This is an awful bagel. Come on, Apple.
Friday, October 12th, 2018
Yesterday’s post featured a quality real-world baked reproduction of a logo. Today, we have a terrible digital representation of a baked good. Shield the eyes of your children from the worst image I’ve posted since Gritty.
Grubstreet has dissected this image, and they’re correct that it looks like a lousy machine-cut monstrosity. But like a duck/rabbit optical illusion, when I look at this, I can also see one whole bagel on top of half of a much larger bagel. No matter what, it’s all awful.
More players should make emoji-based jerseys for baseball's Players Weekend next season.
Thursday, October 4th, 2018
When I wrote about Brad Boxberger’s excellent emoji jersey, I also contemplated a some simple options for Mike Trout ( 🐟) and Chris Sale (⛵). Since that post, I’ve conducted an in-depth review of all the MLB rosters. I’m now pleased to present my favorite emoji representations in baseball. For those that remember Emojli, this post might alternately be called “The Best Emojli Usernames for MLB Players, if Emojli Still Existed”.
🛡️🛡️ James Shields: Getting to use two of the same emoji really makes this one for me.
🎰 Mookie Betts: I’m actually rather shocked at how few gambling-related emoji there currently are.
🏰 Diego Castillo: You see, “castillo” is Spanish for “castle”
❓ ❔ ❓ JT Riddle: Fans of the campier versions of Batman will surely appreciate this one.
3️⃣ Trea Turner: Ridiculously, Trea (pronounced “Tre”) wears #7 for the Nationals, so this would result in a hilariously confusing jersey.
➡️🐂 Spencer Turnbull: Maybe this one is too obtuse, but think of the satisfaction folks will have once they work it out.
🆕🍓 Jake Newberry: There’s a “New Button” emoji, and by god, we’re gonna use it.
💥👨 Glenn Sparkman: I think the “Collision” emoji can read as a spark.
🤢👨 Robbie Grossman: Meanwhile, the “Nauseated Face” definitely works for “gross”.
⬛🔥 Clayton Blackburn or Paul Blackburn: I’m not sure why there’s a “Black Large Square” emoji, but several players can make good use of it, including these two.
🏹 Chris Archer: This one is a bit fanciful, but I think it works.
🕸️ Tyler Webb: Meanwhile, this one is very literal.
🍸 Nick Martini: It would be impossible to improve upon this one.
💪 Shawn Armstrong: Look at that biceps! It’s very strong! Also, it’s fun to refer (correctly) to the singular as a biceps!
👨🚢 Jeff Manship: These are literally the “Man” and the “Ship” emoji, making this compound very on the nose.
👃 Rougned Odor: Speaking of being on the nose. I know his name is pronounced “Oh-door”, but with a name like that, he really ought to have a sense of humor.
😉 Dan Winkler: Finally, this one isn’t perfect, but the wink itself acknowledges that.
In addition to the above, there are dozens of simple and straightforward options for players with common nouns in their names, like Aaron Judge (👨⚖️), Josh Bell (🔔), or Greg Bird (🐦). With so many possibilities, I certainly hope we’ll see more emoji on the backs of jerseys next year.
Major League Baseball's first emoji jersey was great.
Monday, September 10th, 2018
On Major League Baseball’s recently created “Player’s Weekend”, players are allowed to customize their uniforms in multiple ways, including wearing a nickname on the back of their jersey. This year, one Arizona Diamondback’s pitcher really nailed it:
Photo via the Arizona Diamondbacks
Yes, that’s pitcher Brad Boxberger’s jersey, featuring an emoji nickname. Slate has a great interview with 📦🍔.
Do you ever look at the burger emoji and think, “Hmm, this is more of a cheeseburger”? Were you afraid anyone would misinterpret your name as “Boxcheeseburger”?
There’s always that possibility. But you can’t be too choosey when you’re going with emojis to try to spell your last name.
I hope we see more emoji jerseys in 2019. All-stars like Mike Trout ( 🐟 (“Fish”)) and Chris Sale (⛵ (“Sailboat”) or even 🈹 (“Japanese symbol meaning discount”)) are obvious candidates.
In 2018, there are many options to convey disgust via emoji.
Wednesday, March 21st, 2018
Almost exactly a year ago, I noted the upcoming “Face with open mouth vomiting” emoji (🤮). This emoji is now available on the latest OSes, but if you don’t see it at the end of the previous sentence, here’s a massive version of Apple’s take on it:
Apple’s “Face with open mouth vomiting” emoji
I have some questions for the designer at Apple who drew this, including “Where exactly is this massive stream of vomit coming from?” and “Did this poor creature eat green Jell-o with a side of Mike & Ikes?”. Artistic choices aside, however, this would seem to be an obvious choice if I needed to select an emoji for Barvd in 2018.
There’s actually now a wealth of options available for consideration. In addition to that actively puking face, there’s this guy who’s right on the cusp:
This “Nauseated face” (🤢) was introduced in 2016. Props are due to the Unicode Consortium for not incorrectly calling this the “nauseous” face.
More recently, the “Face with hand over mouth” (🤭) was introduced:
Apple’s version of this could be holding it in, but the eyes fail to show any sort of panic or plans to dash for a toilet or trash can. Worse, other platforms actually show smiling eyes and even a smiling mouth, making “Face with hand over mouth” a poor choice overall.
Clockwise from top left: Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook
Of course, as long time readers may recall, the Barvd emoji was already selected way back in 2014. In that long-ago era, life was generally worse all around. The women and people of color of emojiland found themselves largely unable to hold down a steady job (👩🏽⚕️👨🏿⚖️), and it was also impossible to ask for a glass of bourbon (🥃) or even properly flip someone off (🖕). In part because the available emoji set was far smaller, this little guy was chosen to represent Barvd:
“Speak-No-Evil Monkey”/Barvd emoji
We’ve been using this emoji for over four years, and I think he holds up well. While the above choices may be more obvious, part of the enjoyment of emoji is interpreting them. I welcome the use of alternative emoji alongside an exclamation of the word “Barvd!”, but personally, I’ll be sticking with the classic puking monkey. He never goes out of style.
Thursday, June 15th, 2017
Last week, lexicographer Jane Solomon posted an in-depth analysis of which emoji get paired with the gun emoji.
Wednesday, February 1st, 2017
The new Logoji Instagram account is great. It takes real logos and reworks them to replace elements with standard emoji (using Apple’s emoji art, specifically).
I’ve made side-by-side comparisons of some of my favorites, to really highlight how well done this is.
Malibu Rum
The PGA Tour
Santander Bank
Frankly, I think you could swap that Santander logo in everywhere, and no one would notice.
Thursday, October 27th, 2016
New York’s Museum of Modern Art has just “added” the original emoji, created for Japanese mobile provider NTT DoCoMo in 1999, to their permanent collection. The New York Times has an excellent look at this bizarre artifact of a nearly pre-historic era.
Ancient Emoji
Monday, February 29th, 2016
Despite attempts by domain sellers, you won’t find a collection of disgusting social media posts on baronvd.com. No, it’s only on barvd.com that you can get this kind of delightful content, and here you are, just in time for another year of Barvd. Let’s look at what was dreadful in 2015!
We start the year off with something of a mess. The winner (and sole nominee) for this month is a tweet which has been deleted. Fortunately, much like the Library of Congress, the fine folks over at Favstar handle the archiving of tweets.
As Brooklyn Nine-nine recently showed, mumps are both hilarious and disgusting.
Honestly, this one’s sort of a cheat, because it’s really just a tweet about a disgusting news story. On the other hand, it’s so foul that it’s easy to bend the rules so as to include it.
I have some questions about the structure of this headline. Should we not make yogurt with this grad student’s vagina, or with any vaginas? It’s unclear.
This next tweet actually seems relatively innocuous.
Sure, the idea of thousands of swarming ants is a bit unsettling, but withou—OH SWEET UNHOLY HELL
Run! Run to April! It can’t possibly be as bad as this!
You might be surprised how much time a Barvd post requires. I’ve had this picture up in my browser for quite some time:
It didn’t start out so disgusting, but like mold, the foulness has grown over time. I’m sick of looking at this horrible creation, but now it’s your turn.
The crassness of this tweet is rather off-putting:
But what’s much more off-putting is that Alison is entirely correct.
You know how to make a pretty lousy Smashing Pumpkins hit from the ’90s even worse?
Good luck not hearing that line sung in Billy Corgan’s nasal whine.
July is the time to celebrate America’s independence, so let’s look at an incredible American creation:
I was already gagging at the thought of a hamnana. There was no need to top it off with Hollandaise.
The following was tweeted during an early Republican debate, and it’s especially gross when you remember who was on stage.
Even more sickening is the fact that this was just the beginning of many months of horrible Republican debates. Don’t worry though, just eight more months until the election.
This fantasy in three parts amuses, before it horrifies with the unpleasant yoga pants visual.
@rynbtmn, in a three tweet set
That poor imaginary child. That poor real us.
In recent years, traditional sexy/slutty Halloween costumes have really gotten played out. Thankfully, there are always innovators coming up with bold new ideas.
If you don’t remember Kim Davis, good for you. She’s too unappealing on both the outside and the inside to be pictured, even on the pages of Barvd, so you’ll have to do your own image search. If you do remember the dishonorable Ms. Davis, you know just how repugnant this idea is.
Let’s take a drive through almost 400 years of history. Halfway through we take a sharp left turn, so hang on tight.
Aw, come on, man. Neven. No.
In December, I wrote about “bully sticks”. The truth behind them is unappetizing to say the least. The response I got from one reader, however, was beyond the pail.1
➕1️⃣ to Mr. Bailey for his correct use of the Barvd emoji, but ➖💯 for providing us all with the idea of hot, smoking bully stick.
That’s it for the year 2015. Thank goodness this is a leap year, as it enabled me to get our 2015 review in before March 1st. Fear not though, because the collecting of awfulness for 2016 has already begun. As always, if you’ve seen an awful tweet, Instagram pic or other post, send it in or just tweet a link to @PBones.
Footnotes:
No, that’s not a typo. “Beyond the pail”, as in, it made me puke so hard I overshot the bucket for which I was aiming. ↩︎
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2016
Well, this will be anticlimactic for most, but the mailbox poopers have been revealed to be my good friends James and Jill. They sent me an email with the following:
We hope you enjoyed the lovely present we sent you. We saw it and thought of you. The checkout process had no way to include a note.
So the real culprit here is a terrible checkout process. I hope we’ve all learned something. Namely, that it’s possible to send a stuffed pile of poo emoji through the mail, to anyone you love (or hate). Well, if this site’s faithful readers hadn’t managed to buy up so many that they’d sold out, anyway.
Y’all have a lot of disposable income.
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