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Mastodon Renaming “Toots” to “Posts”

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Re: Mastodon Renaming “Toots” to “Posts”

#31

Post by TulliusCicero »

dsabanin wrote: post #24
bigyikes wrote: post #22

I know little about Mastodon, but it seems like somebody went out of their way to make the cringiest sounding product possible. “Hey man, I just tooted on mastodon!” It really sounds like parody. I hope I am just missing the point. You might say this is a superficial criticism, but I think naming is important when it comes to social appeal. At least, it becomes important when the naming has gone so horribly wrong. If…

I just googled Mastodon, and I think you're right. Now I'm going to go tweet about it.

Even when 'google' as a verb was brand new, I don't remember it sounding awkward.

Re: Mastodon Renaming “Toots” to “Posts”

#33

Post by marcinzm »

bogwog wrote: post #26
quesera wrote: post #7

I approve. No one asked me, but if they had, I'd have opined that the pre-cuting of your nomenclature is usually the result of too much time spent thinking about branding and not enough time building features. Note that "tweet" was spawned organically by the community, and Twitter did not adopt the word formally for a couple years after it was in popular use.

> is usually the result of too much time spent thinking about branding and not enough time building features. Uh, I think you might have it backwards there. The Mastodon folks probably didn't spend enough time thinking about branding.

I feel it's more that they spent too much thinking about branding but they were just not very good at it.

Re: Mastodon Renaming “Toots” to “Posts”

#35

Post by int3 »

bigyikes wrote: post #22

I know little about Mastodon, but it seems like somebody went out of their way to make the cringiest sounding product possible. “Hey man, I just tooted on mastodon!” It really sounds like parody. I hope I am just missing the point. You might say this is a superficial criticism, but I think naming is important when it comes to social appeal. At least, it becomes important when the naming has gone so horribly wrong. If…

> I hope I am just missing the point.

Pretty sure it's a pun for the French `tout suite` -- "right now / ASAP". Pretty clever actually given how much value people place on immediacy on social media...

Re: Mastodon Renaming “Toots” to “Posts”

#36

Post by gojomo »

inopinatus wrote: post #29
skierguy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. As an American, I would be much less likely to use or spread good word about a product that centered around the act of "tooting". Our culture sees the word as silly, childish, and a bit gross. I could get used to it eventually, but if it's the first thing I see about the product, I'm probably going to find something else to use that doesn't make me think of farting or introduce fart terminology into my everyday…

Being a native English speaker from another country I don't possess this association at all, and have to dig quite deep to remember that Americans do. I do get tootsuite => toute de suite i.e. a sense of immediacy, the present moment, with greater impact for being a bilingual pun. Along with that, the onomatopoeic elephant. Cynical take: notwithstanding the denial in the PR, that original author knew the scatological…

As a very young child & native American English speaker, I was told the rhyme,

Beans, beans, the magical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot.

That cemented the association with farts, but 'toot' as in 'toot your own horn' (idiom for self-promotion), or even just literally tooting a horn, are also strong associations. So it's not exclusively, or primarily, a word for farts to my ears – but that's one of the top few potential meanings.

Re: Mastodon Renaming “Toots” to “Posts”

#37

Post by jjtheblunt »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #31
dsabanin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just googled Mastodon, and I think you're right. Now I'm going to go tweet about it.

Even when 'google' as a verb was brand new, I don't remember it sounding awkward.

and "go ogle" actually has the approximate meaning that "google" took on as a verb (phrase).

Re: Mastodon Renaming “Toots” to “Posts”

#38

Post by Uehreka »

quesera wrote: post #7

I approve. No one asked me, but if they had, I'd have opined that the pre-cuting of your nomenclature is usually the result of too much time spent thinking about branding and not enough time building features. Note that "tweet" was spawned organically by the community, and Twitter did not adopt the word formally for a couple years after it was in popular use.

I’m pretty sure there are still some people who were on Twitter early, are grumpy that “tweet” was what caught on, and still say “toot” in regards to posting Twitter statuses.

Re: Mastodon Renaming “Toots” to “Posts”

#39

Post by ragnese »

Lame. There's nothing wrong with something being a little bit funny and irreverent. Not everything needs corporate marketing polish.

I assumed it was making fun of Twitter. Honestly, I'm a little disappointed that it wasn't intentionally using "toot" as a double entendre.

Re: Mastodon Renaming “Toots” to “Posts”

#40

Post by ragnese »

ggggtez wrote: post #23
bscphil wrote: post #10

> The word “toot” is a part of mastodon, it fits, people know what you mean. If you take that away you take away a part of mastodon’s soul. Proof people will react dramatically to basically any change, I guess. More importantly, as Blikkentrekker has pointed out, this hasn't been merged yet, and in fact from the comments seems to be very unpopular. Possibly it won't be merged at all.

> people know what you mean If someone tells me "hey wanna toot with me" I certainly don't think I'd have a clue what they meant.

If someone said "I tweeted about that" 15 years ago, would you have had a clue?

If someone said "I Googled it" 20-whatever years ago?

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