Sometimes I wonder if things like the hexbear bouncing cat emotes are a bit twee and cringe, but then I see the aesthetics the other side has run with...

  • Ideology [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I like the cat emotes. I want more girly stuff on here to balance out the edge. :cri:

    • TrashCompact [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Maybe I have too narrow a definition of "girly", but I think that emote's aesthetic is more "cutesy" than specifically "girly".

      I fully support both to balance out the edge and appreciate cute things especially, such as :kitty-cri-texas:

      • GrafZahl [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Decades of trying to reeducate myself about what I'm allowed to like, leave it to Chapos to bring me right back to the start :agony-deep:

        • TrashCompact [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Hey, if it's not hurting anyone, you're allowed to like it as far as I'm concerned :heart-sickle: . I was just raising a point about taxonomy.

          There's nothing wrong with women liking "boyish" things, right? So men liking "girly" things should be fair game too!

          • GrafZahl [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated. No worries tho, I didn't take it in a bad way from you or from Ideology. Nowadays "girly" doesn't mean much to me anymore, just reading it made me think of teenage years. It took some navigation to get away from the circles where it meant much at all.

        • Ideology [she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          I was in a rush, there's just a shortage of anything not-cishet-dudes in the emoji picker. Cool enby stuff and fem/soft boy stuff would be just as much of a pleasant change. There's lots of ways to be any gender but "man in suit" is what we can post normally. :glucker:

          Edit: I was also attempting to push back on the idea that the blobcats are cringe, because there's a general trend in pop culture to view anything cute or "for girls" as more cringe than edgy "boy" stuff. Pop culture would view them as "girly" even if queer people and allies like us wouldn't. I don't think it's very fair and erases the ability of non-masc people to express themselves. Most of the time when I post, I feel like I have to de-emphasize feelings I have irl to kind of fall in line with norms that enforce emotional distance and a certain ironic machismo. It's only when I get deep in a comment thread where I start sounding like myself.

          @TrashCompact

          • GrafZahl [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            You are right of course, and that's honestly how I interpreted your original comment too. I was playing up the unfair reading of it and should have probably communicated I didn't mean it so serious. Or I should just drop the sarcasm in the first place lol

            • Ideology [she/her]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Is fine, I'm just tired. Selling your labor to capitalists is a fuck.

          • TrashCompact [none/use name]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Reading that I asked myself "do I sound like myself here? how do I present?" and, after spending a while thinking about it, I just don't know. It's a little disconcerting, but probably not as much so as actively pretending to be someone else.

            • Ideology [she/her]
              ·
              2 years ago

              It's pretty normal to have masks or sociolects. I think the main thing is how you feel about the parts of yourself they bring out or suppress. Like I act a little different in queer threads or comment threads than I do responding to people I suspect are cis/straight or white because letting your guard down in the latter instance feels more vulnerable.

      • Ideology [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I shat that comment out on my break, oops. My main point is that 90% of our emojis are dudes HARD POGGING. Sometimes I just want to feel cute without being flirty.

      • Ideology [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Nah, I don't see them as a fem thing, was more pushing back on the "cute things are cringe" idea in the OP.