MOQAIers, stop using closed symbols as "aesthetics" in your posts.
[PT: MOQAIers, stop using closed symbols as "aesthetics" in your posts. End PT]
Since racism in MOQAI has been a topic more recently, I want to add this. This is not the first time this has been brought up[?] in this community, but I feel it is relevant now so I'm bringing up again. These symbols are not just aesthetics for you to use, and treating it as such is really disrespectful to those that belong to those cultures. You are not a horrible person f you've used these symbols before and didn't know, of course not. However, if you've accidentally done something racist, then you should better yourself and learn to not make that mistake again.
In fact, our own host has been guilty of this when making discord servers. Fae's used closed symbols in channel names, but it was pointed out by someone that these were closed and our host was given resources to check the unicode of a symbol to see where it comes from. Our host didn't question it, and immediately corrected fae's mistake by changing the symbols used in the channel names.
This problem does not apply to just this community, and is all across Tumblr. Especially in "aesthetic" communities like the editblr community. If you use symbols as part of your layout for posting and you have not checked them, please do. It is likely that closed symbols are present in it, and you can very easily correct it. Especially if you got the symbols from a site like This One (a common one we see), which seems to not have much regard for this problem.
To check the unicode of a symbol, you can use This Website, which seems to be the go-to for a lot of people. You simply copy and paste your symbol into the text box and press 'inspect', it tells you stuff such as the code, the name of the symbol, and what unicode block it comes from [the unicode block is important as it easily tells you if it comes from a specific culture.]
There's also a list of some carrds and such that contain non-closed symbols. I'd still check these beforehand with the unicode checker though, as sometimes people can make mistakes.
This Carrd in particular states what closed language symbols are, the issue, some commonly used ones, etc.
Non-Closed Symbols Carrd #1
Non-Closed Symbols Carrd #2
Again, check anything with the unicode checker first, the symbols in the Carrds above are not 100% guaranteed to be open.
Feel free to add any more resources if you know of them!!
Using these symbols may seem as "not a big deal" to some people, but it can really water down and disrespect a culture. Especially as language can be a big part of them, a lot of these symbols may have significant cultural and / or religious meanings.
If anyone is part of a culture that often has their symbols used for aesthetics, feel free to add your own input. We are personally not, and would love to hear some insight!
This may not be the most coherent, we are slightly blurry, so excuse that.
Tagging for reach: @radiomogai @stars-of-the-universes @goldengender + anybody else.
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