Â
Â
I am sitting here flabbergasted at what we found. Ben and I are trying to make jokes about it to lighten the mood because, seriously, what the fuck?
I… I don’t even have the words. Google is a company I trust with my documents, with my e-mail, with the analytics of my website… so many things. So many things. And this discovery has rocked my faith in them to the ground. Let me take you back.
A while ago I was chatting with Pinback. We were discussing the fact that Tiger Woods is going to get knee surgery. My position was that it was ridiculous that a guy who fucking plays golf for a living needs his third round of arthroscopic surgery. His take was that Tiger puts so much torque on his knee that it’s amazing that he doesn’t blow it out every round.
I countered with some other people that I would be less surprised to see get knee surgery, like Kool-Aid Man. The Twinkee Kid. Starro the Conquerer. A mannequin. Old B.O.B. from “The Black Hole.” And so forth.
And then he set me straight. I saw a video of his swing and he was right. Tiger does sort of put more torque on that than most domestic automobiles. And that, I thought, was that.
Until a half-hour later, I heard the Google Chat “bonk” and went to see what was up.
And I saw the most horrifying, most insensitive, most racist emoticon of all-time. It was the above “sambo” monkey, or whatever the hell that thing was supposed to be.
It’s made by the following key configuration: :(|) . I can’t remember what Ben was originally shooting for – maybe a frog, or someone being nonplussed, or whatever. But Jesus, to see that thing just happily appear on the screen – what the fuck?
Again, I don’t even know what to do. I love Google’s products… I don’t want to get them in any shit. I don’t want my e-mail turned off or the thirty bucks I’ve received from running ads around here for two years to be refunded or something. Google is my friend! I just – it’s obvious that we sat on this for a long time. I’m not trying to start shit.
But frankly, I didn’t have anything else to write about tonight, so there you go. STILL NOT BELIEVING THIS SHIT!!!
I’m confused – isn’t a just a monkey? Yahoo has a very similar emoticon that is activated by the same keystrokes, I think.
Jules, everyone knows that : ( | ) is the standard, historical emoticon used to symbolize a black person. To type in “black guy emoticon” and be shown a monkey, well. You draw your own conclusions (specifically, the conclusion that Google is a racist organization bent on world economic domination, at which point it will install a world government based on white supremacy.)