Comment by GaryBluto
> grown up enough to not be bothered by an image of an anime cat girl
This is some real four-dimensional chess. "You're the childish one for not wanting Japanese cartoons on software projects!"
> grown up enough to not be bothered by an image of an anime cat girl
This is some real four-dimensional chess. "You're the childish one for not wanting Japanese cartoons on software projects!"
It isn't a driving human emotion. The world is full of serious businesses that use "cute" icons or employ anime-styled elements, and most people don't care. It's just a subset of tech and CS people who feel compelled to register their disdain at every opportunity.
And yet if you bring up that "Gimp" is an unserious name, or anything about RMS that's far more problematic than a cute cartoon, that same subset will defend it to the death.
> It isn't a driving human emotion. The world is full of serious businesses that use "cute" icons or employ anime-styled elements, and most people don't care. It's just a subset of tech and CS people who feel compelled to register their disdain at every opportunity.
I'm not talking about anything this narrow - disgust manifests itself in every facet of human life, this comment thread is just one minor example. Lots of laws were initially justified by some form of disgust. There's practically an infinite number of examples of people feeling immediately "icky" about something (absolutely anything, applicable at any point in history) and only then trying to create a justification for these feelings, basically working backwards to make their instincts seem more reasonable and palatable. You can easily spot it because when one justification is taken down, another one takes its place, and it can go on for eternity - justifications are temporary, the only thing that's permanent is the unshakable feeling of correctness and righteousness about the initial disgust. Notice how OP's argument about standards and professionalism was quickly swapped out for a more dignified version of "well, I just feel like everyone who likes XYZ is a sweaty anti-social manchild", as soon as arguing the original point became more difficult?
I'd argue there's a difference between a funny mascot or punny name (that have been used in professional environments) and a mascot that looks like a child and is designed to look "cute" or "silly" to a fandom mostly comprising of eccentric (in a bad way) grown men. I don't think I've ever seen a developer on the internet who publicly enjoys anime who didn't act neurotically or childishly, although that's just anecdotal.
> The world is full of serious businesses that use "cute" icons or employ anime-styled elements
I can't think of any outside of Japan.
> This is some real four-dimensional chess. "You're the childish one for not wanting Japanese cartoons on software projects!"
I would be OK with the sentence if it was "You're the childish one for not wanting Japanese cartoons on your software projects!".
As you wrote it, well, that's none of your business.
It's not just "not wanting" something, the original comment wasn't nearly that mild. It's being enraged by it to the extent of making petty, low, personal attacks on someone who steps just barely out of line of their preferred behaviors.
This whole comment chain solidifies my opinion that disgust is one of the driving human emotions. People feel initial, momentary disgust and only then explain it using the most solid justification that comes to mind, but the core disgust is unshakable and precedes all explanations. No one here has managed to procure any argument for why seeing a basic sketch in a certain style is objectively bad or harmful to someone, only that it's "weird" in some vague way. Basically, it goes against the primal instinct of how the person thinks the world "ought to work", therefore it's bad, end of story.
To me it seems obvious. The anime art style is in, especially in Western countries, especially^2 among younger people, and especially^3 among techy people. Ergo, you may see a mascot in that style once in a while in hobbyist projects. Doesn't seem like anything particularly objectionable to me.