Komrade Kool-Aid Mann

In Slack you can post a reaction icon on comments.  It appears under the comment really small, about 16x16 pixels.  If multiple users respond with the same reaction, a counter shows how many, and if you hover the mouse cursor over the icon, a 54x54-pixel version is displayed along with the icon code and the names of everybody who made the reaction.

It addition to standard emoji, Slack also has a bunch of custom icons, one of which is classic Kool-Aid Man bursting through a wall.  A co-worker recently selected this icon to respond to an announcement.  I was pleasently surprised to see Kool-Aid Man in Slack, so I rolled my cursor over the icon to see it bigger.  After a quick look, I moved my cursor away and the pop-up disappeared, and then the icon code registered in my brain.  I thought I had imagined it, but when I went back for another look I found that it was indeed what I thought I'd seen:  koolaid‑kommie.  I wondered why in the world Kool-Aid Man was labeled as a kommie, and then I noticed that he was wearing a Russian-looking hat, and that he had what looked like a yellow hammer and sickle on his belly.

I extracted the full-sized 128x128-pixel version and confirmed that this version of Kool-Aid Man was made to look like a communist.  I found this strangely out of place, especially since Slack is supposed to be a politically-neutral productivity tool (but to be realistic, we all know corporations can't figure this out in the 2020s).  I replied in the comment thread, “Why did Slack make Kool-Aid Man into a Komrade?  Is he supposed to be bursting out of the Berlin Wall like it's 1989?”

A little while later, a co-worker posted a link to a song labeled, “koolaid-komrade.”  He had taken my quote and fed it into an A.I. song generator, then “remastered” it half a dozen times.  It's short, but it had me laughing with tears the first time I heard it.  It's really catchy too.