Anxiety Aunt: Help! I am worried my friend is going to cause offence by using culturally inappropriate emojis

Dear Aunty, Please don’t judge me by this conundrum which could easily be described as a First World problem. It IS a First World problem, one which seems to divide the woke world. I have a friend — a very good one — who texts back and forth every day, often with a thumbs up or a clapping hands emoji. I find it quite unsettling that she always uses the black-skinned emoji. She is fifth generation English and paler than Snow White (before Disney became PC). My question for you, dear Aunt, is how to handle the delicate subject that my friend might be guilty of cultural appropriation and potentially will offend someone in the future, without sounding like the Wicked Witch. I have tried sending back the yellow emojis (in abundance) but she only comes back with more black ones as if to make a point. How do you think I should handle this issue moving forward? Yours Stumped Dear Stumped, Firstly, let it be known your Aunt has got Oneself into an abundance of trouble with emojis over the years. Like the time One wanted to let a potential suitor, who happened to be vegetarian, know One was cooking eggplant parmigiana for dinner. One suspects the tweens next door gave your Aunt a bum steer when they suggested the best way to check if said gentleman was fine with eggplant as a main ingredient was by sending him that emoji, a thumbs up and a question mark. Of course your Aunt knew One had put One’s foot in it as soon as One hit send and the trio of troublemakers stopped bouncing up and down on their trampoline to converse over the fence and instead started rolling around on the floor of said trampoline clutching their sides and gasping for air. So just a little disclaimer that perhaps One is not the best person to help solve your dilemma but One shall give it a crack. Secondly, One has also tied Oneself in knots over how to navigate this modern world where being politically correct seems to trump tolerance and general kindness. One finds it baffling trying to keep up or even to work out if One thinks unisex-only public toilets are a step in the right direction or a step backwards and whether One can even admit One is undecided about that issue without fire and brimstone raining down from the heavens. It really is a minefield, especially for those of us who were around when the rotary dial telephone first became commonplace. One’s opinion is that while the progressives demand we all be mindful of others, they do not realise that sometimes their approach to change looks a lot like railroading more traditionally-minded individuals. It is also interesting to note that the people these more progressive types seem to be raging hardest against are generally those who have been around the longest, those who have wisdom and life experience on their side but also those who are, generally speaking, at a stage where huge sweeping societal changes can be overwhelming and take more than a hot minute to process. Older individuals, like your Aunt, have been around long enough to know that change does not happen like we are hurtling down a one-way high-speed motorway. We know that sometimes traffic stalls. Sometimes it grinds to a halt and sometimes people veer off in different directions. If you stop and think about it, and appropriated the language of the woke, you’d have a case for arguing their approach is decidedly ageist. In your Aunt’s humble opinion, what we all need more of is patience and tolerance. Towards everyone. But, stepping off One’s soapbox, One would say to you that maybe the best way to proceed is to gently explain to your friend that as a rule of thumb, anything you wouldn’t do in the real world should also be avoided online. Which is a good thing for us all to bear in mind. You could explain why some people might take offence to her using those particular emojis and suggest that a better option might be to opt for the neutral standard yellow emojis instead. Just don’t blame your Aunt if the cast of The Simpsons come knocking with a cease and desist notice.