I beg to differ, I think the community as a whole has been taking that phrase way out of context.
Honestly I personally think it came off to a lazy answer to a question.
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This does nothing to remedy the fact that resources were wasted on a hair that is universally shunned by many male (and female) player characters instead of a style they would actually use. With so many other more prominent and popular hairstyles, it is a total mystery as to why the Karen cut was prioritized over them.
I'd tentatively suggest it can be laid at the feet of the new localisation lead who took over some of the work from Koji back in Shadowbringers after he was moved to go and work on FFXVI:
https://twitter.com/fabulafatua
I suspect such influence due to this statement made during an interview a while back:
https://i.imgur.com/kcUQncm.png
Square Enix would probably do well with diversifying their localisation team to include people who pay attention to and gather feedback from a wider sample of players rather than those who simply flock to Twitter and are often far removed from regular players and their desires/opinions.
Having witnessed WoW devolve into a strange purity spiral based on Twitter sphere 'logic' and 'necessary additions to the game' I must confess to being rather wary of a repeat where FFXIV is concerned.
I mean it’s one of many examples though. Look at the influx of “gender neutral” hairstyles that are incredibly feminine. It’s not just the karen hair, there’s so many hairs now that have curls or bows etc. It’s pretty bad that it took this long just to get some facial hair lmao.