<rant> People keep posting them in Slack all the time, but I find it about as appropriate as that brief time when all my uni teachers decided that it's hip to include rage comic faces into every other slide of every presentation.
</rant>, yes I know, I'm fun at parties…
I'm grateful communication on MatterMost at my company has not seen the need for reaction gifs emerge; the wildest thing we have is a custom emoji of a dancing banana.
and before that, plaintext emoticons... ಠ_ಠ
When people use it, it looks the same to me like if they were using “Live long and prosper” in casual conversation.
Grok is not simply understanding or knowing a thing, it’s knowing that thing so well and all the things related to that thing, and understanding all of your feelings associated with that thing, that it becomes a part of you. At least, that was my interpretation of it.
Heinlein’s explanation and exposition is more detailed in the actual book. If you have not read it, highly recommended.
Grok works in English, I've been reading it for, what, 20 years in English texts. It mightn't be in dictionaries but they're not the sole arbiters of language.
It comes from US English, AFAIK, a neonym from Heinlein (the sci-fi writer).
English speakers seem to have this weird idea that all people need to use language that everyone can understand.
Other languages tailor their speaking patterns given the class, context, and people around them.
This is how new forms of communication develop. Sometimes they're random images (images that'll probably be used for even more extensive tracking now), sometimes they're playful changes to language, sometimes they're intentionally invented or modified words because the language lacked a word for a given purpose, and if they catch on enough with enough people they'll become part of communication. Because brains and pattern matching.
Sounds beautifully dystopian.
If this is an ironic joke, it's a good one. If not, it's painfully un-self-aware.
Because "feels like I'm in Darmok" is just an meaningless in isolation as "Temba, his arms wide."
-- https://twitter.com/venatrixlunaris/status/11852863701068595...
Giphy takes way too much space.
Also, why does Teams not have a :shrug: icon. Seriously?
I got tired of collapsing them
/collapse is your friend here.
1. Type a couple words relevant to the topic or your feelings on the topic into a gif search engine.
2. Pick whichever gif suits the context best.
3. Watch as everyone thinks you're super clever.
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I mean, I get it. Most people just want funny pictures, and I love sharing memes with friends. But something about reaction gifs just boils my blood. I'm very, very bothered by them. If someone posts a relevant comment, or video: great. If there's something really clever about the reaction gif: good job. But most of the time it's just kind of related, and not really a discussion at all. Or worst of all, a "wow" "lol" or "wtf" expressing funny face.
And that persistent dancing parrot animated emoji.
Luckily the bot ended up doing more valuable things too, but the original design of the bot was purely for abusing the colleagues on my team.
And it had the intended effect, people still joke but slack is not pegging my CPU, rendering animated images anymore.
The term to Google here is “digital blackface”.
If you bring this to more people’s attention my guess is that reaction GIFs will become less prevalent in your office.
I don't think there's any solid evidence of disproportional use of of one ethnic group by another. You can certainly find individuals who thoughtlessly or deliberately do that but generalizing that to some random population (eg of office workers) is likely wrong.