Elon Musk has explained the decision to bring back the gun emoji to X (formerly Twitter), saying the choice to depict a realistic firearm rather than a toy pistol is part of the fight against the “woke mind virus.”
In a post on his social media network on Tuesday, the US billionaire shared a chart showing how the emoji has looked on various platforms over the past decade. Included on the list alongside X were images used in the products of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta’s Facebook.
The apparent trend has been to move away from real guns to toy guns, while Musk’s platform has done the opposite since he bought it in 2022.
”Nerfing of the gun emoji matches rise of the woke mind virus, as a core tenet is equating fake harm with real harm,” he said, commenting on the chart.
X transition from the previous toy gun to one that resembles a modern semi-automatic pistol happened last month – at least for its web interface. The older version was introduced by previous management in 2018.
The US stands out among developed nations due to its gun culture and levels of gun violence. Some people want the display of realistic guns in various media reduced because they believe it glorifies them and fuels their use.
The Unicode Consortium, the organization that decides on what should be turned into an emoji, currently calls the one with a gun a “water pistol.”
Musk is a vocal supporter of some conservative political causes. He has said he believes “that the right to bear arms is an important safeguard against potential tyranny of government,” but supported some gun control measures, such as background checks for people who want to own deadlier firearms.
Earlier, Musk posted a row of gun emojis at around the same time that US President Joe Biden was giving a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday. Among other things, Biden touted his administration’s record of passing gun control legislation and urged further restrictions.
The ‘woke mind virus’ that Musk was referring to is a pejorative conservative term for the advocacy of radical policies, such as the right of minors to gender transition at schools without the consent or knowledge of their parents.
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