I feel like, if you are categorically incapable of coming up with something nice to say about someone’s hat with a degree of sincerity necessary to make it through that one-off interaction, then one of two things is true: either you’re the wrong person to be involving themselves, or the hat is so horrendous, the kind thing to do would actually be insulting them so they never wear it again. My money is on the former tho lol

Okay? Again, who are you serving by choosing this specific forum to shout that messaging? I know you aren’t OP, so consider that the royal “you”.

It’s just tiresome is all, and I’m on the “boo, capitalism” side of things. It’s like the folks who turn every thread tangentially related to Microsoft into a Linux advertisement. Or the involuntary ejaculation of a vegetarian when the subject of diet comes up. Like, yes, these folks are probably correct about the things they are saying; you’re never going to be wrong to consider the angle being worked by a corp. However, it’s infantilizing to suggest that people are unaware that a corporation wants their money. That’s a given, and without additional commentary, it’s a positively useless statement that only serves to make people tune out the messaging, even in contexts where it IS desirable to bring it up (such as when a company is doing shady shit in pursuit of your money). Releasing a mediocre graphical remaster of a title that people have nostalgia for hardly qualifies as “shady shit” in my book. Lazy, sure, but not shady.

Meanwhile, I loathe in-article links to the store page which are disguised as links to other, earlier coverage on the subject the article is discussing. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I mean, we can only go off of what is presented in the story, while acknowledging it’s 4chan and therefore both fake and gay. Within that frame, the new guy has been tagged with a nickname, he has mentioned to his colleagues that he’d prefer they not call him the nickname, and they are continuing to call him the name he’s expressly said he’d prefer they didn’t use. That’s a textbook hostile work environment, at a minimum.

He’s upset enough that he voiced his preference. Choosing to ignore that stated preference might be fine in this context, or it might not be. But, assuming that someone is not actually upset about a behavior that they’ve requsted change seems like an unnecessary leap of faith.