On Tuesday, a message thread on Reddit - announced with a swastika symbol - cropped up to educate users on how to apply the strike-through to emojis like an Israeli flag, a mosque, and an African-American face. The alt-right was quick to pick up on the offensive possibilities. The strike-through modifier of the rainbow flag was the first to make headlines, but it appears the strike-through can be applied to any emoji. This is comparable to how the character of the letter 'e,' for example, can be modified to become 'é.' As other reports have noted, an emoji with a strike-through can only be viewed in certain ways, such as text message window or Twitter on a mobile device. It is a line of code, in which a modifier in the form of a strike-through symbol has been applied to a rainbow flag emoji to create the offensive image. The controversial image, resembling a crossed-out rainbow flag, is not one character. The bad news is that a glitch in the Unicode Standard is being exploited to create what is essentially hate speech in emoji form. The good news is that there is no such emoji has been designed or approved of by the Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit that oversees the Unicode Standard of characters that includes emojis. Reports of an anti-LGBTQ emoji sparked alarm on social media and queer outlets this week, with many questioning why such an emoji would ever have been designed.
