from users, let by New Yorkers, spawned ‘Bagelgate.’
In the fourth beta release of iOS 12.1, the original bagel has been swapped out with a more realistic version.
It didn’t take long for the critics to emerge, as users began to complain that the bagel looked ‘stale’ or more fit to be from the ‘frozen aisle from a supermarket.’
The iPhone maker changed its bagel emoji to include cream cheese and more realistic details after a widespread outcry from users spawned ‘Bagelgate.’ Pictured right is the old emoji
Others said that the bagel’s extremely smooth exterior made it appear plastic.
Some critics had referred to the original emoji as ‘something you get from a cardboard box in the freezer section at Walmart.’
The first emoji depicted a plain bagel – no seeds, spread, or other toppings, which sent users into an angry frenzy.
Apple took a page from Google and Twitter and added some cream cheese to its bagel to make it appear slightly more appetizing.
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