0

A few years ago at my company, for various reasons if you performed a dangerous action you had to hold a large doll while doing it. This is no longer necessary and the doll is now gone from the office.

Today I posted a very low resolution icon of a blue train on slack to show I was doing this action and a coworker joked that the icon was now so stylised and turnover had been so high that most people who worked at the company had no idea what it meant - but everyone still used it to mean "I'm performing [ACTION]".
He then asked if there was a word for it, mentioning the "save icon" he used as a coaster on his desk.

I suggested cargo-culting but that doesn't really seem to fit. Equally linguistic drift applies to words rather than symbols.

My various google searches have turned up articles about how millennials don't know what the voicemail icon means and essays on how people read different things from emoji, but nothing useful.

Lexi
  • 101
  • That icon is too small for me to make out. It looks vaguely like a bus on fire—which makes no sense at all. – Jason Bassford Jun 25 '19 at 17:01
  • @JasonBassford That was his point really. Contextless this icon is meaningless, but with historical context it makes a bit more sense – Lexi Jun 26 '19 at 11:19
  • So, you're saying that the answer should be something like meaningless, senseless, confusing, strange, or perplexing? If that's what's being looked for, it should be clarified and narrowed down. It's also something quite different from the question it was marked a duplicate of. – Jason Bassford Jun 26 '19 at 16:29
  • To use a simpsons reference, imagine before venting radioactive gas employees had to go on slack and post the :vent: emoji. Employees who joined after the incident might have no idea what that emoji means - other than that a vent is taking place. – Lexi Jun 27 '19 at 10:54

0 Answers0