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Amata

The Cat Face & Forum Response Options

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I recently had an interaction that, really I should have seen coming. 
I posted a thing, and Person A complimented me about it, I responded to Person A's comment with "Cat Face" ... and Person A contacted me privately to ask why I responded so negatively to the compliment. 

Of course it was a misunderstanding. Here's why: 
When I finally got on the forums, I wasn't sure what the cat face meant .... so I searched the forums for a post explaining what the cat meant. I found this: 

 

 

 

And that gave me the impression that "cat" is an alternative reaction face that could be good or bad or whatever. And since, cats on social media tend to be about enjoyment, wasting time, cute things, and feeling happy... I just went with it. What I did not consider was that there are only 2 reaction emoji available on the forums.  Now that somebody pointed it out to me, I can completely see how the cat face could be negative -  since the heart icon is obviously positive and since there's only one other icon, people will naturally assign a negative meaning to it. 


If the Cat face was truly intended to be a neutral or general response option, we need to disrupt the obvious positive/negative binary.  


My suggestion is: Please give forum users a "not-positive" emoji of some kind - a thumbs down, or a troll face, or something. 
I understand that we want to focus on and promote positivity  within our community, so I can see this being something that is very carefully considered.

Another option is to break the +/- binary by introducing a couple additional "general" or "neutral" options like a sprout, a dog face, a strawberry, etc. 
Players would make of them what they will, but there would be fewer miscommunications because of the binary implication. 
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PS - If I have given you a "cat face" reaction, please understand... I'm good with books. I'm good with animals. I am not so good with people. The highest compliment I pay a person is to compare that person to (a) a book, or (b) an animal. Sorry for any miscommunications this might have caused. 💜

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(I have no idea what I did that made my topic post have such strange formatting) 
Weird, sorry!

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4 minutes ago, Enuf said:

its just a cat

 

While this is literally true.... the entire field of semiotics, does in fact, exist.

So I'm guessing there might be something to it. 

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I don't think most people would link a cute cat face with a negative response. It certainly wasn't my first thought when I saw it. lol

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This came around from

"hey I can add custom reactions" 

"can you add a cat reaction"
"sure"
 

 

Rest assured, it means nothing, and is just there as a bit of fun 

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cat is best emote it means cat and nothing more then snuggle cat 
cat means happiness

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Well I'm more of a dog person so I won't even use a cat.

 

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Let's not bring in a negative reaction (it's no fun to receive these).

 

The 'like' Heart adds + one to the poster's forum reputation counter, whereas I believe the Cat makes no change, so if you like something you read - use a 'like' Heart - lets keep things positive! :) 

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I think having no negative response is a good thing.  Apart from anything else it would serve no purpose than to allow "pure" negativity, as in a post can be declared bad without any engagement or disagreement expressed to give any indication of what it is wrong with it or why.  

 

I understand the consideration that having two options invokes a binary attribution but really there are 3 (or even more) separate and distinct options.   There is a declaration to the community endorsing the post; there is a likewise public exclamation sort of like "this is fun!"; then there is a reply in the thread which could be a separate 3rd response or could be seen in combination with the "votes". 

 

I did wonder if there should be something else (non-negative) in addition to the heart and the cat - like a goat -  but I think it would actually actually detract from the heart. 

Edited by TheTrickster
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I'll admit to having a little irrational, egotistical thought when I first went to do the Heart emote and saw the cat emote. Since I never saw anyone else do the cat, I thought maybe it had been something that had been given to me back during one of my earlier tries at the game. So I started using the cat instead of the heart. 

 

Then I saw someone else use it, and that self-delusional idea popped like a bubble. 😸

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