[DoreenMichele]

"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.

[teekert]

Moreover, is it really so difficult to imagine that there are still people that don't like publicity these days?

[DoreenMichele]

Yeah, I just cannot comprehend what is going on in this discussion. Is this the same HN that hates Facebook for all of its privacy issues? But the people in some small village somehow forfeited their right to privacy because a few hundred years ago it was named something that now sounds funny to people in a different language?

It's bizarre.

[read_if_gay_]

That’s nonsensical. Because the town’s name is mildly meme worthy, these people are forfeiting their right to privacy? Sorry, what? And how is Facebook even remotely related to this discussion?

[SideburnsOfDoom]

I think you're mistreading the parent comment. And oddly too, because you do the same thing. You don't mean "these people are forfeiting their right to privacy" literally, do you? it's the opposite. Neither does the parent, it's a question, implied that the answer is "of course not!"

You made that even clearer with "Sorry, what?" but parent comment only make sense if that addendum is assumed.

[read_if_gay_]

Thanks for pointing that out, I see where you're coming from, but GP's other comments make it seem like a serious statement to me.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> there are still people that don't like publicity these days

Yes, but they don't post about it online, so no-one hears from them. They might even choose to live in a village with a 3-digit population count.

[ithkuil]

> In 2012, there were reports that the village of Fucking in Upper Austria attempted to change its name to Fugging through a referendum after receiving large amounts of prank phone calls from English speakers about the village's name.[3] According to these reports, they were unable to do so because Fugging in Lower Austria was already so named;

Prank phone calls are definitely more annoying than some tourists taking a picture at the town sign.

[riffraff]

GP didn't say taking pictures, but that the sign was being stolen.

I do not know if this is true in the specific case but I have met idiots who stole street signs, so this seems at least plausible.

[ephaeton]

I live about 5km away from Fucking. Their signs are _regularly_ stolen, even despite their countermeasures. They even stopped replacing way signs ( | Fucking > ) that were stolen.

[usrusr]

Almost seems like a privacy hack, living in a place that direction signs cannot point to. Makes me wonder if they were ever close to getting blanked out on Apple maps.

The brewery might lose some business long term, but for now they surely benefit from another lap in the news machine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking_Hell

[tasogare]

While the demographics stealing the sign might not totally overlap with those willing to pay to it, the village should consider opening a souvenir shop.

[chrisseaton]

Why should they do that? Why can’t they just get on with their lives in peace instead?

[bjohnson225]

Probably fair to assume that they weren’t raking in money from the “haha, the road sign has a rude word” tourism.

[Trufa]

One ought not to tell people what they ought to want.

[mantap]

Sounds like an opportunity to sell road signs to tourists.

[cinntaile]

I doubt they tried this but I agree that they should have.

[cblconfederate]

They could make millions from fucking tourists

[dewey]

They probably didn't, otherwise they would've not done it. They had hundreds of years of data to base that decision on.

[ranit]

More likely, only 20 years.

[xellisx]

Make the t-shirts!

[wraptile]

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.

[DoreenMichele]

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.

[setr]

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.

[DoreenMichele]

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.

[selestify]

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.

[DoreenMichele]

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.

[_underfl0w_]

"Merchandizing, where the real money from the movie is made."

  I recently passed through the town of Weed, California and bought a tie-dye hoodie from a gas station with the town name on it. Didn't need the hoodie, but they sold them so I bought one for the novelty. Voilà! Business angle.

[9HZZRfNlpR]

Probably they are not interested in this bad humor and selling hoodies. Also not everything in life is counted in dollars, selling a hoodie with a rapey joke? You think they need that.

[ThrowawayR2]

> "How do you think they can monetize it?"

Presumably the same way Hell, Michigan did. Apparently they sell souvenirs and hold events.

[DoreenMichele]

Although one theory of the origin of the name is the German word for light or bright, most people these days don't find the word Hell particularly offensive and it's not sexually explicit. Fuck or Fucking is still considered "extremely offensive" by some people and it's sexual.

But more to the point, if people in Hell, Michigan choose to monetize the name of their town instead of change it, hey, that's their choice and it should in no way dictate what people in Austria choose to do about the problem they currently have with the issues caused by the name of their town.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell,_Michigan

I don't know why people in this discussion feel like their solution or suggestion is more correct than what locals decided they wished to do about the problem. It's not like their solution involved sacrificing babies to a dark god.

[anoncake]

Why does it matter if something is considered offensive for sexual or religious reasons?

[usrusr]

Like, with a brewery?

Unfortunately they were a bit late with that, the beer that uses the village as it's namesake, Fucking Hell, is from a business a few miles over the border in Germany. (they surely won't rebrand though)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking_Hell

[oh_sigh]

Why exactly would anyone buy the officially licensed Hell shirts when there is nothing stopping anyone from printing that town name on anything?

How many people are going to hold an event in Fugging specifically because the name means a sexual act in a different language?

[quickthrower2]

How about “My sister went to fucking and all I got was this fucking T-shirt” T-shirt’s.

[DoreenMichele]

That's not even funny. Maybe "My sister/friend/whomever went to Austria and I all I got was this Fucking t-shirt" would be sort of funny.

But "She went to fucking and all I got was this fucking t-shirt" isn't really a good joke. There's no surprise element. There's no "gotcha." There's no epiphany of "Oh, I get it!"

[quickthrower2]

That was sort of the meta joke! “All I got was this T-shirt” T-shirt’s are not funny in the first place

[yabatopia]

It's a challenge.

"My Parents really liked Fucking but all they got was this Fucking T-shirt".

Let's make it a bit darker...

"My Brother and Sister really liked Fucking but all they got was Me" T-Shirt.

[anoncake]

I can't see that happening. Making bad jokes could make people think the people of Fugging are some kind of Germans. Austrians hate that.

[teekert]

Spoken like a true entrepreneur. But you know, there are people out there, in small villages that have quiet lives that nobody ever hears about and they are perfectly happy. I'm really amazed at all the "We can monetize this" and "It's free publicity" statements here. How about admiring these people for their wish to maintain tranquility in the village the know and love?

Edit: quite - quiet

[slx26]

Join now the club where "opportunity" is more valuable than "freedom"! (hey, it might be an evolutionary trait, but I suck at surviving and I'm ok with it)

[wraptile]

The second part of my comment was in the same spirit as well - how about we admire this peculiar linguistic artifact, embrace and enjoy it rather than optimize everything like robots. Europe especially is completely bent over preserving old cultural architecture and artifacts - what's wrong with wanting to preserve _new_ architecture and artifacts?

[chris_wot]

Well, there was a lager called Fucking Hell.

[DoreenMichele]

Translation: "Our Town Name's Light Beer"

Hell is the German word for light.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25225292

[n3k5]

I don't know anything about beer, but I've spent a minute looking this up before, so here's a surprise German lesson:

‘Hell‘ means bright. Sometimes, ‘light‘ is the correct translation (e.g. light blue is ‘hellblau‘ in German). But in this context, it means pale, as in pale lager[0]. Nothing to do with reduced alcohol content or calories. The German translation for that kind of ‘light‘ (as in ‘light beer‘) would be ‘leicht‘ (lightweight) or ‘light‘ (as a loanword from English).

Also, it's not ‘our town name‘; it's ‘their town name‘. Fucking Hell isn't made in Fucking; it's not even from Austria.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_lager#Helles

[cygx]

> The German translation for that kind of ‘light‘ (as in ‘light beer‘) would be ‘leicht‘

It can be used that way, but it's not the only meaning: Leicht und stark also refer to a beer's gravity[1] instead of its alcohol content per se. A Starkbier in particular is a beer with 16° on the Plato scale[2] (which does go along with more alcohol, so in a way this distinction is splitting hairs).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_(alcoholic_beverage)

[2] http://8degreesplato.com/2017/05/31/so-what-is-degrees-plato...

[DoreenMichele]

Thank you for that. I knew I was on shaky ground with the translation. I know nothing about beer and my German is rusty and I didn't do a lot of digging before posting.

My main point stands: It doesn't mean "fucking hell" in German.

Kind of like that song "What does the fox say?" The two brothers didn't expect it to be so successful. In fact, they intended it to be a joke on some TV show they were doing or something like that. They were planning ahead of time to be all "We got our big break and this is the garbage we produced!"

I talked to an American who was sure that it was intended to be a play on words. She heard it as "What the fucks?" and she figured that's why it was so popular.

That may well be part of why it took off -- because it's something for English speakers to snicker about -- but I kind of doubt it was originally planned that way. People who speak English as a second language -- or anything as a second language -- routinely say "bad" things without intending it or even realizing it.

So someone may be doing it ("it" being naming the beer something naughty to the English speaking ear) on purpose because it's funny to people who speak English. But this isn't a case of "laughing with you." It's very much a case of "laughing at you" and the people being laughed at aren't enjoying it and they decided to put a stop to it wrt their town name.

And I feel like I'm getting a lot of hostility for being on the side of the villagers who feel mistreated and don't want to put up with it anymore. And it's an icky thing to be feeling right now and to be observing how this went down overall.

[FrojoS]

Helles = Lager