This is particularly prevalent amongst trans people on twitter (where I see it used a lot) you see a lot of people using this emoji under for example a powerful looking selfie of someone who appears dominant, as a playful offer of submission.
There’s lots of emojis that the culture has given alternate meanings to, for example the peach and the eggplant.
You could ask “how would I explain this to a child” to anything adults talk about that is sexual in nature. Usually the answer is “don’t.”
I don’t think TFA was written for children and the author wanted to include this common internet meme in to their article title.
Imagine you drop your finger randomly on a word. How can you find the start of the sentence it's in?
(After this, if the child were familiar with binary, I'd show the actual representation of UTF-8, perhaps colour-coded. It's really quite intuitive. No need to go for the abstract straight away: if the child can generalise, they can generalise, and if not, there's no point making it artificially confusing.)
Also, pleading is an actual part of this very common sexual dynamic. If you’re just made uncomfortable by sex that’s fine but you don’t have to turn that in to judgment of people who aren’t.
You accuse me of making assumptions and then make your own incorrect ones.
I find it annoying when people weave their personal non-technical agendas into technical discussions. I can anticipate your response now... there is no agenda. But go read the article and you will notice is not even specific to this one emoji.
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Keep up the good work mr/ms downvoter, I've got a lot of points to burn and no shop to spend them in. Good to know I'm pissing off one person who is chronically offended by my skepticism.
It’s they/them downvoter actually.
But seriously, as far as I can tell it’s not possible to downvote people who have replied directly to me. It’s just other people downvoting you because what you’re saying is unpopular.
You’re certainly not pissing me off. That’s why I’m trying to calmly explain your errors. But it sounds like you’ve made up your mind and take disagreement as some kind of encouragement.
> But it sounds like you’ve made up your mind and take disagreement as some kind of encouragement.
I do find disagreement of silent onlookers with nothing to contribute irritating yes. Life is too short to fear controversial or unpopular ideas so I take it as encouragement. I'm happy to change my opinion in the face of compelling arguments, not thoughtless people.
This is the problem with people like yourself: just because someone makes a reference to something prevalent in their subculture in normal writing or conversation, you get all worked up and complain that they're trying to "push an agenda".
No, they're just speaking using their own subculture's jargon. I don't get why you seem to need to label it as something nefarious.
While I was aware of the sexual connotations of "top" and "bottom", I didn't know about this emoji's "alternate name" or its use here. It didn't detract from the article at all for me, and as a bonus, I learned something new about how people different from myself communicate sometimes.
About the only thing I can say in "agreement" is that sure, communicating in this manner can cause confusion and make such communication less clear. But the author probably doesn't particularly care about that, and has no obligation to do so.
Exactly.
(also, you are so worried about the kids, why are you making sex about anger in your anger over sex?)
I also find it funny that pointing out something is a weird and distracting choice is considered angry, and I can only assume by the onslaught of downvotes, uninclusive or something... or maybe my "what if" has been interpreted as a "think of the children", hard to know when people don't bother forming an argument.
Idiomatically signifies exasperated frustration/anger in many contexts.
My entire comment was just a play on words, pointing out that the word "fucking" means "having sex" (i know it's one of those words with a ton of shades and nuance so there are lots of uses for it but for the play on words, let's be literal - also easier when the context is sexual to begin with). When read in that light - "a having sex pleading face and they made it about sexual roles" is amusing, no?
Wow, you must spend literally every waking second of every single day enraged.
Why do you think this should be treated differently when that hobby/interest/trend is sexual? Why do you think something sexual is "weird/distracting" in a way that other interests aren't? Given that you explicitly said "How would they go about explaining that label to a child?", complaining that you're not making a "think of the children" argument and don't care about children seems more than a little disingenuous.
I'm sure there are plenty of seemingly-mundane ways that you or I communicate that others might find "stupid" (I know I'm consciously trying to begin fewer sentences with "I mean"). So what? Getting worked up about something like this, enough to post about it on an internet forum, seems a bit much.
It feels like you have some conscious or unconscious axe to grind (or at least some high level of discomfort) with people who have different sexual "culture" (for lack of a better word) than you do. Maybe ask yourself why?
You wouldn't. Just like you probably wouldn't explain the sexual meanings behind the eggplant or peach emojis to a child.
Not sure why this needs to be a consideration. If you're writing for an audience that includes children, sure, use child-friendly terms and concepts. If you don't care about including children in your readership, go nuts.
Granted, I don't think everyone needs to be prudish, such that this is a bit of a tempest in a teapot. But it is very different than claiming that explicitly sexual reframing of other items is the same thing.
(to be clear i also think is okay not to like this kind of language)