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.
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.
> 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?