In order to avoid becoming a niche language nobody uses due to the network effects of C's ubiquity, and to achieve its goal of completely replacing C as much as is practically feasible, Rust needs buy-in and what economists call pre-committing. That is to say, it needs thought leaders to accept that Rust is the future and commit to building things in Rust, even when it doesn't make sense to do so in the current climate. Hence the heavy emphasis on marketing and RESF psyops.
> "c-lions"
C-lioning - n. Derailing a discussion by "politely" demanding evidence that obviously unsafe programming practices are unsafe and should never be used. E.g., "Can you tell me, exactly, why aliased pointers are bad?"
I'm really sorry, but I'd kind-of want to know exactly, why aliased pointers are bad?
C has always had a defacto logo:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5e/The_C_Program...
People often think that book's title is "The C Programming Language" but if you look closely it's really "The Programming Language" and the blue-and-white logo is a linked list diagram. There's a blue circle around the base of the list's "next" pointer, which unfortunately is white on a white background.
By convention, C programmers know it it's unsafe to guess where the arrow points, so this has never been a problem.
There's also a theme song: https://i.imgur.com/Yd00GWf.gif
There's a youtube version with singing around somewhere but I can't link from work
JetBrains got there already! https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/
"C-monkey"
C-slug
Maybe we should find a cool demonym like "c-lions" or "c-weeds" or whatever. Then we'll be able to ask the real questions like "is C webscale?".
Now I'm being a bit snarky but I genuinely understand why newer languages need branding nowadays, but in the case of C that ship has sailed long ago, you don't really need to introduce it, it's just C.