And at the other extreme, the guy with a 10 year old photo who never logs in, listed as “software engineer”.
Who has enough experience and knowledge to rebuild a social network.Honestly now: does anybody actually like that style of emojis/avatars? They create a strong negative reaction in me but I am not sure why.
They perfectly illustrate the Corporate Mindset. I like to imagine they were designed by a conclave of neurotypical and painfully unfunny and uncreative MBAs who got together in a coworking space and brainstormed the most consensual and least offensive avatar tech they could fathom. Likely none of them ever had a passing thought about what makes for compelling character design. Certainly none of them can stomach the idea of emergent phenomenon in communication. And above all nothing must stick out; to them the idea that users would want to make a non-human, cyborg, furry, green-skinned, or whatever avatar is abhorrent. Jane’s quirky facial expression is the full extent of allowable creativity (and even then you know they had a 30 minute debate about including it).
These avatars do a better job of inspiring dread in me than half the shit in Severance.
Tangentially, it reminds me of when we went from Geocities/MySpace/custom reddit CSS/custom youtube pages to “you can change your PP and banner”. … okay? Was a unified design language really worth crushing all visual creativity?
… and now I think it’s a shame that Lemmy and Mastodon’s default clients don’t support (AFAIK) custom CSS for communities/user pages. I think that would be very iconic for the Free Web. Is someone working on this? I feel like someone should be working on this.It’s like the Corporate Memphis of emojis.
I’m really glad that I discovered the phrase Corporate Memphis, because it works really well as an out of context pejorative. E.g.
“Ugh, that’s so Corporate Memphis”
That could refer to something that isn’t at all like the corporate Memphis art style in a literal sense, but has all of the vibes.
They look like they’re designed for young children
They’re made to be inoffensive and generic, in a way that shelters companies from being sued.
They are a fake as the people who use them?
The first one will add “Thought leader of the dark enlightement” the moment she gets a backlash for her AI art.
