INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
As United States President Trump preps for a historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Twitter doesn''t want you to forget to
tweet about it under the right hashtag.
In a choice that seems to make light of a lot of really quite serious things at once, Twitter is
promoting its new #TrumpKimSummit emoji for Tuesday summit in Singapore.
US President @realdonaldtrump will meet North Korea Chairman Kim
Jong-un on 12 June in Singapore
Tweet with these hashtags to unlock a special #TrumpKimSummit emoji
pic.twitter.com/THa3IRlnTi
mdash; Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) June 10, 2018
The event-specific symbol features what appears to be a
high-five between a hand representing the United States president and one representing the North Korean dictator known for executing his
political enemies and exiling large swaths of his nation to prison camps, where they face starvation and torture.
Presumably they are
high-fiving over the successful but by no means guaranteed or likely negotiation of an extremely delicate denuclearization agreement and the
deescalated international threat of the mass loss of life through nuclear annihilation.
The summit won''t be Trump first foray into treating
an established despot and human rights abuser like or perhaps better thanthe leader of an allied nation, though it is Twitter first time
treating such an event like a Game of Thrones season finale
Twitter event-specific emojis, sometimes called hashflags, are usually reserved for things like Coca-Cola branding campaigns (#ShareACoke)
or the Super Bowl, not possibly misguided diplomacy efforts between international adversaries
In the future, they should probably stay that way.
Goodbye grades
#LastDayofSchool #ShareaCoke pic.twitter.com/WBYPMzbKmU
mdash; Coca-Cola (@CocaCola) June 1, 2018
We&ve reached out to Twitter with
questions about what inspired the #TrumpKimSummit emoji campaign and will update this story if we hear back or manage to make any sense of
Assuming that nuclear war doesn''t break out.
