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Comment by f1refly | Hacker News Reader

Right? I hope it never goes away, we should make the web more fun instead of sad and clean!

I think if you were to poll people, a significant portion would be repulsed by this catgirl aesthetic, or (though this isn't the case for Anubis) the cliche inappropriately dressed inappropriately young anime characters dawned as mascots in an ever increasing number of projects. People can do whatever they want with their projects, but I feel like the people who like this crap perhaps don't understand how repulsive it is to a large number of people. Personally it creeps me out.

I'm not repulsed by it but I do wish the people that forced this stuff into their software/hardware realized how juvenile it makes their product look. There's a decent cheap Chinese pair of Bluetooth earbuds on Amazon that's been very popular among audiophiles but the feedback sounds are an anime girl making noises and there's no way to turn it off so I lost interest in purchasing them.

well for the bluetooth headphones i dont think you were the target demographic.

but open source generally isnt treated as a product. its just a bunch of volunteers having fun writing code. its natural that they will include their other interests in it in some way because it makes working on a project more fun. first impressions matter a lot, but i dont think foss projects should optimize for that instead of having fun.

> inappropriately dressed

How do you think Anubis should dress?

Perhaps like he is depicted in temples, like this one from the tomb of Horemheb; 1323-1295 BC: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_King_with_Anubis...

a dog man wearing short skirts is also inappropriate in my opinion

Other options would be: just the head, a black dog (common depiction), perhaps most fittingly to what Anybis does: the scales

The whole Japanese cartoon schoolgirl thing is 100% creepy.

What? She's wearing a hoodie and a tee-shirt, how is that inappropriate? And how being young is inappropriate?

The internet was better when it repulsed a significant portion of people.

What would happen if it changed in a way that repulsed you?

I'm still here

It sounds like something you might benefit from talking to a therapist. It's not normal to have such a strong reaction. I hope you can get the help you need!

This is intentional. The version with the fun art that expresses the creator's individuality is free and open source, but they sell a paid version with bland, corporate-friendly art that also supports custom art and CSS. This makes the project sustainable to work on without having to worry about corporations that care about professionalism/how people like you think/etc not supporting the project financially.

> (though this isn't the case for Anubis) the cliche inappropriately dressed inappropriately young anime characters dawned as mascots in an ever increasing number of projects

I think the fact that people bring up things that the Anubis mascot isn't when talking about Anubis is more telling of their own harmful (and potentially racist) biases against Japanese-styled media than it is about the idea of having anime-styled mascots for free software projects.

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