• Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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    1 day 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@sh.itjust.works
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      41 minutes 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@lemm.ee
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        18 minutes 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???

    • Robust Mirror
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      7 hours ago

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

      • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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        6 hours 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.

    • Mac@mander.xyz
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      24 hours ago

      Maston
      Fedverse
      Friendic

      These kinda suck, tbh. Might need a full rebrand.

      • Jupiter Rowland@sh.itjust.works
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        34 minutes 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@lemm.ee
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        23 hours 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”)

    • Faresh@lemmy.ml
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      24 hours 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.