Calling things unofficial names as a positive practice
I really like how sometimes, things will have an 'official' name, but most people just call them something completely different (even though they might know full well what the official name is). E.g.:
Elon Musk changed the website's name to X, but most people still call it Twitter.
The Anish Kapoor sculpture in Chicago is officially titled Cloud Gate, but everyone calls it The Bean (it looks like a giant shiny bean).
When I was an undergrad there was a nightclub called Cindy's, but that was not what it said on the building. Basically under a previous management it had been called Cindy's, and the name had been passed down through various generations of students. (I do not know what the official name was).
Why do I like this? It feels like a fun sign of the indomitability of the human spirit, or something; the fact that it's hard to top-down control how people think of things, how they divide the world. Sometimes when people make top-down decisions we just have to put up with it (e.g., if a cafe we like closes down, or a website/app developer changes it for the worse), so it's nice that sometimes we can just be like 'nope'.
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Amber Dawn
in reply to Amber Dawn • •Similar incident maybe not known to the Americans: they ran a poll to name a polar research ship, where people could write in suggestions. Someone suggested the name "Boaty McBoatface", and this won by a landslide. However, the powers-that-be boringly decided not to honour this :p (They called the ship RRS Sir David Attenborough)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaty_Mc…
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Adam Scherlis
in reply to Amber Dawn • •There's a line in a Dessa song ("Dixon's Girl") that I particularly like:
"There was a snow storm in Jackson
When you and I met
At a club called Saint Sebastian's
But the sign said something different"
Why would a club in Mississippi be unofficially called "Saint Sebastian's" and officially called something else? Makes u think.
(St. Sebastian is the unofficial patron saint of homosexuality.)
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