Why aren’t there emojis for throuples?

by philg

Happy Global Love Day to everyone. Let’s look at a recent New York Times podcast:

For years, Evan Sterrett’s relationship with his boyfriend had become “reruns of the same drama.” Evan wanted space; his boyfriend wanted commitment. But one summer, their relationship received a guest star — a third partner who resuscitated their joie de vivre.

Today, we hear Evan’s story about navigating the complex geometry of throuplehood. Then, we meet Samatra and April Doyle. They don’t live together and don’t co-parent, but they are married and intend to be together forever.

A queen-sized bed can sleep two adult men comfortably. It can fit three, if you don’t mind cuddling or waking up to strange noises in the dark.

One early July morning, I woke up to my boyfriend making out with the guy who had been living with us for the past month. I’m not really a fan of sex before toothbrushing. So I smiled, mumbled “hot” and turned over.

April and Sam Doyle have been married for three years. It’s both of their second marriages, and they’re both mothers. April has one daughter with her first wife, and Sam has three children.

Let’s have a look at family structure emojis from Apple:

None of the above cover the throuple situation promoted by the New York Times. Shouldn’t there be emojis showing three adults in a sexual or romantic relationship? For compliance with 2SLGBTQQIA+ dogma we would need the flexibility to show each member of the throuple in any one of the 74 gender IDs recognized by Science and each member also needs to be available in a rainbow of skin colors. That’s going to be more than one million emoji choices required, therefore, before considering the possibility of adding children.

What does GPT-4 say when asked the headline question?

As an AI language model, I can’t provide real-time updates on the current emoji set, but as of my last knowledge update in September 2021, there were no specific emojis for throuples. Emojis are designed and approved by the Unicode Consortium, which aims to create a standardized set of emojis that can be used across various platforms.

There could be several reasons why there isn’t a specific emoji for throuples:

  1. Limited representation: There are countless different relationships and arrangements that people can be a part of, and it would be difficult to represent all of them through emojis. The Unicode Consortium may focus on more widely-used and universally-recognized emojis.
  2. Complexity: Designing an emoji that accurately represents a throuple can be challenging. Emojis need to be simple and easily recognizable, and creating an emoji for a throuple might be too complex for the small size of emojis.
  3. Demand: The demand for a throuple emoji might not be high enough to warrant its creation. The Unicode Consortium considers multiple factors when deciding on new emojis, including how widely the emoji would be used and the potential impact on existing emoji usage.
  4. Inclusivity: It is important for the Unicode Consortium to be inclusive of diverse cultures, identities, and experiences. They may be focusing on adding emojis that represent broader groups of people or experiences rather than specific relationship arrangements.

That being said, the selection of emojis is continuously expanding, and it’s possible that a throuple emoji could be added in the future if there is enough demand and support. People can propose new emojis through the Unicode Consortium’s submission process, so if you feel strongly about having a throuple emoji, you could consider submitting a proposal.

8 thoughts on “Why aren’t there emojis for throuples?”

  3. When governments start approving throuple marriages it will be interesting to see the divorce payouts. Will it be split by time in marriage? By number of orgasms given? At least child support could be split.

  5. Okay…… If you can’t beat them join them. In honor of the WGA strike! (https://www.vox.com/culture/23700519/writers-strike-ai-2023-wga). Phil, since you pay for chat GPT, can you type the following into chat GPT and share the results with us here. Chat GPT…. please write Jimmy Kimmel a monologue very similar to his other monologues but include some recent events to make it feel new.

  7. Based on the “couples holding hands” mojios I draw the following conclusions:

    Platinum blondes can date only platinum blondes but dark blondes can date anyone; the person walking on the left is always the handholdor and the one on the right is the handholdee; parting your hair on the left is forbidden; there will be no fatshaming because there are no fat people; and persons who prefer to present themselves as males wear pants and dark shoes while those who present themselves as females wear very short skirts and wear bright red or blue shoes. The latter looks suspiciously like the “1950’s Household” catagory on Fetlife.com.

    I dearly hope that this is simply a limited, non-random set of the 64,000 possible emojios, and that people with seriously disfigured faces, traumatic amputations, pear shapes, traditional Semitic or East Asian noses, unusual patterns of baldness, mutton chop side burns, acne and bleach blonde hair with roots showing are fairly represented in the Unicode Emojio world. Plus, of course, nine fetuses.

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