The Birth of Ziggy - A very revealing article by Lurkmoophy

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@xvg11 I honestly don’t really care what gender (or non-gender) it is as long as it doesn’t affect the site that I’m using. Like @fauxtronic wrote below, I didn’t consider it either, before I read this:

I, in my arrogant opinion, think that you’re making it out to be a bigger deal than what it really is, but, again, that’s just my opinion. It’s not like it’s physically, mentally, or emotionally affecting you. It’s not like it being gender-less is going to make the world’s people decide that they really aren’t male (if they are male) or female (if they are female), even if what they feel is otherwise. There is also enough of that going around in the schools and whatnot. Please don’t get mad because I’m NOT trying to cut you down or belittle you in any way, but if it’s not hurting anyone, there shouldn’t be any reason why you would try to strike something up where there shouldn’t be anything to strike up. By the way, anyone who’s reading this: please note that I’m straight, so my reply to the starting of the discussion is not because I’m trying to defend my gender. I just, honestly, don’t understand what the problem is…

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Where in my post did I say there is a problem? I simply shared a post that I found on the official Memrise Product Development Blog about their motivations for totally revamping Memrise in the way they have done.

The fact that Ziggy is either androgynous, genderless, or non-binary was not news to me. I initially read it six months ago, when Luke stated it in his June post on the Memrise Blog that Ziggy is “androgynous.”

https://blog.memrise.com/2017/06/26/meet-ziggy-memrises-new-mascot/

At that time I don’t think that many users gave Luke’s description of Ziggy much thought, because most people don’t choose to spend their time contemplating the gender-identity of space-jellyfish.

What I found very interesting, puzzling, and surprising in this current article, was that the Memrise team stated that in order to make a statement about their “progressive values,” they had deliberately injected the very controversial subject of gender-identity into what previously had been a very straightforward flash card app.

Why would they decide to make their space-jellyfish character explicitly “non-binary,” which according to Wikipedia, is a synonym for “gender-queer,” which is a term that many people would have a reaction to? And having decided to make a socio-political statement with their product, then they should not be surprised if customers, who may or may not share their socio-political viewpoint, express their positive or negative reactions, especially when the product is often used by children in a scholastic setting.

I would have been equally puzzled if they said that they had decided to make their imaginary space-jellyfish explicitly Christian, Sikh, Jewish, or Moslem, for example. Why inject such emotionally charged and divisive attributes into a space-jellyfish in a flash card app? What would they hope to gain by doing so?

Memrise used to be a simple but effective learning tool, with a great community of contributors, that started off with a gardening metaphor. Flowers and gardening are simple to understand and as non-divisive, inoffensive, and non-controversial as any metaphor could possibly be. Why throw that all away and replace it with an “irreverent”, “non-binary” space-jellyfish? Don’t they want to appeal to the widest possible audience?

So, the focus of my post is not primarily on the ill-conceived space-jellyfish’s lack of gender, but on the Memrise team’s incomprehensible decisions to destroy a system that worked and everyone liked about their product, and take things in a very strange, controversial, and alien direction.

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Point taken. I’m sorry, I guess I misunderstood and thought that you were just harping on the character building itself, by way of the title and the discussion and what you had originally posted (how you had posted it). I’ve read some posts where that’s what they were doing (although some, I don’t have a problem with for they had very good reasons). That’s the way that I had read it, what with the whole parent/children thing. I had read the article, which I, too, found pretty darn interesting. I should have asked you in depth before I rattled on and I shall make it an appoint of not doing that again. :sweat_smile: My apologies. I do agree with you, though, in that if you are going to do something, you shouldn’t go half way. Like Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield wrote “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention.” You shouldn’t just decide something and only go half way, especially if you’re (the Memrise creator(s)) looking to ‘help’ the general public,and the people there don’t agree with something and then you (whoever decided it) doesn’t listen to them and try to fix it, or just goes plainly in full reverse. That really doesn’t help. Again, my apologies, @xvg11 and I will pay more attention (or ask more questions first) before making assumptions and looking like a total idiot. See, I can learn, too! :slight_smile:

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I am female. When I was a teenager I invented the nickname “Ziggy” for myself, because I identified with the cartoon character that always has a black cloud over his head. But everybody thought it was from Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Anyway, like you, I thought Ziggy was male. And really I don’t care one way or the other. I could say a couple of political things here as well, but will keep my mouth shut for now :slight_smile:

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Ziggy or jellyfish being male or female has zero importance for me for learning languages. Good tools that work and are reliable is no 1.

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I found it every time very strange when somebody (an institution, young person etc) tells one how not to feel discrimated and at the same times takes good care to deeply humiliate that one. I personally did feel insulted to be represented as a ugly lila whatever. I doubt that the ziggy has anything to do with “empowering and inclusion”, because, save very young kids surrounded by standard toys and cartoons (therefore being part of or longing for the utterly white-ish male-ish - “brave explorer with big claws” - mainstream culture), no one can feel happy to be “depicted” in such manner.

(A Honduran or a Bengali fighting hard for a bit of education and landing by mistake on memrise is probably not very sure about how the ziggy should help her learn)

(to the mental reply of the young product manager that “you studied till very high up, you’re white an priviliged, you don’t know”, I’d answer “haha, you have no idea”. But for sure I don’t belong, I never did, to the fav pets of those “white and privileged” who care so much for their fav discriminated ones)

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