[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.

[selestify]

I’m not objecting to them changing their name, they can do whatever they want with their own town. I’m objecting to the idea that it’s somehow immoral for foreigners to find something about your town amusing.

And yeah, maybe don’t be so prudish. Children seeing random strangers shaking their hips isn’t the end of the world. I personally find that ridiculous. But probably a little bit less ridiculous still than your initial comparison of this to rape of all things.

> I think I need to get off of HN for a bit.

Goodbye.

[ce4]

Exactly this, the people from Austria and southern Germany don't find that name offensive at all. They've had enough. And now they exert their right to be left alone and not be harassed by a serious number of english speaking idiots. Places ending in -ing hasnt the same grammatical meaning like doing something, that scheme is really common (Mering, Kissing, Manching, Piding, Peiting, and hundreds more). It's the same idiots that beleaguer known instagram photo spots - just a worse kind. And only for some quick silly joke that humiliates the people there. This will hopefully stop the influx of assholes stealing the village's signpost, "insta posing" at the village sign and making prank calls. Also note that normal people live there, probably in a closer knit arrangement than you normally would assume (3 digit inhabitants). I'm rather sure that persons who profit off the infamous name are looked down to (eg. the silly "Fucking Hell" beer brand, "hell" meaning light in that case in german). Dont forget it's normal people living over there, Doctors, Engineers, Farmers - and they want to be treated that way :)

PS: The pronunciation will not change.

[zeroc8]

Austrian here. I don't think they have much of a problem with the sexual aspect of the name, but while it may be funny initially, the joke really gets old after years and years of prank calls. I guess they just have had enough.

[Dylan16807]

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.

[ce4]

I'm not living there but I would guess that profiteering off the name is seen with contempt as it approves of the meaning. At least for older people. Tbh, your suggestion to cash in on that silly phenomena wouldnt make it stop. Not everything that can be profitable needs to be done :-)

[DoreenMichele]

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.

[_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.