this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
108 points (85.1% liked)

No Stupid Questions

41714 readers
1019 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I really don't like the design of the progress pride flag, and I couldn't really put my finger on it until I saw this: https://nava.org/good-flag-bad-flag

For reference, here is the flag I'm referencing as "bad flag":

And here is the original:

So, the original has too many colors, but it's the colors of the rainbow. In order. It's recognizable from really far away, and it's dead simple to draw.

With the Intersex flag, that's 14 colors. There are three shades of "purple". The circle won't be visible from far away. The chevrons are too thin to be very recognizable from far away.

It's not like there aren't good pride flags. Like there are AMAZING ones:

Edit:

In case you don't know what these are: https://flagsforgood.com/collections/pride-flags

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] RabbitMix@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 19 hours ago

I'm pretty picky about flags but I like the progress pride flag well enough. not over the moon about it, but I fly it outside my house during June. If you can make a better one, it's always okay to attempt to do so.

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

it's a long time meme that pretty much all LGBT flags are awfully designed. but they also got wide acceptance so it's hard to redesign. as a designer I've looked for redesigns and have not seen anything really. even the ones you've shared are brand new to me. where did you find those?

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What annoys me about takes like this is that it seems to be appealing to some sort of council of gays who are in charge of the flags. Nobody is. There's no "official" flag. If you don't like the progress flag or the intersex version of it then just don't fly them or design your own that you do like. Nobody is stopping you. A ton of the pride flags in use today are just designed by random Tumblr users in the mid '10s. Which is fine, not hating on them, just making sure you know there is nothing stopping you from making one you like or flying the ones you prefer.

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is the very reason I'm surprised. These flags come and go by the winds of memetics; so why is it that this design is somehow able to propagate so well despite being so clearly visually incoherent?

I'm not necessarily complaining, I'm just astonished that it caught on. Like imagine if a really discordant and structureless song became super popular.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I fly the original pride progress flag on my house and I really like it. If it is shocking to you that not everyone agrees with what makes a flag look good look no further than the US's state flags. They're a mess. They're all over the place. People have different tastes. I think the "state seal on blue background" is bad but clearly enough people in those places don't dislike it enough to change it.

pride flag

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

pride flag indeed.

[–] Hugin@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago (6 children)

I'm of the option that the original rainbow flag is still the best. It was meant to include everyone under the rainbow so trans people and others are already included.

[–] JennyLaFae@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

The Progress flag stands for the progress that has been made and the progress that STILL NEEDS TO BE MADE against racism and transphobia as well as memorializing those we lost to AIDS.

So yes, while the original flag is meant to include all the LGBT+ communities, progress stands for more than inclusion for a lot of us ✌️

[–] Hugin@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

My problems with the progress flag and the trans rainbow flag are not with the groups or ideas they are ment to express.

First like OP I think they are bad flag designs. To busy and lack the simple design a flag should have. I also just don't like the look.

Second there is value in a consistent recognizable design like the rainbow. I spot all sorts of variants and often don't know what they are supposed to mean.

I also don't think there should be spefic meaning to the parts. Saying this color stripe is this group and that color is another group is problematic.

The rainbow colors were meant to symbolize broad inclusion. Everybody under the rainbow. Red isn't gay, blue isn't lesbian, etc. (I know some have tried to add that after the fact).

When you start adding spefic groups to the flag you start having included groups and excluded groups. So as much as I support trans rights and think they belong in the community I don't want any spefic group in the flag.

You then get groups that are not included and want a new flag to included them. Like we are seeing with the trans flag causing groups to want the progress flag. Pretty soon the rainbow is going to look like nascar with logos everywhere.

A simple consistent flag with the message of broad inclusion is better.

[–] JennyLaFae@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 4 hours ago

I think you're missing the forest for the trees and I don't think I'll be engaging with your slippery slope argument ✌️

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

The progress flag is copyrighted by one Daniel Quasar, and he sporadically exercises his copyright on people who use or sell designs involving the progress flag. Or so I've heard. Anyway, for this reason, I avoid using it.

[–] JennyLaFae@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

The primary reason it's copyrighted is to prevent corporations from profiting off of it.

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 hours ago
[–] kux@lemm.ee 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

i was sceptical of this claim but it appears you're dead right

Most people do not know about this flag’s origins. Its creator appropriated Gilbert Baker’s 1978 rainbow flag and the light blue, pink, and white stripes from the 1999 trans pride flag created by Monica Helms (without even a call to her), and the black and brown stripes from the 2017 More Colors More Pride Flag designed in partnership with Philadelphia’s Office of LGBT Affairs and then proceeded to LICENSE THE DESIGN FOR PROFIT

https://gaycitynews.com/we-need-walk-away-progress-profit-flag/

rest of the article is interesting too

this just makes it all the more baffling that this graphic-design-is-my-passion gaudy clashing mess of a flag is the one you see everywhere now

[–] hddsx@lemmy.ca 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

That’s wild. I would have retained the copyright too, but for the purpose of suing the fuck out of people who misuse it

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 2 points 20 hours ago

Even if that were what he's doing, I would still avoid using it as I'm a supporter of the public domain on principle. If something is essentially public domain, it should be fully public domain.

That's not actually the original pride flag. That's the one with 2 mission stripes that were taken away due to cost. The original had turquoise instead of blue and a pink and indigo stripe, so one color more than the rainbow. Rainbows have red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

The 8 striped also symbolized different things. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_flag_(LGBTQ)

I agree with what you're saying. As they keep adding more things to the flag, it becomes cluttered and harder to see.

[–] sprite0@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

i just learned last week about the original lesbian flag:

and i gotta say it's amazing

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Fair warning with that one, its really cool looking but mostly popular with trans lesbians and terfs.

[–] sprite0@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

as a trans lesbian... ok that tracks.

[–] SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

I've seen TERFs use it less, as they've started to win the "trans debate" less of a need to disguise their shit as "protecting lesbians"

[–] dontkickducks@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Aside from the design of the flags, scrolling through these ones felt a bit like a colour blind test. Especially the demi-flags.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 125 points 2 days ago (24 children)

I think it's basically just "feature creep." Too many ideas trying to be crammed into one symbol. And what's annoying, to me, is that the rainbow by itself was already supposed to represent everyone. That's why it is a rainbow.

load more comments (24 replies)
[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Rainbow flag is cool. 🏳️‍🌈

Due the spectral (is that said correctly?) nature of gender identity and sexual preferences individualized representation of every part of an infinite spectrum is, by definition, impossible. Thus a catch them all flag is the best in representing our diversity.

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago

New pride flag

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 30 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ugly flags & the LGBT+ community, name a more iconic duo. Like, I thought we had designers amongst us, whatever happened to them?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›