zlacker

>>galonk+(OP)
"Don’t people have any sense of humour these days?” asked one OOeN reader.

Another noted: “They’re getting free publicity – they ought to have been happy to have a funny name."

Free publicity that leads to sign posts being stolen. For a tiny village of 100 people, this is likely a serious hardship. If it isn't bringing in more money than it's costing them, it's an attractive nuisance, not free publicity.

>>Doreen+eb
I guess if monetized properly big part of those 100 people could live off the name alone. It's also sad to see this tiny cultural artifact go just because few people are inconvenienced. The stone roads and tiny alleys in the old town are inconvenient yet we don't go bulldozing it all down.

>>wrapti+Yd
How do you think they can monetize it? How do you monetize random strangers coming to your town, taking photos of themselves in sometimes "lascivious poses" with your sign and sometimes stealing it? What's the business angle there?

It's a tiny village. Such places often have a real sense of community that you don't have elsewhere. Injecting a lot of sexual nonsense into their little town because of the name likely feels rather rapey to them.

That's sort of like the old fashioned advice that if a woman is going to be raped and can't avoid it, she should try to enjoy the ride -- which is all kinds of deeply offensive and morally depraved.

These people find this behavior offense, offensive enough that they changed the name. They don't seem to find the name offensive. They seem to only find the behavior of random people coming to their village offensive and they don't know another way to stop it.

>>Doreen+se
Like piracy, the easiest solution is probably to just sell a copy of the sign in a fashion (obviously) easier than theft.

I doubt the thrill of theft is a significant driver of it.

>>setr+df
Perhaps that solves the financial part, but it doesn't solve the part where people who speak some other language are sexualizing the name of their town which apparently wasn't named that way to make some kind of sexual statement.

I'm for the decriminalization of sex work, but I also think that needs to be something someone chooses and is not compelled to do. The very definition of rape hinges on the detail of consent, which is why we can distinguish between kink and rape: People can consent to BDSM. The definition of rape does not hinge on the detail of whether or not it is physically aggressive or even violent.

If their primary issue is that it is an affront to their sense of dignity, making money off of it doesn't fix the issue. That's a bit like saying "If you give a few bucks to the woman you raped, it's somehow okay now that she didn't want to have sex with you."

She's highly unlikely to feel like giving her money afterwards somehow makes it okay to assault her.

>>Doreen+Gf
Rape is a highly traumatic event. Getting offended at a foreigner’s well-meaning amusement that your town name means something funny in their language... doesn’t elicit much sympathy from me at all.

Now getting your signs stolen isn’t very nice at all and becomes less well-meaning, I agree. But I hardly think the joke itself is anything immoral at all.

>>selest+mh
So if your five year old child has a good view of this sign from their window at home in a tiny village or walks past it regularly on their way home from school and is thereby exposed to random strangers from across the globe pretending to have sex while taking photos, you are supposed to care more that random people on the internet feel you have no right to be incensed and change the name than about the negative impacts to the people of the village where you live?

I cannot fathom why so many people are objecting to their right to change the name of their village. They don't like what's happening. They don't need the world's permission to say "I can't stop assholes from around the globe from being assholes, but I can change the damn name that is their excuse for acting like butts to my town." and now people think it's the townspeople who are in the wrong and not the random assholes from across the globe whose bad behavior they got fed up with.

Wow.

I think I need to get off of HN for a bit. This is just ridiculous.

>>Doreen+Mh
The post was a suggestion to sell signs, not an approval of the portion of people taking photos that are in highly inappropriate poses.

So yes, this argument is ridiculous.

>>Dylan1+vn
I noted that it sounded like an attractive nuisance. I failed to list all the ways in which it was an attractive nuisance and only focused on the part where it's obviously costing a small town money.

Then HN pedantry and argumentation kicked in.

The townspeople clearly see it as an attractive nuisance and not as free publicity. They chose to change the name because it's such a nuisance. Now a bunch of people on HN feel the townspeople were wrong to handle it that way and have a zillion criticisms and solutions.

The townspeople didn't ask HNs permission or opinion. And a lot of the comments here before I noted that it's an attractive nuisance were basically junior high style humor listing all the towns with "bad word" names and giggling about it -- which I initially participated in and then deleted those comments to try to behave in accordance with HN rules and treat the article in a more serious fashion, at which point I made my comment about it being an attractive nuisance.

And that's apparently where I made my wrong turn for the day. And there is no cure for where that took me, it seems.

>>Doreen+ho
I think you made your wrong turn when you equated this to the heinous crime of rape. Few things are actually comparable to rape in severity