Arts & Entertainment

Trans and gender-inclusive options among list of new emoji for 2020

Published

7 years ago

February 1, 2020

Believe it or not, there is a governing body in charge of emoji – and they’ve announced that several gender-inclusive new ones will be among more than a hundred additions showing up on your phones in 2020.

The Unicode Consortium this week announced the release of Emoji 13.0, and with it, 117 new emoji. The expansion features 62 brand-new emoji, as well as 55 new gender and skin-tone variants, many of which are gender-inclusive. One particularly notable addition is a new transgender flag emoji, created from a proposal co-sponsored by Google and Microsoft.

Among other new emoji are a new smiling face with a tear, the two people hugging, a pinched finger “Italian hand gesture,” a disguised face, and numerous additions to the animal, food, and object categories.

Tech giant Google sponsored five of this year’s new emoji, with several of the more inclusive options among them, such as a person in veil and person in tuxedo emoji, and a range of skin-tone variants which now include people who present as male, female, and non-binary – including a gender-neutral Santa Claus.

The new crop of emoji refects a trend over recent years toward more inclusive and representative options. 2019 additions included a hearing aid, a wheelchair, a prosthetic arm, and a seeing-eye dog, as well as a gender-neutral couple and an increased number of skin tone options.

In addition, this year’s emojis also feature an increased focus on empathy, with new Google-suggested emoji depicting two people hugging and a slightly smiling face with tear (a response to user requests for an emoji which expresses both appreciation and relief).

Among other new emoji selections are a ninja, a black cat, a wooly mammoth, a polar bear, a dodo, bubble tea, blueberries, an olive, a tamale, a teapot, a piñata, a boomerang, a mousetrap, a headstone, and an anatomical heart and lungs.

You can watch a video introducing the new emoji below.

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Online Culture

Clavicular charged in alleged rape of teenage influencer

Online personality’s real name is Braden Peters

Published

20 hours ago

September 23, 2026

Joe Reberkenny

Braden Peters a.k.a. "Clavicular" (Screen capture via NBC News/YouTube)

Online personality Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, has been accused of rape.

According to NBC, Aleksandra Vasilevna Mendoza, an 18-year-old influencer known online as Alorah or Alorah Ziva, accused Peters of sexual assault, and the case is making its way through the court system.

The alleged incident occurred on May 23, 2025, when Mendoza was 17.

According to a criminal complaint from the Chatham (Mass.) Police Department, Peters called her an Uber to his family’s home. Once there, he allegedly got her drunk on vodka while they livestreamed on Twitch and then raped her. His mother and grandmother were allegedly in the house.

The documents allege Clavicular committed rape, drugging a person for sexual intercourse, and procuring and providing liquor to a person under 21.

According to court documents acquired by NPR, Mendoza began communicating with Peters on Instagram, where he paid her to appear on his livestreams to help her “make her name known on social media.”

According to those documents, Peters arranged for the minor to come to Cape Cod home to participate in a videostream for his 437,000 followers on Kick, 1.2 million followers on TikTok, and more than 1 million followers on Instagram.

At his home, Peters allegedly instructed Mendoza to say she was 18 on his videostream and to claim the alcohol on camera was water instead of vodka. Mendoza said she felt peer-pressured to drink the spirit and that she became noticeably intoxicated after a couple of drinks.

The allegations go on to state that after stopping the stream, Peters and Mendoza kissed on a couch and then had sex in his bed without her consent. Mendoza said she did not receive a sexual assault forensic exam after the incident. NPR does not name alleged victims of sexual assault.

The charges come months after Mendoza sued Peters in Miami, accusing him of sexual battery in connection with the events of May 2025. The civil lawsuit also separately alleges that he injected her face with a non-FDA-approved fat-dissolving substance during a November livestream in Florida.

Peters is known for his “looksmaxxing” concept of vanity, which is at the core of his online presence. The “looksmaxxing” culture he has helped cultivate combines elements of incel culture and heterosexuality, with the stated goal of attracting the opposite sex. He has gone as far as to say he has undergone “bonesmashing,” or hitting his own face with a hammer; taken anabolic steroids to more rapidly grow muscle; and used crystal meth as an appetite suppressant.

At the same time, looksmaxxing has been described as having elements of homoeroticism, with “looksmaxxers” appearing more concerned with impressing other men than women. Peters has multiple times pointed to openly gay actor Matt Bomer as the gold standard for male facial aesthetics.

Peters’s arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 14.