Anyone who orders from the Hamburg mail order company Otto has known for a long time: The Hamburg company has changed.

The customer has long since become a "customer" for the Hanseatic League.

In 2019 Otto began to discover the controversial asterisk language for himself much faster than others.

The people of Hamburg call it “fair language”. On Wednesday it brought them a veritable shit storm on Twitter.

Carsten Germis

Business correspondent in Hamburg.

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The outrage sparked - as an Otto spokesman said - "actually harmless response to a tweet". A user who complained about gendering received the answer from Otto: “That's right, it's that simple: We gender. And you don't have to order from us. ”With the wink smiley that is common in social media, the sender probably wanted to suggest himself that he wasn't talking about the arrogant message quite as arrogantly as it comes across when reading. After all, in a market economy, the customer is still king.

The anger of the tweeting customer, however, grew.

He canceled his Otto customer account.

The shitstorm began, the swarm intelligence raged.

The Hamburg company was surprised.

The discussion took place in the famous Twitter bubble, it was said in Hamburg.

"The waves of indignation are out of proportion to the importance."

Now, according to surveys, gender is opposed by the vast majority of the population who know the grammar.

The German Spelling Council also spoke out in favor of the official regulations for the German language this year against the “gender gap” with an asterisk or a colon in the word.

But Otto as a commercial enterprise can of course decide against this advice on the market.

"We stand for diversity, respect and the freedom to have different opinions," said a company spokesman.

“Part of that is fair language.” Otto emphasizes that the asterisk language he practices is also an expression of the company's philosophy of doing justice to the diversity of modern society.

In any case, Otto has not been able to determine that a noticeable number of customers are switching to competitors as a result.