Something pretty shady happens when you Google the ginger emoji
The battle to get a redhead emoji added to keyboards has certainly not been without impassioned debate. But, now it seems Google might have waded into the ginger emoji discussion with a rather shady message.
If you're an iPhone user with Gboard enabled on your keyboard, something pretty unusual happens when you emoji search the word "ginger." Google's Gboard presents you with a bunch of middle finger emoji. (How rude!)
Redheads are currently jubilantly celebrating as a standalone redhead emoji has just been made a candidate for 2018's Unicode release. If accepted, they could be added to emoji keyboards by mid-2018. Given that Ginger Parrot (a website for redheads and their supporters) launched a petition for the ginger emoji two years ago, this is a pretty huge victory. Does Google secretly dislike redheads? Or is it sick of hearing about the flight for the ginger emoji?
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Bizarrely, this little quirk is unique to iPhone users.
Mashable did some more digging into Google's potential distain for redheads. It emerged that no middle fingers appear when you search for "ginger" on Android using the Gboard function.
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So, what on earth is going on? A spokesperson for Google explained that the Gboard is basically confused. Gboard assumes you mean "finger" when you type "ginger." The spokesperson added that Google is "actively working to correct this." Um, seems like redheads might have a new campaign on their hands.
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
