• Cyrus Draegur
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    4 days ago

    god damn why do so many federated services have such awful fucking names that feel disgusting to say

    friendica sounds like a strain of bacteria that eats your ligaments

    https://xkcd.com/856/

    TROCHEES, MOTHER FUCKERS, USE THEM IN YOUR FUCKING BRANDING.

    FACEBOOK. YOUTUBE. WHATSAPP. TIKTOK. SNAPCHAT. REDDIT. DISCORD. TUMBLR.

    TWITTER before it turned to utter shit partially because its name was changed to “X”.

    Hell even LEMMY is a Trochee and I think that’s part of why it’s managed to stand up to reddit this well!

    Even the big names that AREN’T trochaic get truncated to trochees! INSTA! PIN-TREST!

    They try to truncate Mastodon to Mast-o but people keep thinking THAT’S a reference to a disease too.

    fucking hell

    I’M MAD BECAUSE I WANT FEDVERSE SHIT TO SUCCEED AND IT’S LEAVING THIS PERFECTLY ACCESSIBLE LOW HANGING FRUIT TO ROT ON THE VINE WHEN IT NEEDS EVERY LAST FUCKING SCRAP OF HELP IT CAN GET

    the best time to change it was before it was made.

    the second best time is RIGHT. FUCKING. NOW.

    and the longer they delay, the more painful it’s going to be getting passed up by BLUESKY.

    • Jupiter Rowland
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      93 days ago

      When Friendica was launched in 2010 (yes, it’s way older than both Mastodon and Lemmy, go figure), it was named Mistpark.

      Which, to a German like me, sounds like “dung park” or “manure park”. Which, by the way, is the reason why Mike Macgirvin renamed it.

      • Cyrus Draegur
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        13 days ago

        goodness, mistpark kinda sucks even in english

        mist park? i mean it could be the right rhythm if you stress MIST but why “mist”?

        Mist is … like fog. It obscures. it also sounds like “missed”, which evokes a sense of loss.

        Also the ‘stp’ in the middle is a phonetic stumbling block that REALLY hampers its casual pronunciation; in practice you’d end up saying “misspark” and people who hear it in conversation would not hear the ‘T’, go searching for it, and not find it because they have the wrong term.

        why the fuck are they so consistently BAD at naming things???

        • Jupiter Rowland
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          23 days ago

          why the fuck are they so consistently BAD at naming things???

          Because the guy who developed Mistpark within four months in 2010 in his spare time on a budget of exactly zero didn’t have millions for hired marketing experts to design a name for something that literally had never been done before.

      • Cyrus Draegur
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        304 days ago

        Proposal for Mastodon: Trunky.

        It’s bouncy and fun sounding with bright percussive phonemes. The “R” also gives it an energetic vibe.

        Being a microblogging platform, it can both be a reference of how one truncates one’s messages, but also maintain the mammoth reference as well as sidelong imply the other definitions of ‘trunk’ which are also useful: a box where you keep stuff, and the central pathway from which other pathways branch.

        You can keep calling the posts “toots” too.

        However, I think “Favorites” should just be called Likes, or hell … updoots if you REALLY want to lean into the mascot.

        If so, however, boosting and bookmarking should also be changed to align with the mascot.

        Either call them Retoots … or Trumpets! And bookmarking can just be called “Remember” (because “Elephants Never Forget”)

        • @camr_on
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          34 days ago

          I like that. They need to lean in to it

      • Jupiter Rowland
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        43 days ago

        Good luck going around, putting the proverbial gun against the devs of way over 100 Fediverse projects that are fully independent from another (no, there is no central Fediverse branding department) and forcing them to rename their stuff NOW OR ELSE!!!

        A few exceptions that are trochees right now:

        • Forte (which may pretty well be the Fediverse of 2030 by this logic)
        • Iceshrimp
        • Sharkey
        • Mitra
        • Lemmy
        • Mbin
        • PieFed
        • PeerTube
        • Funkwhale
        • Owncast
        • BookWyrm
        • Cyrus Draegur
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          3 days ago

          Forte sounds AWESOME. Forte: GET LOUD! Love that! :D

          Iceshrimp … oof. it ain’t the worst but frozen seafood ain’t exactly inspiring. Also the Sibilance-heavy junction is a little bit grating, might be a little inaccessible to people who have speech disabilities or aren’t used to the anglic lingual mishmashy hodgepodgery.

          Sharkey? SHARKEY. HOLY crap. YES. SHARKEY! it’s playful, it’s bright, it’s fun, I don’t even know what it is but I wanna find out so I can USE it!

          Mitra. Hmm… Huh. Okay… I could see that working. It strikes me with a cool sophisticated feel. An air of slick precision. Wonder if anyone else gets that vibe.

          Lemmy is alright enough, kinda squishy but still fun. The lemming mascot motif is cute, although that tragic false factoid about lemmings all following each other off cliffs injects into the public consciousness an idea that users of lemmy might be victims of groupthink.

          Mbin… dull woody sounds, reminds me of that sleep medication Ambien, but also bin like where you toss your garbage. But that doesn’t kill it. Bins are also used for storage of things you want to keep. I could see it surviving with that name.

          PieFed, I don’t hate it! I appreciate the snackish pun. That could go places even if it feels a little silly.

          PeerTube, its name is strongly descriptive. Could take off. Kinda hope it still could someday. No other notes.

          Funkwhale. Heh. It’s just funny. Not terrible.

          OwnCast could work out too

          BookWyrm - the spelling of Wyrm evocative of DRAGONS covetously gathering knowledge in a treasure trove. That’s DAMN COOL.

          Some of these are actually pretty dang good actually!

          I don’t think anyone needs to be threatened into rebranding but informing them that a bad name might hold them back is just a statement of fact. None of us ARRANGED for these conditions. If they want to carve an ice sculpture in the middle of a volcano, pointing out to them that the environment is hostile to their project is in no way “threatening them”.

      • Cyrus Draegur
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        33 days ago

        actually i think i’ve heard people call it Fedi and I think it’d catch on.

    • @pyre
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      33 days ago

      bestie

      frendo

      callme

      hangout

      goobr

      reindeer

      sickduck

    • Robust Mirror
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      53 days ago

      You’re not wrong; Friendica, Diaspora, Pleroma, they all sound like some kind of bacteria or infection.

      • Cyrus Draegur
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        3 days ago

        tfw my doctor tests me positive for Pleroma Friendica Diaspora 😭💀

    • @[email protected]
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      4 days ago

      I think Friendica is a good name. And I don’t think it sounds like a bacterial strain that eats ligaments. I think of friendship when I hear it.

    • @acetanilide
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      33 days ago

      What is a trochee? I looked it up but I don’t understand

      • Cyrus Draegur
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        73 days ago

        Trochee refers to a specific structure and rhythm found in some words within the English lexicon.

        It’s about how many syllables there are, and which syllable(s) are accentuated.

        Trochees are two-syllable words where the first syllable is accentuated. The word “English” is itself a trochee. Like the other social media names I mentioned: TWIT-ter, FACE-book, DIS-cord, YOU-tube

        They’re generally snappy and fun to say, especially to string together (such as in the XKCD comic I linked)

        You can categorize every word in english as fitting some pattern of rhythm for its count of syllables

        Mastodon has three syllables with stress (accentuation) on the first. MAST-o-don.

        Its metrical categorization is called Dactylic, like these words:
        BI-cy-cle, TYP-ic-al, EL-eph-ant, PO-et-ry, MUR-mur-ing, END-less-ly.