I was in a Starbuck's today and got a grande Irish Cream cold brew, which was amazing, and noticed that my barista (who had, um, boobs, and appeared to be a woman) had a name tag that said "pronouns He/Him/His."
The POINT of this encounter being, of course, that I got a grande Irish Cream cold brew, which was amazing.
Somehow, I was even able to drive home, concentrate enough to play some guitar, and watch some football, and I strongly suspect I'll be able to go to sleep tonight.
What's the point of your story?
Actually, I don't understand the point you were trying to make in the OP. I am sincere.
I asked two questions in the OP. Perhaps people didn't get to the questions as they stopped reading in order to compose snarky responses that didn't address the questions. But, for the avoidance of doubt, I will repeat the questions I asked in the OP:
I have two questions: one, what is going on here? I'm a knuckle-dragging scumbag reactionary so I can't quite understand why your physical appearance is relevant, let alone relevant enough to describe in a diegetic audio description track, when discussing a product.
Two: is this something you think is desirable for corporations to move towards? I've spent my entire life embarrassed and ashamed about my imposing physical presence. It would cause me anxiety to draw extra attention to it.
No, no: I read the OP and your questions. I just don't get why this is worth more than an internal eyeroll to you. I honestly don't.
It is worth more than an 'eyeroll' for a number of reasons, and I thought some of those reasons had been made obvious in the OP. For example, it ought be clear that I regard the routine acknowledgment of native land in corporate presentations a coerced religious utterance, which is bad enough, but it is also a waste of time, and transparently hypocritical. I was forced to go to church growing up, I don't want to go to church at work as well.
But that wasn't the main point of the OP. The main point was
my bewilderment at what the hell was even going on. Nobody has offered an explanation; they've only gaslighted me for being bewildered and for expressing concern about being coerced to engage in this in the future.
Why are you *forced* to engage in this in the future?
Because I work for a large organisation, and I can see the same developments in my own workplace (admittedly, not to the extent in the two Microsoft videos).
I admit that I'm a little flummoxed at the descriptions of people's clothing--perhaps they are doing this for those who don't have visuals or who are vision impaired?
Well, it partly sounded like an audio description track for the vision impaired, but it cannot be that. Audio description tracks are laid over the top of the existing sound to explain on-screen action necessary to understand the narrative. I can only think it is put in there to normalise discussing your own ethnicity in a presentation. Blind people (the ones who've never had vision at least), don't know what a 'red' top is or 'blonde' hair.
I worked for many years in the medical field. It was very common for all speakers to disclose any potential conflicts of interest that might be tied to their presentation as well as their bona fides. Beyond that? I don't understand why they were doing what they were doing but that might be a question to ask someone connected to the presentation?
Why would being a tall Hispanic man be relevant to discussing IT?
I don't know anyone connected to the presentation, but it is entirely possible that somebody here knows what's going on.
