Old internet thing. Hotly debated at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress

I’ll add the contextual link above for others, since it’s been awhile.

“No one” in this context meant “no one who actually does maths professionally.”

No it doesn't. Everyone who does Maths professionally does it the same way as in Maths textbooks 🙄

When I see 1+½ i can instantly say “one and a half”

And that would be wrong. It's 1 plus one half. 1½ is one and a half.

when I see 1 + 1 ÷ 2 i actually have to pause for a moment to think about order of operations

You don't know to Divide before Adding??

one I recognize the structure of the problem immediately, and one feels foreign.

Says person with "decades of maths experience outside of textbooks" 🙄

The point is that people who do maths for a living

That would be me

are probably above average in maths, tend to write things differently than people who are stopped their maths education in high school (or lower)

Nope. We all write it the same way as we were taught, even those who have done Maths at University (also me).

these types of memes are designed around making people who know high school maths feel smart

No, they're designed around getting those who have forgotten the rules to argue about it. i.e. engagement bait

Dear colleague,

By qualification I meant explanation. My doctorate is irrelevant to the truth.

Since you asked, my larger point was about the unhelpful nature of this content, which makes students of math feel inordinately inferior or superior hinged entirely on a single point of familiarity. I don’t handle early math education, but many of my students arrive with baggage from it that hinders their progress, leading me to suspect that early math education sometimes discourages students unnecessarily. In particular, these gotcha-style math memes IMO deepen students’ belief that they’re just bad at math. Hence my dislike of them.

Re: Dave Peterson, I’ll need to read more about this debate regarding the history of notation and I’ll search for the “proven rules” you mentioned (proofs mean something very specific to me and I can’t yet imagine what that looks like WRT order of operations).

If what riled you up was my use of the word “conventions” I can use another, but note that conventions aren’t necessarily “optional” when being understood is essential. Where one places a comma in writing can radically change the meaning of a sentence, for example. My greater point however has nothing to do with that. Here I am only concerned about the next generation of maths student and how viral content like this can discourage them unnecessarily.