Friday nudes, et cetera

I hate friday nudes. Always have.

Friday nudes, for those who haven't come across them, are a feature of some workplaces. At some companies, the dress code is less strict on Friday, Friday being almost weekend and all that. Time to lighten up! So some people will mail around a photo of a bare-breasted beauty around lunchtime on Friday.

I've always hated those.

It's not that I hate nude photos, or even porn. I don't, not at all. Many may be tasteless, kitschy or degrading, but the same adjectives apply to much advertising and many TV shows too (I once watched an episode of something called Idol), and all that is too commonplace to hate. I'd be smothered by my own hate.

No, my hate is more selective. NSFW refers to anything to do with nudity, whereas we should fighting a war on distraction. Working while being distracted by looking at boobs is bad, and getting an eyeful of boobs when one is reading build reports and other work mail is a jarring distraction. A team being distracted by unnecessary controversy is also bad, and that includes disagreement about rubbish like those mood-lightening friday nudes.

This doesn't really matter for nude photos. They should be verboten because they distract, they are verboten because of nudity. No great difference. Slack, though… Slack is nominally a work tool, but encourages interruptions, animated gifs and other abhorrent distractions. Slack can do that because of the gap between what NSFW means and what it ought to mean.

God how I hate those big spectator sports events and their live reporting. Those too are somehow acceptable at work because they're not NSFW.