Can An Emoji Make a Difference in a Crisis

[IndigoRed]

A BBC article discusses how an international group of scientists are lobbying for an earthquake emoji to be added to the Unicode set. They said it could really make a difference during emergencies like earthquakes, where every second counts. In particular, the campaign aims to find an earthquake-appropriate emoji to be submitted to Unicode. And apparently, this emoji or “emerji” wouldn’t just help with warning systems, they say it can even seismologists determine where and when earthquakes are happening.

Wow. Honestly, I’m not up for debating whether an emoji can be an effective line of communication in a disaster. Right now, perhaps we should focus on helping save our environment, working hard to save up for a sturdy home that could at least withstand minor earthquakes, and perhaps enough money for home and life insurance. Right???

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44403986

[CoinOnTheBeach]

personally I cannot see how it can harm the cause.
If it helps even 1 person without harming anyone that is already proving it being useful.

[Evan_Smith]

Haha, I think it's a fine idea to have an emoji for earthquakes, but would it actually help? The article talks about how it could save precious seconds. What, is everybody supposed to memorize some combination of symbols that would make the earthquake emoji? That doesn't sounds very practical of even any faster than typing earthquake. Typically, when you want to use an less common emoji, you need to open all of them and search through them to find the one you want. This would 100% take more time that just typing the word "earthquake". Another one of the arguments in the article is that it would make it easier for scientists to track earthquakes all over the world, as emojis are a universal language. Right... Like it would be very difficult to just make a list of all the translations for the word "earthquake" and monitor those. Pretty lame article, BBC, if you ask me.