B
Tangentially, thinking there might be some intersection here with Cyberlyra's discussion of the notion, absent in Usian language, of a "keener":
https://hachyderm.io/@cyberlyra/116074966881545815
To wit, doing something for the joy of it, with no other motive, does not compute. Dysphoria as being what cannot be named, let alone bodily embraced.
What is described here sounds very much like the culmination of the very specific flavor of masculinity that was being performed in tech in the 90s.
What myself have described as the "wounded masculinity" of a generation for whom being socially abused for being geeky or nerdy was still very fresh. (Something that, later in life, myself came to recognize as akin to the religious woundedness one encounters at a UU coffee klatch.)
Now that we're the other side of "nerds rule the world", that triumphant enthusiasm having been fully corporatized, all the steam of having proven the bullies wrong having long since been expended, what remains is a performance of masculinity.
Yet a masculinity that is a husk of the wounded masculinity that preceded it. Hollowed out of the deep yearning to prove oneself superior to one's tormentors, leaving only a faint echo in the drive to prove... something, to someone, whatever and whomever that might be.
You are a cruel, cruel person, to foist this upon your followers.
That emoji always looks to me like someone being patted on the head.
My vote was based on current implementation and explanation of same to users.
However, if we ask "ought" rather than "should" (principle rather than expectation), then reply visibility would be contingent on the propinquity of followers to both Alice and Bob, which is to say, not all of either interlocutor's followers would see the post, but rather visibility would be a function of relationship weights with each follower across both participants in the exchange.