Here’s a bit of business advice: Before you decide on a name for your product, company, or program, first run it past a bunch of second graders and a bunch of frat boys.
If any of them giggle, throw it out and try again.
This specific example is made up for anonymity’s sake, but I’m surprised how often people don’t think to look at the acronyms/abbreviations of these things ahead of time. Who knew having a twelve-year-old’s sense of humor could be a legit business skill?
Lol, reminds me of an episode of “All in the Family”:
“Edith, we’re outta terlet paypah!”
“No we’re not, Archie, I just bought some yesterday, it’s in the kitchen.”
“…I ain’t IN the kitchen, Edith…”
“Oh… OHHH!!”
As a member of the Anal. Sci. community, I endorse this message :-/
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I have no words
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But I have a product using that exact word! It’s a hot sauce with an image of a chicken with something obviously stuckin its throat, in distress. It’s called the Choking Cock.
And yes, I’m more than aware of the meaning, but with some things, it’s just more fun to watch the more… pure kids squirm and blush when you point out the image and then ask them ‘Why? What did they think it means’?
“Ok, let’s try Direct-Informational Calculation Kit instead…
Nope, still a bad idea!” XD
Here in Canada, the Conservative Party and the Reform Party teamed up in 2000. At the big press announcement, they declared the new organization the “Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance party”.
The next day, they changed it to “Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance”, but the name “CCRAP” plagued them for their entire four-year existence.
And yet everyone forgets the classic example from GTA 3, Citizens Raging Against Phones
In Walt Disney World that new Toy Story Land is open. It has a ride called Alien Swirling Saucers… Did… Did you guys ride the Alien Swirling Saucers when you went down there?
(I know I’m horrible but this is the Pandora’s box you opened.)
There used to be a comic book series called the All-Star Squadron.
Bad abbreviation that seem to have slipped by. Star Trek: Discovery (ST:D)
Sounds about right. Someone tell me when the Picard series premieres. I’ll be staying away from new Trek until then.
So not first graders or third graders, but second graders?
Is this kind if like how Evil Overlords should run their plans by a third grader and fix anything that the kid catches?
It’s a subset, yes, usually used on whatever evil device they’re going to build.
I was thinking the same thing. Glad I checked the comments to see if I wasn’t the only one before commenting.
And in the Vita hacking community, you have jerks that do that stuff on purpose, with bigoted or otherwise horrible acronyms… ugh.
I was JUST going over this with my office a few days ago. They rolled out a new spreadsheet program: Financial Assistance Program. The enthusiastic email was so proud of how much FAPing would increase productivity.
Wish I could say that was an April Fools joke, but no. I had to explain internet slang to a bunch of suits.
“Size requirement”. For something that abbreviates to “COCK”. I see what you did there.
I think he realized it just as he said it.
Anybody else reminded of Trump and his Fair And Reciprocal Tariff (F.A.R.T.) idea?
I wince at a memory of a company (to be nameless) that at one time considered marketing their in-house game development software as “Structured Programming Object Oriented Gaming Environment” …. that’s right. Some in sales and marketing even liked the name “The SPOOGE Engine”… they were very confused when a few spoke out about it. Til they followed up on our suggestion to google “spooge” back at their desks. Hint: don’t.
Eh, it wasn’t that bad. Learned that there’s a type of Carribean music called Spouge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spouge
Reminds me of a Red Dwarf episode. They had an alien roaming around the ship and someone suggested they would form the “Cooperative League for the Incarceration of Terrifying Organisms and their Re-integration Into Society.”
Look up the name of St. Charles, MO public transit. I couldn’t even thought of it as a joke.
cocks!
er… you know… the strip from 28 Sep 2014?
That reminds me of a German Soap Opera they wanted to name it first Alles nur aus Liebe (Everything because of Love) well lucky they spotted it before it was to late
Rumor has it that when Fresno was putting together their public transit options, they wanted to take a page out of the San Francisco Bay Area’s playbook and, similarly to BART, name it the Fresno Area Rapid Transit.
The idea was summarily scrapped for Fresno Area eXpress.
Seattle created the South Lake Union Trolley.
They actually rolled it out into service and had all the trolleys painted before someone pointed it out.
At my workplace, one of the teams named themselves such that their acronym was FART. The CEO, who was part of said team, thought it was hilarious. =D
Way-back-when… My buddy and I did a lot of autocrossing. We called ourselves the Free American Racing Team. 😉