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Comment by jamesrcole | Hacker News Reader

I think the term "toots" is spectacularly bad, and could majorly hinder broader uptake of their service.

Word of mouth (or 'word of text') is a major way services like this spread. Imagine discussions of Twitter in the media but where the words "tweet" and "tweeted" are replaced with "toot" and "tooted".

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I love open source software, I hate Facebook and I dislike twitter. People in my community want to know what I think about technology, and I’m strongly inclined to recommend stuff that isn’t FB, Google, Apple, etc.

But a mastodon “tweet” is called a “toot”? Honestly? Am I insane? Is it just in the USA that that means “fart”? It truly is spectacularly bad. Branding and naming matters, and it’s not shareholders that care. Users care.

The free software movement likes silly things like these.

The main dev of Mastodon is not American. Toot just means the noise that is made with a trunk, like tweet is supposed to be the same for birds. It's only in the U.S. that 'toot' is some kind of synonym of 'fart' or whatever and I'm honestly tired of Americans imposing their own cultural thinking on everything, instead of trying to actually understand it. The majority of people do not live in the U.S.

It's not just the U.S. I'm from Australia and it's the same here. I would imagine it's also like that in other countries.

In any case, even just considering the US market, it's clearly a very large and important one for any software system. And, what a word means there has nothing to do with Americans imposing things on others.

Why is nicknaming Richard as Dick ok, but toot isn't? Seems way more offensive to me.

I hate cockroaches and yet have deployed CockroachDB in production. The insistence on being puritan seems shallow to me, considering the real problems this world is facing, but to each their own.

In the context when you're clearly referring to a person, it's clear the meaning is "Richard". It's common for words to have multiple meanings and it's easy to navigate those from the context. With "toots" as a verb describing what someone does "Joe tooted about his plans", for many people, the meaning of that word in such a context would normally mean that bodily function. So the difference is in the kind of context-sensitive meaning that comes to mind.

> In the context when you're clearly referring to a person, it's clear the meaning is "Richard".

It's not anymore clear than toot - if I say, "Hey Dick", it might be the insult depending on the context. Now it's unlikely to be if the name is Richard, but since you can't really fart about stuff, it's unlikely that you're farting about your plans.

Ever wonder why "git" isn't very objectionable? Because it is an obscure British insult, not an American one.

In every one of those cases the context makes the meaning clear.

Nobody uses the phrasing "Hey Dick" for the insult. That would be either "Hey, you dick", or "Hey" followed by a long pause and then "Dick".

"Git" -- as a name for the software -- is unobjectionable because it's obviously not calling anyone a git. The term "git" by itself isn't offensive.

All very different from saying that someone tooted, or referring to their toots.

Even if it's "Richard tooted about politics" the thing is that the only prexisting use of the verb "tooted" that applies to a person is the bodily function, so that association is always going to come up -- and remember also that for Mastodon to grow it has to bring in new people who are not familiar with it or its terminology, and first impressions are important.

Nobody is imposing anything, but I don't think publishing something that about half a billion people would read as "I just farted about history of labor relations in 19th century UK" is a very bright idea. The majority of people indeed do not live in the US, but a lot of people do, and even more people share enough of cultural context to know what the meanings of "toot" are to completely overshadow any original intent. If the word has several meanings and one of them is bad, that's the one people would remember.

If I were targeting a global audience, I would still avoid words that are completely benign in the US like "bloody" and "fanny". It's just common sense to make your language more globally accessible.

Surely a short message is a tweet, I can tweet you on Twitter ... but also on FB messenger. You could also just call it a "message" if it's not got a low character limit.

You don't need a new name on every new service.

People thought precisely the same thing about "tweet" when Twitter first came out.

I never heard "tweet" being a word for a bodily function largely considered indecent and/or hilarious. Is it?

It's not in Australia. I have only heard it used as a word for a noise birds make.

Can you elaborate on the problem you see with the word "toot"?

It's an onomatopoeic term for briefly sounding a horn, but I almost never hear it used for that. In my experience, there are two primary uses of the word in American English:

1) In the expression toot [one's] own horn, which means to praise oneself. Often in the form "I don't want to toot my own horn, but [...]".

2) A cutesy word for a fart, used primarily when talking to young children.

Notably, an elephant using its trunk to make noise is said to be trumpeting, not tooting.

So I'm born and raised in the US Midwest, and in my entire life 'toot' was never used as euphemism for 'fart' except in the context of the elementary school rhyme. I can perfectly understand people not liking the sound of the word or even how it looks, but the fart connotation seems like a manufactured rationale to me. Actually, for the population that would possibly use the word that way, i.e. 8 year-olds, the usage would be a positive feature, not a negative.

It may not have that meaning for you, but it does for others. It's nothing manufactured.

And, for many people, it's the only meaning that naturally comes to mind in phrases like "I tooted" or "Joe tooted".

Isn't 1) exactly what tooting and tweeting both are really about, though?

Tooting is a more wholesome activity. Tweeting is an inherently performative act due to the nature of the platform. To toot is to be.

> Notably, an elephant using its trunk to make noise is said to be trumpeting, not tooting.

So if Mr Trump was on Mastodon would we say he was tooting or trumpeting?

Beans beans, the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot.

Aside from "toot my own horn" the only other uses of the term I can think of are:

Kids impersonating the noise a train horn makes.

A word for farting.

The only context in which you'd normally say that someone "tooted" is the latter.

It's clearly an attempt to make people think about "tweet" without infringing copyright/trademark, much like the way the generic Dr. Pepper at the grocery store might be called "Dr. Skipper". Mastodon should come up with its own concepts.

Nope. Hbomberguy suggested it jokingly, and then it was done.

https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/100419966679180204

Not everything is a cynical ploy. There are still pure and wholesome things in this world.

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