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Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

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Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#81

Post by stormcode »

stormcode wrote: post #19

As much of a chuckle as I got from this article... It's actually not hard.

Ahhh, I'm being down voted for saying this isn't actually hard.

Maybe having the last name Butts on the internet IS hard after all.

(In case it's not clear, this is my last name)

The only trouble I have ever had was Facebook locking me out of my account in 2011 and making me send them a photo of my ID before being let back in. Took a month.

The funny thing is I have a random Facebook account with a totally fake city and name for a character in a game I play, and never had any trouble with that!

Never had a registration problem on any site, though.

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#82

Post by JohnWilcox »

dx87 wrote: post #7

A similar problem happens when the name itself is only considered offensive in certain cultures, but is completely benign in the culture of the person with the name. I remember two gaming related incidents where people were blocked from making accounts; one was a south american using "negro" as his username being prevented from creating an account, even though english speakers with the username "black" are fine; the…

I think the real problem that is totally overlooked is the whole authoritarian nature of this paternalism of monitoring people as to their "offensiveness". It's pure and unadulterated authoritarianism and controlling to declare yourself as the moral arbiter of what is and isn't offensive and what should and shouldn't be allowed. And no, it's not a matter of whether you CAN legally do so, it's a matter of whether you SHOULD be an authoritarian dictator.

How about giving people a choice instead of playing Little Lord Fauntleroy and controlling everyone's actions. How about just giving users the option to block "offensive" or even just possibly "offensive" names and terms and words, instead of going all paternalistic jerk.

It is something that has bothered me for a long while now, especially in places like Reddit, where the whole fundamental concept of the site was totally and utterly undermined by the authoritarian mod squad that makes the whole community voting/self-regulation a facade when it's not being used by the angry mob to metaphorically burn the witch that dared to say something that wasn't their favorite thing to hear.

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#83

Post by fooker »

philwelch wrote: post #24
dx87 wrote: post #7

A similar problem happens when the name itself is only considered offensive in certain cultures, but is completely benign in the culture of the person with the name. I remember two gaming related incidents where people were blocked from making accounts; one was a south american using "negro" as his username being prevented from creating an account, even though english speakers with the username "black" are fine; the…

> A muslim coworker told me that "jihad" being synonymous with "holy war" is pretty much just a western thing, it could also be referring to an internal struggle, so it's similar to christians naming a child "Chastity". Which actually explains a lot about the infamous quote, "The main character, Spongebob, lives inside a giant pineapple. How do you think he acquired that house? Through jihad."

Acquired the house through 'internal struggle'? How does that make sense?

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#84

Post by Symbiote »

tokai wrote: post #41

I have an ø in my name. It is especially annoying when entering payment details and I have to input my name as it appears on my credit card. It is surprisingly often that only ascii is accepted. I would guess the anglo-internet is hell if you're from Asia.

An American user of my software was yesterday complaining that she didn't like seeing the weird letters in names etc, and wanted them stripped out.

I argued that changing Ø to O was just as wrong as a Norwegian some time ago perhaps changing her name's W to V, and that was obviously unacceptable.

(I'm not sure how realistic this is, but I've seen an old child's alphabet poster that didn't include W.)

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#85

Post by cuddlybacon »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #71
tokai wrote: post #41

I have an ø in my name. It is especially annoying when entering payment details and I have to input my name as it appears on my credit card. It is surprisingly often that only ascii is accepted. I would guess the anglo-internet is hell if you're from Asia.

I pretty much never input my name as it appears on my credit card. I have yet to have anyone (in person or online) complain about this, despite instructions saying to do so. (Specifically, my middle initial appears on my credit card, but I never fill it in when buying stuff online.)

I have had purchases declined because I put "John Smith" and not "John X Smith" as my credit card said.

Could be different since I'm not in the US.

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#86

Post by philwelch »

fooker wrote: post #83
philwelch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A muslim coworker told me that "jihad" being synonymous with "holy war" is pretty much just a western thing, it could also be referring to an internal struggle, so it's similar to christians naming a child "Chastity". Which actually explains a lot about the infamous quote, "The main character, Spongebob, lives inside a giant pineapple. How do you think he acquired that house? Through jihad."

Acquired the house through 'internal struggle'? How does that make sense?

He struggled in life to improve his standard of living to the point where he managed to accomplish having an undersea pineapple to live in? I don't know, man.

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#87

Post by xkcd-sucks »

maxerickson wrote: post #79
davidw wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unoriginal or not funny ones; if they're unique and not some lame meme, they'll often get upvoted

The mods discourage humor because it tends to metastasize into tedious offtopic threads, which I guess is true enough. Readers think they punish bad jokes and reward good ones, but the stupid Butts pun is doing great while the absurdist gem about Leonard Nimoy secretly wanting to be Kirk and living it out for a year in the white pages (and then someone working with him forgetting his name!) was nuked from orbit.

The humor just has to be dry enough to maintain plausible deniability. Kind of like flirting in a corporate setting

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#88

Post by tomp »

Alex3917 wrote: post #80
rectangletangle wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually wrote a full-stack web service to handle people's names, specifically to help avoid situations like this. My best advice: treat people's names as a potentially very long and entirely arbitrary text field. Don't assume anything without their confirmation, even if it seems obvious, because somewhere out there someone's name will violate that assumption. My research did conclude that nearly all names are belo…

> treat people's names as a potentially very long and entirely arbitrary text field The problem is that you still need to deal with unicode attacks, sql attacks, js attacks, css attacks, regex attacks, etc. There's nothing 'arbitrary' about sanitizing any user-inputted text field, and it's especially difficult to do so a culturally sensitive way. It's a good problem you're solving though. It's a great job interview q…

> since to get someone's first name given their full name

I never understood why that's necessary in the first place. Simply have inputs called "full name" and "address" and let people type in whatever, similar to how many websites now have "name" and "title" (as in Mr, Mrs, Reverend, ...), which is a partial and culturally insensitive solution to a similar problem.

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#89

Post by rectangletangle »

tomp wrote: post #88
Alex3917 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> treat people's names as a potentially very long and entirely arbitrary text field The problem is that you still need to deal with unicode attacks, sql attacks, js attacks, css attacks, regex attacks, etc. There's nothing 'arbitrary' about sanitizing any user-inputted text field, and it's especially difficult to do so a culturally sensitive way. It's a good problem you're solving though. It's a great job interview q…

> since to get someone's first name given their full name I never understood why that's necessary in the first place. Simply have inputs called "full name" and "address" and let people type in whatever, similar to how many websites now have "name" and "title" (as in Mr, Mrs, Reverend, ...), which is a partial and culturally insensitive solution to a similar problem.

The biggest problem with this strategy is it isn't idiomatic to refer to someone by their full name in many contexts. However given its simplicity, and cultural neutrality, a single full name field should be the default choice IMO.

Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'

#90

Post by dmurray »

brians wrote: post #45

I had John Fread write in last year. His whole family had learned to be careful picking usernames, and more careful as WAFs and such grew popular.

I'm normally pretty good at this, but I don't get either part of this. What's potentially offensive about a Mr or Mrs Fread? And what's WAF here?
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