In the image at the top of the article, why is the Rust crab altered to have "angry" eyes and holding a knife aimed at the Go gopher? Aside from the joke of "don't bring a knife to a protobuf fight" the inference of violence sucks and lessens the spirit of friendly competition and "all in good fun." I don't know if Rust has a code-of-conduct or rules for use of their mascot, but I bet this doesn't follow it.
Congratulations! You've won the Poe's Law Post of the Day Award!
"Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture which says that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views."
But it does appear to be the author's intent, considering their Twitter account has a photo of the crab using the gohper's carcass (with dead eyes) as a carpet referencing the same article (if you translate the Chinese). Also, the author went out of their way to use a CrabLang logo (not a Rust logo) to add the knife.
https://x.com/ratuthomm/status/1775183479858483439https://imgur.com/a/txMb4Kw
What intent? Have you asked the author what their intent is? The linked Twitter post does not have a knife in sight. What is wrong with using the CrabLang logo when he was using valid CrabLang?
Maybe you're not thinking about it enough? Do you know anyone who has been almost fatally stabbed (attacked by gangs) with knives? I do! It likely violates a code-of-conduct and is unprofessional.
Isn’t it tiring to think about every possible offence in the world and how someone somewhere will be offended by (knives, tires, cars, pens, saws, sharks, planes, needles, ropes, speakers, games, … you get the point) while writing an article about a programming language?
At some point one needs to exercise common sense and learn to live in a public society where people speak and not everyone is out to offend you.
I have no association with any of these communities, but the crab holding a knife was a somewhat well-known meme[1].
I guess it can also be viewed as a play on words, given that crablang is a fork.
Given that the creators of crablang explicitly say it was a "lighthearted response"[2] to some of Rust's changes, it makes sense that they'd use a meme for a logo.
That said, seems you're not alone in wanting a different logo[3].
Ah, I think I remember that image meme from a long time ago (I never would have connected those dots). Thanks for the context here, it actually helps take the edge off!
That's the challenge with these inside jokes. If you don't get the context, and I didn't recall it instantly either, usually the interpretation will be wildly different.
Exactly, then why does it matter that the author had anything in their post as a figure of speech or analogy?
Is it wrong to post a meme of a dog sitting near fire - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-is-fine
As a joke from SREs who handle firefighting calls?
Does it offend dog lovers, people who are scared of fire?
When I see a knife, it never suggests a weapon, unless it is the kind of knife that is really a weapon, like a double-edged stiletto, or it is wielded by someone who has obvious intentions to use it as a weapon.
The knife from that logo does not look like a weapon, but just like a standard utility knife. Moreover, a crab cannot move a knife in the way in which it is used as a weapon, e.g. for stabbing, but only in a way similar to a human who eats using a knife. Therefore a crab does not suggest someone who uses a knife for violent purposes.
For people like myself, who do not buy industrially-made food, there is no other tool more important than knives. Without using knives every day, I would starve to death.
So you may be offended by seeing a knife that in your mind looks like a weapon, but I am offended when someone claims that one of the most essential, if not the most essential tool of the humans suggests violence or other bad things.
Some people may use knives seldom or never, but then their lives are completely dependent of the work of other humans who use knives to produce the things that sustain the lives of those who do not use knives.
Thank you. Sometimes these trains of sensitivity in thought threads can be annoying.
I definitely appreciate your contextual perspective and the ability to express it much more clearly and calmly than my own initial reaction.
I'm not sure if we submit, as a society, need to see more Tex Avery cartoons as children.
I genuinely feel that either a new civil war in the US and or global conflict is eminent and the young of today are largely ill prepared to say the least.
It’s simple. You ignore fire as a bad thing and don’t even consider that as equivalent comparison to a knife. But someone who was affected by arson probably will say “why include fire in a blog post?!” . My point is, it is not on the author to think about all these effect when they write/speak. As a mature society, we should learn to not expect every source to filter their thoughts and rather expect the consumer to filter out what they don’t want.
By not valuing fire/arson at the same level of concern as Knife(important to you), you just validated the core of the problem.
How about the image of the dog / fire viewed by someone who was orphaned and horribly scarred for life as a child in a household fire?
Trauma exists in all forms in our world. Sometimes the extremity of trauma is used in jest simply because it’s so extreme and at odds with the situation. That’s a form of absurdist humor that absolutely runs the risk of triggering someone that the extreme situation is personal to, but was never intended to hurt anyone.
I think almost everyone considers that situation - someone triggered by personal trauma when seeing a cartoon crab attacking a cartoon gopher with a knife on a programming blog about performance between two programming languages - sad and has empathy for those suffering from a relived trauma. That must be debilitating in life and no one is insensitive to that level of embodied suffering.
However, likewise, almost no one feels sympathy for the person who pulls out a code of conduct to kill any cartoon humor not designed for the Sunday serialization of a national newspaper.
