Which things have you avoided or embraced on the name alone?

ALostInquirer@lemm.ee to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 74 points –

Is it shallow, or petty, to decide based on name alone? Yeah, pretty much, but there's probably something, a product or service or site, that the name has made you gloss right over it or jump to it ASAP.

What are some examples that spring to mind for you?

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I avoided the Instant Pot for a long time because it sounded cheap and all those functions couldn't possibly work well.

I was wrong. I was so wrong.

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Warby Parker. Something about the name just completely frosts me. I know I should grow up and give them a chance (because Luxotica is fucking evil). But it really turns me off. "Warby Parker"...sounds like the name of some kid who's dad owns racehorses.

I think part of the reason I use Zenni Optical online is because Warby Parker sounds like a place that'll offer grandma glasses for stupid-expensive prices.

I tried Zenni a couple of times. Really wanted to like them. But the glasses they sent me were horrible. I do have a somewhat complex prescription, though. I suspect for basic prescriptions they are OK.

Mine are basic and yes, zenni crushes it every time. I even get my phone number lazered into the ear thingies so that people can call me if I lose them.

That's because Warby Parker is a place that'll offer grandma glasses for stupid-expensive prices.

This is hilarious because it invokes same exact feeling for me when I hear the name. It just screams "New York socialite."

Glad I'm not the only one. I am highly averse to anything that sounds like a "lifestyle brand". Hollister and such. I'll never understand people who wear expensive brand name t-shirts and provide free advertising for giant corporations. Ryan George made a pretty funny YouTube video about this strange phenomenon.

I lived in a city, had occasional need for a car. A car club would have been ideal. Don't need to spend thousands on a car upfront, don't need to deal with maintenance, don't need to secure parking.

Problem? The only car club in town was called whizzgo. Like, a toddler word for urination. Written on all the cars in big colourful letters. No thanks.

This very Lemmy account is from embracing its domain name.

When I shop on Amazon and see the obvious China companies that sell the same product but have the strangest names. Definitely avoid those products. If I see a.company only ships via fedex, I avoid doing business with that company. Dang, I know I have more just can't think of them right now with morning brain.

Edit: I avoid many major brands too. I belive them to be selling because of the name alone rather than having a quality product anymore. Dr Scholls is one of those,

They're all random names consisting of 7 capital letters too DINGBAO, VXSUFEN, WEGTHOS, etc.

At least "dingbao" can be pronounced. Some of the others sound like names for elder gods in bad Lovecraftian fanfic.

Love it when they consist only of consonants. Saw something along the lines of XYGDLFW the other day

yeah, I do still buy from Chinese companies sometimes, but only if they are smart enough to use a name that doesn't sound like someone just used a random password generator and said "good enough"... or ... whatever the Cantonese equivalent of "good enough" is, I suppose.

Can’t hear Uber without hearing Nazis prattle about ubermensch.

…Are you aware that “über” is a normal German word meaning “over”?

Yes, ubermensch is a loanword in English, favored by cringy edgelords like the founder of Uber.

Do you have a source for your claim that Uber is named after “übermensch”? I couldn't find it anywhere. Some webpages say that it's just named after the prefix „über-“.

Do you know most non German speaking people have heard the word übermench ;-) ?

Yes. Doesn't mean that anyone who uses the word „über“ is a Nazi.

I thought Fight Club was a boxing movie and had no interest in seeing it. I only saw it because I tried downloading Jackass on Kazaa and it ended up being Fight Club. The intro had me hooked.

Wait... It's not a boxing movie? Haven't seen it yet for the same reason.

You're lucky it wasn't Bill Clinton "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky" instead.

Any product name which starts with "smart" or ends with "maker".

Both are just e-waste OOTB.

Smartphone

If it wasn't for the 5 ish messaging apps I have to maintain and my recent move to a new city (need maps), I'd try to avoid that one too.

So easy! Whatsapp!

Dumbest. Name. Ever.

So hopelessly of its time, namely that moment when the word "app" was the coolest thing ever among normies because iPhone.

And, cherry on the top, coined by geeks with language skills so poor that they thought "app" rhymes with "up", which it absolutely does not to anyone who speaks English properly.

What an embarrassingly dumb name.

I appreciate what you're saying, but given the literal billions of users I'd say they absolutely nailed it.

If you want to make money hand-over-fist , you can't shy away from the "normies." IMO, using "normies" unironically is way more cringe.

Does judging books by their cover count? Seems like in the same vein...

In the 90s, I avoided Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series books because the Baen covers were awful, and at the time she hadn't written books for any other publisher so I didn't get introduced to her via that route. In the 2010s I finally read her books...and I was mad as hell that they'd put such ugly covers on them back in the day, because I would've been crazy about this series in the 90s!

in the same vein, I'm so glad they reprinted Glen Cook's Black Company books, because no one I tried to get interested in them would read them with the old covers. I'm not sure even I did. I certainly can't imagine I deliberately chose to pick up a book with this cover.

I've got that paperback.

I used to! I picked up a set of Black Co at a used book store to try and loan out. finally didn't come back after I "lost" the cover and apologized for the state of the book I was loaning. but got another convert, so a win in my book.

Avoided: Captain Laserhawk - A Blood Dragon Remix. The title is just so ....edgy. I took one look at it and immediatly lost all interest.

Spoiler: Big mistake. Once I did finally try it out, I immediatly binged all 6 episodes and was devastated that there wasn't more. Fair warning tho, the 18+ rating is completely justified.

Embraced: The Owl House. I had no idea what the show was even about, but the name has a nice ring to it so I got curious and gave it a try ... with a similar result as mentioned above (binge it all and be devastated that there isn't more of it)

Semi-related tho not about the name: I refuse to shop in ANY store that has a self-checkout. And by that, I do not mean that I just refuse to use the self-checkout - I will reject the entire store for that sh*tty business decision. You either employ enough actual cashiers or you can go jump in the lake. Yes it is petty and childish, but I still feel it is justified.

Where do you get groceries? The only grocery store near me without any self checkout is Trader Joe's, and while I usually shop there first, there's always something I need that they don't carry.

I live in Germany. There are eight different supermarkets within driving distance (less than half an hour), and two smaller markets within walking distance. Two of the big markets have self-checkouts, so I stopped shopping there altogether out of spite.

EDIT: just to visualize the statement, this is one of the cities around these parts (~150k people). Not my actual home as I don't post personal stuff online, but a good representation of the situation.

Everything within the blue area is less than 20 minutes walking distance away from the blue marker in the middle, and every red marker is a supermarket. If someone dislikes a shop for any reason, it is a matter of minutes to find a different one.

"Captain Laserhawk" sounds like a car audio store from the 1990s.

The owl house was so sweet. Warms my heart! Had to show it to my SO who was a bit reluctant at first but grew to love it :)

Did you know that TOH has its own community on Lemmy? !theowlhouse@lemmy.world

Mostly MoringMarks comics, but they're an incredilbly in-character work of art ;)

(Sort by "oldest first" because there are lots of ongoing stories between the oneshots)

Yes! I've seen it pop up in c/all occasionally :)

I'd love to be able to boycott places with self checkouts as I hate that shit too but I also need to eat and unless I started just eating crisps and sweets from the local newsagents I wouldn't be able to buy any food at all around here :(

What the shit? Self checkouts are the best things ever in invented. It saves me from 1 awkward interaction a day.

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For 3 or 4 seasons I completely ignored Game of Thrones - the name just threw me off. To some extend I'm happy I did - there was a lot of content to catch up to when I finally did give the first episode a shot :)

How'd that turn out?

It ended up in my top of all time :) Next to The Wire and Breaking Bad.

It ENDED in your top of all time?

Well done for not letting the end ruin the beginning, I'll rewatch it every so often but my god it leaves a sour taste these days. The last season is enough to undo all the good work they'd done to that point, it's such a shame :(

The ending is not great, but it definitely was an ending. Some shows can't even manage that. And to me it hasn't spoilt all the previous seasons - those were solid.

Yeah I still rewatch and enjoy the heck out of it, but then the choice is either an incomplete story or a godawful ending with characters that barely resemble the ones I enjoyed initially.

I don't hate the show as a whole but it doesn't get near my top 10, yet it could've been my number 1 of all time if they turned the last 2 seasons into 4 or 5 with the same quality as the first 4 or 5.

I honestly don't even hate the final picture, it's just the complete lack of justification to get us there I can't stand, and the embarrassing endings of some characters who deserved more (or should have died sooner).

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OpenTofu. What the hell were they thinking?

I don't eat tofu, nor been around folks that do (or do and talk about it), so I'm whiffing here. Is it because tofu spoils when left open, or is there a pronunciation part I'm missing?

It's a fork of Terrafom, it's an IT thing: https://opentofu.org/

They started with the name OpenTF but went with this...thing.

Ooooh, it's that kind of name. Yeah that's bad. Thanks for clarifying!

Damn... I didn't know that m and I'm devops though we don't touch terraform

That's so bad D;

I've been playing World of tanks blitz. I had fun, then discovered there is a world of warships blitz as well, which has a Dutch line of ships. It was the 1st game I heard of with Dutch content, so I'm now kinda hooked on it, chasing after all Dutch ships. It wasn't exactly the name of the game, but more the hint of the content.

BTW I'm Dutch, when you haven't guessed it already. ;)

I have one that I don't think is shallow or petty. I avoid the Wondergrove cannabis company because there is a children's show/educational program of the same name. While state regulators are making cannabis brands who have made no attempts to advertise to or appeal to children change their packaging to single color designs to reduce their appeal to children, there is a weed brand named after a kid's show that calls its flower line "Field Trip." I call it "Kid Weed" because it makes me think of the WKUK Kid Beer sketch. And I don't buy it.

Prejudices can shield you from stuff, but they can also make you miss stuff you later hope you didn't.

Trying out new things in life is an effective way to learn something new about yourself and the world around you.

Trying out new things in life is an effective way to learn something new about yourself and the world around you.

Part of why I'm asking tbh! I'm blanking on stuff I've avoided based on names, but I'm hoping some replies here might highlight them as, "Avoided but...!"

You could try out setting up a bucket list!
Whatever you come up with what you'd like to try or experience, write it down!

I have over 200 entries on mine.

It wasn't the name alone that did it, but I got the Newbury Comics pressings of Phanerozoic I and Phanerozoic II (by The Ocean) on vinyl because A) the name is cool, and B) the pressings looked cool. Turns out the albums sound cool too.

I gave The Crazy World of Arthur Brown a try because of the album artwork. Turns out it's now one of my favorite albums.

I'd heard Ziltoid the Omniscient was good, but what really won me over was the album artwork. Between the cheesy name and cheesy artwork, I had to give it a listen. It's easily one of the greatest albums of all time.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.

I've been considering getting one of Intel's Raptor Lake cpus.

Uh, I'm trying to think if there's anything else. There have been games that have caught my eye purely because of the name, but none of them were that great iirc. I think Risk of Rain mighta been one of them, and that one was pretty good; but most of the games I've tried based on name alone were pretty meh from what I remember.

Penny Dreadful. I just… can’t.

Why? I thought it was a fitting name given the source material that inspired it (although, granted it was more Gothic novels but still...).

There was a place near where I used to live called The Bargin Store. I tend to avoid places that can't spell their own name correctly.

Oscar Meyer products. I've never eaten one knowingly and I plan to keep it that way.

Thought of another! I don't have opportunity to go there anyway, cos they're not in my country, but I always thought In-N-Out Burger was a uniquely terrible name.

So, it's a burger that will be in and out. Why will it be in and out? Are you going to vomit it back up? Or is it because it'll give you diarrhea? Or what else could In-N-Out mean? Sex? Why are you making me think about sex in such proximity to vomit and diarrhea? Honestly, I'm not hungry anymore.

I always thought it was a deliberately horrible name to court controversy, but it turns out the owner is a conservative Christian so it may be genuine tone deaf idiocy.

...it's because you go in and out of the restaurant quickly. Because it's fast food.

Ironically it's the fast food joint with some of the longest wait times in the industry.

Well yeah you need a cover story. You can't just call it "vomity shit fuck burger"