[Groxx]

No, I'm saying that hackeronies does not make everyone uncomfortable / is not necessarily cult indoctrination. Stuff like that can and does arise naturally in groups of people (and can also arise as a control mechanism).

You're saying there are pure non-creepy fun actions for everyone that a business can do. I'm saying it's too gray to make that assertion, not too black and white. So I'm curious what you think is perfectly safe for everyone.

[deciplex]

Note that I'm reading 'There's not much middle ground between "try to have some fun at work because there's no reason not to" and "don't do something someone might take issue with",' as a general assertion on your part - now I'm thinking maybe that's not what you meant. In that case some of what I said might not apply.

that said:

> You're saying there are pure non-creepy fun actions for everyone that a business can do.

I didn't say that. I don't think you'll please everyone with team-building exercises and frankly some people find the entire concept distasteful which is fair enough. That doesn't mean that all team-building stuff is equally bad (or, equally good).

[Groxx]

We're probably on the same page then. And I completely agree that there are better and worse options.

I mean that "fun harmless in-crowd things" can be disturbing from the outside - context and intent matters. A strange in-crowd name is pretty far down the "there are harmless causes for this" side of things imo. Using it in a layoff announcement is probably not the best place though, unless they honestly think the laid-off feel good about it. A large enough package might achieve that tbh, but that's obviously rarely the case.

I'm honestly not sure if there exists a thing that a business can do that its employees would enjoy that will not be interpreted as creepy by some. Everything excludes someone somewhere somehow, the most you can do is target your crowd as best you can... and people commenting on a forum are not in that target audience, so I find the obsession over the name here to be pretty dumb. (Not claiming you're obsessed, just that it's the majority of the comments here so far)