On the subject of intended versus perceived meaning, I read all of the offending conversation and, honestly nothing struck me as inappropriate. Others have made it clear that they feel otherwise and this shows that what is disturbingly unprofessional to some is invisible to others. With that in mind, I was actually pretty spooked to discover this thread and my perceived meaning of this discussion’s opening post was:
- Mentioning sensitive topics will result in your words being well… twisted
- Anyone not up to date with the latest ways to cause offence to any person is not welcome here and will get kicked out for an unspecified crime that they don’t understand (this scares me a lot because I don’t keep up with the world of social politics)
- Some unspecified emoji is bad for some unknown reason (this vagueness really reaffirms point 2)
- Your only warning if you inadvertently cross some line is some vague hint that you probably won’t notice nor know is aimed at you (in fact the only reason I wasn’t paranoid that I had said something awful was that I hadn’t said anything at all)
I don’t doubt that the reality is much less severe than these and later discussion has already dispelled 4 and the second half of 2 but I just wanted to point out that that post is alienating people too and in turn, just how easy it is to alienate even when you think you’re clearly going out of your way to do otherwise.
Oh, that’s not going to cut it. Reading that page does not for example tell me that wink emojis are on the wrong side of this line. In fact, if it weren’t for this, I’d still be trying to guess what the issue was with them (my best and terrible guess was that its informality could imply insincerity which could be seen as a lack of interest but then every emoji is informal so my takeaway there would have been that all emojis are banned and to always speak like a droid).