Alright, so yesterday in this thread I mentioned I had alot to say about a certain emoji. Here I am making a thread about it so that we can discuss what it is, what it means, and why I believe there is a conspiracy around it (as that is the point of this subreddit anyway).

Here is what the emoji looks like. Redrawn by hand.

Chat iOS version: Thanks to /u/joe_jaywalker .

It is is created by joining the eyes emoji U+1F440 or :eyes:, a zero width joiner U+200D, and the speech balloon emoji U+1F4AC or :speech_balloon:, on an apple device that has an iOS that support zero width joins in unicode (iOS6 or higher), and in browsers Saffari, Chrome; on sites Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Whatsapp.

Why should you know about this emoji?

SOURCE 1: I am a witness animated commercial.

The project was originally called I witness bullying. and was later changed to I am a witness.; see that as you will. The above animated short depicts a male one eyed boy (everyone is one eyed in this universe) being bullied, assaulted, and made fun of for presumably no reason (although you could argue it is his skin color, the blush marks on his face depicting he might be gay, or his emoness).

He returns home to get on the internet, his only safe haven to find that people are sending him verbally abusive messages. This commercial implies you can do something about it by; when seeing abusive messages from people to another individual, you can show them support by sending the I am a witness. emoji, in addition to a compliment or supporting message. This appears to be a good faith.

Source 2: I am a witness Ad Council commercial

This commercial is more of an informative spot talking about the project.

Source 3: Scars To You Beautiful video compilation with anecdotes.

Source 4: Scars To You Beautiful by Alessia Cara

This is where the project starts getting a little more... direct. A multi million dollar ad campaign was engineered in order to promote this song into, eternal, oblivon.

This is the largest ad campaign for a single song I have ever seen. I can guarantee, if you listen to any popular radio station, or have visited a Walmart store in the past 6 months, you have heard this song several times. I work at Walmart, so I have heard it every single day. In full swing, on Walmart radio every hour on the hour. On my car drive home. On tv in our break room. CBS, MSNBC, ABC, Disney. It is practically unavoidable.

Not surprising, the largest spot of this campaign was courtesy of CBS, the illumi-not-eye network.

Source 5: No Link - CBS I am a Witness spot with Scars To Your Beautiful by Alessia Cara playing in the background.

This video was created and played over CBS non-stop over the course of its campaign. Correlating the Scars to Your Beautiful song with the I am a witness. anti-cyber bullying project.

What is the sinister truth?

While the project appears to have good intentions, to stop cyber bullying; let us look at its message. As depicted in source 1, it is suggest that you can bully the bullies by big brothering them. Let us get real. Look at this image. Little creepy right, unsettling even, uncanny valley you might say. Even better than that, it is engineered to be.

Courtesy of Mashable.

"The beauty of the symbol is that you don't have to say all that much," says Heidi Arthur, senior vice president and group campaign director for The Ad Council, a nonprofit organization. "It stands for I’m against bullying, to say let’s shut this down."

What are the uses of the I am a witness. emoji?

To show support. "The power of that one person who reaches out is huge," says Arthur. That gesture of solidarity can be, for example, quietly sitting at the same lunchroom table as the victim, sending them an I Am A Witness sticker, or recognizing their pain with an "I'm sorry."

Implying that you can show support to someone, comforting them by letting them know you are watching. What does that sound like to you. Preening children bullied an school and their peers into believing that watching over people not only helpful, but comforting.

To dissuade people from participation. It can also be hard not to get drawn into bullying online, where liking, commenting on and retweeting cruel content is common and forwarding embarrassing email and instant message threads can make you appear well-connected.

The purpose given here is to have the respondents organize and retaliate in a collective mass, to conform and express a unified ideology, and broadcast this message to the target in order to appear well-connected, and become divisive.

To start a conversation. Some schools have anti-bullying policies, practices and trainings, but these are not universal. If you think your school could better prevent bullying, try raising the issue with a supportive adult as well as school administrators. There are several anti-bullying programs and initiatives designed for the classroom. The I Am A Witness Campaign has a list of those resources here.

To show that they mean well, they are even giving people a crisis line. As well as the national suicide prevention hotline.

121HELP.ME

1-855-201-2121

This is has existed for a while, and is just the number to the National Runaway Switchboard. That has a bullying and child abuse sub-hotline; you know the kind that you call and the tell you not to run away from home, to trust your parents, and that put you into state institutionalized half-way houses, and state child protective service environments.

In reality, this red flags a so called exceptional child into the system. Starting a conversation with counselors, school officials, or other parents often leads to make the problem worse.

The Reality

You are a child undergoing bullying online. Many people respond after seeing tweets including the I am a witness emoji. Turns out anyone can just search for the emoji combining characters. Any business, school, government, state sponsored humanitarian organization.

It has literally given a way for these people to search and then find targeted individuals, and the oppressors. The ultimate big brother...

as simple as str.decode('\x1f440\x200d\x1f4ac')

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Edit: Spelling Errors. Added Credit.