Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Larry Flynt has died

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 154 posts

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#11

Post by eyelidlessness »

ladberg wrote: post #9
eyelidlessness wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit on top because I don’t want to improperly malign the parent commenter or get undue upvotes. I misunderstood the intent of parent comment and my response was to a criticism of sex work/publication of such, not to a criticism of the ways the title might be misread. Leaving my original comment below for posterity/accountability, and for anyone else who comes along and does think it’s inappropriate to discuss sex wo…

I'm assuming OP meant it as a grammatical ambiguity for someone who doesn't know "Hustler" is a magazine (because as the first word it's capitalized regardless).

You have a more charitable assumption than I do. We shall see.

Edit: your interpretation was right! And I’m glad for that.

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#12

Post by soheil »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #8
soheil wrote: post #2

The word Hustler being the first word of the sentence is unfortunate.

Edit on top because I don’t want to improperly malign the parent commenter or get undue upvotes. I misunderstood the intent of parent comment and my response was to a criticism of sex work/publication of such, not to a criticism of the ways the title might be misread. Leaving my original comment below for posterity/accountability, and for anyone else who comes along and does think it’s inappropriate to discuss sex wo…

Not sure where you're going with this, but I was just referring to the ambiguity in the title since there are a lot of stories on HN about SV founders who are viewed as hustlers. Quotes or moving the word would work, not a big deal obviously.

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#14

Post by teh_klev »

soheil wrote: post #2

The word Hustler being the first word of the sentence is unfortunate.

Do we really have to censor or edit titles to suite a bunch of potentially "offended" people? Oh the irony.

We all know what Hustler is. And if you're a gormless startup founder picking that as a name for your app or product, well that's your fault, learn you some history and watch "The People vs Larry Flint"[0]. Flint's case in the Supreme Court was hugely important, despite being a "purveyor of filth", and strengthened free speech rights in the US, in particular Hustler Magazine vs Jerry Falwell[1].

[0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117318/

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt#Legal_battles

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#15

Post by p1necone »

ggm wrote: post #4
soheil wrote: post #2

The word Hustler being the first word of the sentence is unfortunate.

would "Hustler" (ie quoted) be better? What specifically about this did you dislike? The idea of a generalised hustler type, as a founder (somebody who founds, and hustles) or .. ?

It's just confusing if you don't know who he is. It's easy to misread it as "(Hustler), (founder) and (free-speech activist)" instead of "(Hustler founder) and (free-speech activist)".

Of course reading TFA alleviates that confusion pretty quickly.

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#16

Post by p1necone »

teh_klev wrote: post #14
soheil wrote: post #2

The word Hustler being the first word of the sentence is unfortunate.

Do we really have to censor or edit titles to suite a bunch of potentially "offended" people? Oh the irony. We all know what Hustler is. And if you're a gormless startup founder picking that as a name for your app or product, well that's your fault, learn you some history and watch "The People vs Larry Flint"[0]. Flint's case in the Supreme Court was hugely important, despite being a "purveyor of filth", and strength…

I don't think this person is complaining about the title being offensive, just grammatically confusing.

If you don't recognize who he is it's hard to tell whether the title is saying that he's "a hustler and a founder" or "the founder of Hustler".

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#17

Post by slibhb »

soheil wrote: post #12
eyelidlessness wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit on top because I don’t want to improperly malign the parent commenter or get undue upvotes. I misunderstood the intent of parent comment and my response was to a criticism of sex work/publication of such, not to a criticism of the ways the title might be misread. Leaving my original comment below for posterity/accountability, and for anyone else who comes along and does think it’s inappropriate to discuss sex wo…

Not sure where you're going with this, but I was just referring to the ambiguity in the title since there are a lot of stories on HN about SV founders who are viewed as hustlers. Quotes or moving the word would work, not a big deal obviously.

The previous poster misunderstood your comment because "hustler" is also used to refer to a male prostitute. Therefore your post was "insufficiently sex-work-positive"...or something

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#18

Post by soheil »

teh_klev wrote: post #14
soheil wrote: post #2

The word Hustler being the first word of the sentence is unfortunate.

Do we really have to censor or edit titles to suite a bunch of potentially "offended" people? Oh the irony. We all know what Hustler is. And if you're a gormless startup founder picking that as a name for your app or product, well that's your fault, learn you some history and watch "The People vs Larry Flint"[0]. Flint's case in the Supreme Court was hugely important, despite being a "purveyor of filth", and strength…

No we don't. I was not objecting to Larry Flynt or the Hustler Magazine in any way, it was just a point of grammatical ambiguity, see my reply to another user complaining about the same thing as you are: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26097449

Looks like I've struck a chord among some HN users unintentionally.

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#20

Post by teh_klev »

p1necone wrote: post #16
teh_klev wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really have to censor or edit titles to suite a bunch of potentially "offended" people? Oh the irony. We all know what Hustler is. And if you're a gormless startup founder picking that as a name for your app or product, well that's your fault, learn you some history and watch "The People vs Larry Flint"[0]. Flint's case in the Supreme Court was hugely important, despite being a "purveyor of filth", and strength…

I don't think this person is complaining about the title being offensive, just grammatically confusing. If you don't recognize who he is it's hard to tell whether the title is saying that he's "a hustler and a founder" or "the founder of Hustler".

> just grammatically confusing.

I disagree, it says "Hustler founder". Replace "Hustler" with and you have many a title on HN any day of the week that is " founder...." with no confusion.

The parent to my post said "The word Hustler being the first word of the sentence is unfortunate.". I'm guessing this is because of the nature and business of the company, i.e. hardcore porn, not due to a grammatical misunderstanding.

Post reply on HN