What happened

According to the source, 10-year-old Teddy, who lives in Peppard, Oxfordshire, believes that the icon with his protruding front teeth and large glasses gives the wrong impression to people who wear glasses.

Since he himself wore glasses, the boy thought that such teeth must be somehow thematically linked to them. So he decided to draw his own version of the emoji, “replacing the toothy grin with a small smile,” according to the BBC. Also in its version, the glasses were given thin lenses and a thin frame.

We want to change this. Apple makes this absolutely terrible for people who wear glasses. They make people think we’re geeks and that’s absolutely terrible. This makes me sad, and if I find this offensive, thousands of people around the world will find it offensive too.
– the schoolboy told reporters on the broadcast.

Schoolboy Teddy is aggressive and comes with his own range of emojis / Photo BBC

The BBC has reached out to Apple for comment but has yet to receive a response.

Teddy says he was inspired to launch his campaign after noticing an offensive emoji in a message he sent to his cousin. He shared his concern with one of his teachers. He also helped start a petition.

It is worth noting that some companies choose to redraw them in their own way, offering their own variants of emoji in their applications or operating systems. However, even though they look different, they always have the same internal coding and name. This means you can send an emoji to someone from their iPhone and the recipient with an Android smartphone will see the same emoji, only in their own design.

Google “nerd” looks similar, but the schoolboy probably never had an Android smartphone.