On a Scale of Not Hitler to Yeah That's Hitler, Where Would You Put This Amazon Icon?

Last night while I was half-watching an episode of Home Town, I picked up my telephone for the 9,000th time and idly swiped through the folders until I found the Amazon app, which looked different than it had the day before. Instead of a shopping cart, the icon was brown, with a little arrow that looks like a smirk, located below a blue… something, with the corner earmarked. Today I discovered this was actually the second change to the app, because many people thought the first version of the new icon looked too much like Hitler.

I understand that it has been a very long year and that we are entering another March when it seems like the first March where everything was bad happened yesterday. I also understand that we live in a society (LOL) where everything is up for debate and that any whiff of association with unsavory characters from history—especially Hitler—is bad for the brand. At first glance, I was having difficultly locating the Hitler here.

The argument is that the little crinkly bit at the top there looks like Hitler’s mustache and that when juxtaposed against the swooshy arrow “smile,” it looks a little bit like Hitler. The updated icon replaces the crinkly bit that was said to resemble Hitler’s iconic mustache, therefore erasing any association with the genocidal dictator. The blue bit on the right is the tape that Amazon uses to close its boxes and the brown is, uh, the box. I see no problem with either iteration, but understand that if Amazon needs to appease people who think that the version on the left looked like Hitler, they did what they had to do.

However, the more I stare at both, together, the more convinced I become that maybe the old icon did look like Hitler, if only because I’ve read not one but two blogs on the internet telling me that, hey, yeah, this does look a little bit like Hitler.

Perhaps confirmation bias is at play? Like, if you’ve got Hitler on the brain, you’re predisposed to see Hitler in ordinary objects, like a bowl of cereal, a piece of toast, or the lumpen feces in the litter box. Maybe you’re always on the lookout for Hitler iconography, and so anything that could even possibly maybe resemble the mustache of evil rings an alarm. If you’re looking for Hitler, you will find him eventually, I guess. But why are you picturing Hitler with a cheeky grin? That’s your business and not mine, but I suggest that anyone looking for Hitler in the old Amazon icon that was changed due to public outcry think again.