The news that rocked the world this past week was not one from the Russia and Ukraine battlefields, nor was it from the promised and much needed peace agreement in the Gaza occupation and conflict. It was, in fact, the realization that a brand that has been around for over 40 years has been misrepresented and misunderstood by generations. The wide (however one-dimensional) eyed, pink bow adorned cartoon character stamped on practically every kind of product from backpacks to toasters is not the feline its name led us to believe. Hello Kitty is a third grade little girl from London.
We found this disturbing news in the Washington Post article, “Hello Kitty is not a cat. Everything is a lie.” This revelation comes from the manufacturer, Sanrio, who seemed surprised that we didn’t already know that. The lesson here might be to check the facts before you categorize. Don’t go on superficial resemblances. Don’t assume just because something looks like it has whiskers, it isn’t human. The obvious may not be that obvious. How the content is classified impacts the findability of your data.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
