5 ms·

I don't know if it's because I'm getting old, but is anyone else a little put off by the cartoon girl in the short skirt? To me it seems like it is fetishizing

by xupybd 4y ago

I don't know if it's because I'm getting old, but is anyone else a little put off by the cartoon girl in the short skirt? To me it seems like it is fetishizing under age girls. I don't know it just feels creepy to me.

heyoni 4y ago
What the…yea, I’m not sure what she’s doing there. Is it supposed to be the projects mascot? Shit, I must be old too.
- darcien 4y ago
  The image links to https://藍.moe/ https://xn--931a.moe/ which has more details on the girl. Looks like you're correct, she is Ai-chan and the project's kanbanmusume. - kanbanmusume: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%8B%E3%82%93%E3%81%B0%E3%82%93%E3%82%80%E3%81%99%E3%82%81#Japanese https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%8B%E3%82%93%E3%81%B0%E...
neotrope 4y ago
It appears to be created/maintained by Japanese developers, which tends to be full of anime culture.
- browningstreet 4y ago
  A.A. Gill had interesting things to say about that… (his essay on Japan in his travel column compendium “A A Gill is Away”)
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Don't suppose you have a link for that, and maybe a date?
    - JustSomeNobody 4y ago
      It appears to be a book.
leke 4y ago
Hehe, that's exactly what I thought. Is it because I'm 48 or is this weird? No, it is this that is weird.
ephaeton 4y ago
I had the same thought. Just tried picturing "selling" use of this to some corporate overlords and I could hear the deafening noise of raised eyebrows in my mind. This looks like something no "modern" project with a "modern" COC could ever use. It seems quite oblivious at the very least, ignorant at the likely.
- detaro 4y ago
  "hard to sell to corporate overlords" is something many communities consider a feature.
- animuchan 4y ago
  Remember when we were allowed to have fun on the Internet? To me, the fact that corpos and their unbearable, sanctimonious servants are put off by this is the best possible feature, bar none.
  - ephaeton 4y ago
    There's definitely a certain element of nostalgia when consuming "old" (say, pre-millenium) art, e.g. tv shows, posters, poems, ... yet once you become aware of dark patterns it's hard to unsee them in said art.
- MuteXR 4y ago
  This is a feature. This is an open source project, nobody cares about the sales pitch to some old executives.
wcerfgba 4y ago
I don't read it as sexual at all, I just read it as moe.
claudiawerner 4y ago
I don't see it as sexualized or fetishized at all. It's rather charming to see anime mascots these days rather than some soulless logo.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  A very young woman posing with a school uniform disguise modified to have a tiny skirt doesn't sounds like sexualizing/fetishizing children to you?
  - claudiawerner 4y ago
    Not really, no. People can wear short skirts without being sexualized; it's a fashion preference like any other. Even so, I dispute the idea that sexuality or moe doesn't belong in the products of our labor. And moreso, I dispute the idea that school uniform fetishes sexualize children in the case of an adult wearing one.
    - prmoustache 4y ago
      > Not really, no. People can wear short skirts without being sexualized; it's a fashion preference like any other. The problem here is not the short skirt. It is the short skirt associated with what his a school uniform that doesn't normally have a short one associated with a very young looking girl. > I dispute the idea that school uniform fetishes sexualize children in the case of an adult wearing one. It triggers people with pedophile fantasy and only them imho.
      - throwaway290 4y ago
        For the record, school uniform is typically worn for at least 4 years after crossing into age of consent. Where do you draw your arbitrary line? Now that it is clear "underage" is not implied, I gotta say I see a lot the obsession with age and hostility at the sign of younger people having healthy sexual lives, might be a sign of repressed psychological issues I guess.
prmoustache 4y ago
Yes as a father of 2 daughters I dismissed it just because of it when I was looking for a fediverse compatible platform.
the_third_wave 4y ago
This type of imagery seems to be endemic in the world of text- and image-based ActivityPub, a similar set of "mascot" images greeted me when I first installed Pleroma and was greeted by a female fox-hybrid (which I quickly removed from the server). I have not noticed any higher incidence of furries in the world of Peertube (which I've been running for years now) or Pixelfed (an Instagram clone which I've been experimenting with for a year or so) so it seems to be mostly limited to the "Twitter-alternatives" side of things. The distributed nature of these systems makes it possible for many subcultures to create their own "islands" of ActivityPub-linked nodes where furries roam the land and/or anime-avatars abound but I do feel that the prevalence of these subcultures has turned off many others from the likes of Pleroma and Mastodon because they deem them to be tainted in some way.
redleader55 4y ago
I noticed that a significant number of contributors to the Fediverse are trans-women who seem to prefer using anime toons instead of their real pictures. I'm not sure it's about sexualizing young girls, but instead it might be about using an idealized self body image (there might be a preferred or scientific term for this, I'm not sure).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- truecomm 4y ago
  [flagged]
branon 4y ago
Do you know many underage girls with fox ears?
smcleod 4y ago
As well as finding it outright tacky - I find it incredibly creepy. It's one thing to enjoy a style of animation / artwork - it's another to have sleazy cartoon avatars of sexualised young girls.
dgellow 4y ago
Yes, that feels uncomfortable. The list of main contributors is also a weird list of anime girls, in combination with the README that makes it a bit creepy. Edit: yeah, no, if you follow the image link it’s pretty clear. It is definitely sexualized and really creepy: https://xn--931a.moe/ https://xn--931a.moe/
truecomm 4y ago
It is creepy. One aspect of the fediverse that isn't discussed enough is that it's full of pedophiles hiding in plain sight.
- omniglottal 4y ago
  One aspect of claiming content without any nudity to be sexualized is that you, yourself, may be the only one actually attaching sexuality to it. If the characters are also underage in your imagination, it's really worth considering where this "underage sexuality" actually exists. I see a cartoon of a dressed woman above the age of consent - what do you see? What are you looking for? One aspect of a common moral culture is that it has laws made by the centralized authority and their promoted influencers - laws like covering women's faces and hair to prevent the victims (i.e., hapless, tempted men </s> ) from succumbing to sexual urges. The more this authority controls a narrative, the more the control is reinforced with rationale arbitrarily and increasingly deviating from reality, and so on, until there exists a central authority who forces more self-censorship than would be permissible in a viable democracy. So here we end up with people seeing a culture's skirt length and project our own sexualization on stuff like moe, and thus their maligned culture becomes a subculture - one which fools in the mainstream cannot apparently differentiate from baby-rapists, although no foul deeds are actually done, not even in the ripe imagination of that subculture. Would you rather subcultures be permitted to exist, or that imams with your sensibilities excise all the clitorises from the internet? Wouldn't you be glad to know that pedophiles are profoundly less common than you imagine, or is this yet another case where, no matter the real and present danger, a voice like yours comes out singularly, loudest, to override every other thoughtful recourse with "think of the children!"? Maybe it would be better not to strawman, and to project your fears less upon others, and to learn that things are not just what you deem them to mean. One aspect of the Fediverse is it allows one to be treated with honest innocence where it's due, including where judgment like yours treats those most needing protection as guilty-by-association.

by xupybd 4y ago

heyoni 4y ago

What the…yea, I’m not sure what she’s doing there. Is it supposed to be the projects mascot? Shit, I must be old too.

darcien 4y ago
The image links to https://藍.moe/ https://xn--931a.moe/ which has more details on the girl. Looks like you're correct, she is Ai-chan and the project's kanbanmusume. - kanbanmusume: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%8B%E3%82%93%E3%81%B0%E3%82%93%E3%82%80%E3%81%99%E3%82%81#Japanese https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%8B%E3%82%93%E3%81%B0%E...

neotrope 4y ago

It appears to be created/maintained by Japanese developers, which tends to be full of anime culture.

browningstreet 4y ago
A.A. Gill had interesting things to say about that… (his essay on Japan in his travel column compendium “A A Gill is Away”)
- pjc50 4y ago
  Don't suppose you have a link for that, and maybe a date?
  - JustSomeNobody 4y ago
    It appears to be a book.

leke 4y ago

Hehe, that's exactly what I thought. Is it because I'm 48 or is this weird? No, it is this that is weird.

ephaeton 4y ago

I had the same thought. Just tried picturing "selling" use of this to some corporate overlords and I could hear the deafening noise of raised eyebrows in my mind. This looks like something no "modern" project with a "modern" COC could ever use. It seems quite oblivious at the very least, ignorant at the likely.

detaro 4y ago
"hard to sell to corporate overlords" is something many communities consider a feature.
animuchan 4y ago
Remember when we were allowed to have fun on the Internet? To me, the fact that corpos and their unbearable, sanctimonious servants are put off by this is the best possible feature, bar none.
- ephaeton 4y ago
  There's definitely a certain element of nostalgia when consuming "old" (say, pre-millenium) art, e.g. tv shows, posters, poems, ... yet once you become aware of dark patterns it's hard to unsee them in said art.
MuteXR 4y ago
This is a feature. This is an open source project, nobody cares about the sales pitch to some old executives.

wcerfgba 4y ago

I don't read it as sexual at all, I just read it as moe.

claudiawerner 4y ago

I don't see it as sexualized or fetishized at all. It's rather charming to see anime mascots these days rather than some soulless logo.

prmoustache 4y ago
A very young woman posing with a school uniform disguise modified to have a tiny skirt doesn't sounds like sexualizing/fetishizing children to you?
- claudiawerner 4y ago
  Not really, no. People can wear short skirts without being sexualized; it's a fashion preference like any other. Even so, I dispute the idea that sexuality or moe doesn't belong in the products of our labor. And moreso, I dispute the idea that school uniform fetishes sexualize children in the case of an adult wearing one.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    > Not really, no. People can wear short skirts without being sexualized; it's a fashion preference like any other. The problem here is not the short skirt. It is the short skirt associated with what his a school uniform that doesn't normally have a short one associated with a very young looking girl. > I dispute the idea that school uniform fetishes sexualize children in the case of an adult wearing one. It triggers people with pedophile fantasy and only them imho.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      For the record, school uniform is typically worn for at least 4 years after crossing into age of consent. Where do you draw your arbitrary line? Now that it is clear "underage" is not implied, I gotta say I see a lot the obsession with age and hostility at the sign of younger people having healthy sexual lives, might be a sign of repressed psychological issues I guess.

prmoustache 4y ago

Yes as a father of 2 daughters I dismissed it just because of it when I was looking for a fediverse compatible platform.

the_third_wave 4y ago

This type of imagery seems to be endemic in the world of text- and image-based ActivityPub, a similar set of "mascot" images greeted me when I first installed Pleroma and was greeted by a female fox-hybrid (which I quickly removed from the server). I have not noticed any higher incidence of furries in the world of Peertube (which I've been running for years now) or Pixelfed (an Instagram clone which I've been experimenting with for a year or so) so it seems to be mostly limited to the "Twitter-alternatives" side of things. The distributed nature of these systems makes it possible for many subcultures to create their own "islands" of ActivityPub-linked nodes where furries roam the land and/or anime-avatars abound but I do feel that the prevalence of these subcultures has turned off many others from the likes of Pleroma and Mastodon because they deem them to be tainted in some way.

redleader55 4y ago

I noticed that a significant number of contributors to the Fediverse are trans-women who seem to prefer using anime toons instead of their real pictures. I'm not sure it's about sexualizing young girls, but instead it might be about using an idealized self body image (there might be a preferred or scientific term for this, I'm not sure).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
truecomm 4y ago
[flagged]

branon 4y ago

Do you know many underage girls with fox ears?

smcleod 4y ago

As well as finding it outright tacky - I find it incredibly creepy. It's one thing to enjoy a style of animation / artwork - it's another to have sleazy cartoon avatars of sexualised young girls.

dgellow 4y ago

Yes, that feels uncomfortable. The list of main contributors is also a weird list of anime girls, in combination with the README that makes it a bit creepy. Edit: yeah, no, if you follow the image link it’s pretty clear. It is definitely sexualized and really creepy: https://xn--931a.moe/ https://xn--931a.moe/

truecomm 4y ago

It is creepy. One aspect of the fediverse that isn't discussed enough is that it's full of pedophiles hiding in plain sight.

omniglottal 4y ago
One aspect of claiming content without any nudity to be sexualized is that you, yourself, may be the only one actually attaching sexuality to it. If the characters are also underage in your imagination, it's really worth considering where this "underage sexuality" actually exists. I see a cartoon of a dressed woman above the age of consent - what do you see? What are you looking for? One aspect of a common moral culture is that it has laws made by the centralized authority and their promoted influencers - laws like covering women's faces and hair to prevent the victims (i.e., hapless, tempted men </s> ) from succumbing to sexual urges. The more this authority controls a narrative, the more the control is reinforced with rationale arbitrarily and increasingly deviating from reality, and so on, until there exists a central authority who forces more self-censorship than would be permissible in a viable democracy. So here we end up with people seeing a culture's skirt length and project our own sexualization on stuff like moe, and thus their maligned culture becomes a subculture - one which fools in the mainstream cannot apparently differentiate from baby-rapists, although no foul deeds are actually done, not even in the ripe imagination of that subculture. Would you rather subcultures be permitted to exist, or that imams with your sensibilities excise all the clitorises from the internet? Wouldn't you be glad to know that pedophiles are profoundly less common than you imagine, or is this yet another case where, no matter the real and present danger, a voice like yours comes out singularly, loudest, to override every other thoughtful recourse with "think of the children!"? Maybe it would be better not to strawman, and to project your fears less upon others, and to learn that things are not just what you deem them to mean. One aspect of the Fediverse is it allows one to be treated with honest innocence where it's due, including where judgment like yours treats those most needing protection as guilty-by-association.