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Comment by soheil | Hacker News Reader

The word Hustler being the first word of the sentence is unfortunate.

Do we really have to censor or edit titles to suite a bunch of potentially "offended" people? Oh the irony.

We all know what Hustler is. And if you're a gormless startup founder picking that as a name for your app or product, well that's your fault, learn you some history and watch "The People vs Larry Flint"[0]. Flint's case in the Supreme Court was hugely important, despite being a "purveyor of filth", and strengthened free speech rights in the US, in particular Hustler Magazine vs Jerry Falwell[1].

[0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117318/

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt#Legal_battles

No we don't. I was not objecting to Larry Flynt or the Hustler Magazine in any way, it was just a point of grammatical ambiguity, see my reply to another user complaining about the same thing as you are: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26097449

Looks like I've struck a chord among some HN users unintentionally.

See my comment addressing the sibling comment to yours. If instead the title was "Stripe founder...." I highly doubt anyone would blink an eye.

Of course they wouldn't, because "Stripe" is not a word commonly used to describe people in the tech world.

If the title was "Spectator founder....", re-evaluate your argument. Also I'm pretty sure "Hustler" is a noun, not an adjective. And adjective is a modifier to a noun, e.g. he was a serious hustler.

This is the weirdest thing to be so aggressively confrontational about...

I don't know how to respond to someone telling me I'm lying about having difficulty parsing a sentence, and being this wound up about it. This is bizarre.

Also I stopped calling it a noun, better?

I apologise and have removed that part of the comment, but sometimes HN exasperates me, and the flush of a few glasses of wine probably tipped me over the edge a bit.

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

I don't think this person is complaining about the title being offensive, just grammatically confusing.

If you don't recognize who he is it's hard to tell whether the title is saying that he's "a hustler and a founder" or "the founder of Hustler".

> just grammatically confusing.

I disagree, it says "Hustler founder". Replace "Hustler" with <anycompany> and you have many a title on HN any day of the week that is "<anycompany> founder...." with no confusion.

The parent to my post said "The word Hustler being the first word of the sentence is unfortunate.". I'm guessing this is because of the nature and business of the company, i.e. hardcore porn, not due to a grammatical misunderstanding.

No you guess wrong, my issue was with the ambiguity, not sure why you insist that is not what I was thinking even though I've already replied below multiple times.

Of course replacing "hustler" with the name of another company wouldn't produce the same confusion, because most other companies names are not also adjectives commonly used to describe people in the tech world.

You're so intent on being offended by imagined offence taken by someone else that you're ignoring them telling you first hand that you've misunderstood them. The irony is astounding...

> You're so intent on being offended by imagined offence taken by someone else that you're ignoring them telling you first hand that you've misunderstood them. The irony is astounding...

Oh jesus, the classic "no you're offended" weak defence. I am in a round-about-way pointing out how historically illiterate (younger) people are these days. Especially when, particularly on HN, free software, free speech etc is the de rigueur cause, yet somehow they don't even know the major recent Supreme Court cases that enforce and uphold the right to such things as satire. Hustler was a major case up there with Roe vs Wade. Now if I'm slightly annoyed by that, then so be it.

You're preaching to the choir, I'm all for free speech, fighting hard battles, etc. but why are you lashing out on me for a simple grammatical issue I took with the title of this post? If you believe the avg HN user should know more about "major recent SC cases" rather than startup founders and them being "hustlers", I think you may be hanging around the wrong community.

Because it's both unnecessary and distracting.

When I misunderstand titles and then realize my mistake I don't start complaining about it.

Can it be read either way? Yes. Does it really matter? No. Language is often ambiguous without context.

But even with that, it really isn't confusing. The ones who don't know who Larry Flint are may choose not to click on it whether they take the word Hustler as a verb or a noun. And the ones who do click will be disabused of their potential confusion almost immediately.

IOW, it's a huge nothingburger.

Have you seen the Uber ad, "Everyone should have a side hustle?".

I'm amazed Hustler is still published as a printed magazine. Penthouse went through several bankruptcies and sales in the last two decades. Even Playboy gave up on the print issues last year.

Edit on top because I don’t want to improperly malign the parent commenter or get undue upvotes. I misunderstood the intent of parent comment and my response was to a criticism of sex work/publication of such, not to a criticism of the ways the title might be misread. Leaving my original comment below for posterity/accountability, and for anyone else who comes along and does think it’s inappropriate to discuss sex work.

No it’s not. Besides being a free speech advocate he helped normalize sex work. I doubt his properties have been especially safe and kind to sex workers, but the general population seeing sex work as “normal but maybe icky to some” has certainly made workers’ lives safer and their work overall less likely to be fraudulently exploited.

I’m not a particular champion of Hustler or Larry Flint, but I definitely think sex work generally deserves to be a part of the social contract and not a whisper and a wink.

I'm assuming OP meant it as a grammatical ambiguity for someone who doesn't know "Hustler" is a magazine (because as the first word it's capitalized regardless).

You have a more charitable assumption than I do. We shall see.

Edit: your interpretation was right! And I’m glad for that.

Not sure where you're going with this, but I was just referring to the ambiguity in the title since there are a lot of stories on HN about SV founders who are viewed as hustlers. Quotes or moving the word would work, not a big deal obviously.

Or simply saying "Hustler magazine founder...."

I immediately got it, but I know who Larry Flynt was. The technical writer in me approves of your observation, though! "Hustler founder" would be a rather odd phrase to use to describe a founder who hustles -- you'd be more likely to say "hustler and founder" or "hustler-founder" or "hustling founder" -- but when there's any possibility for confusion, it's best to be (ahem) explicit.

The previous poster misunderstood your comment because "hustler" is also used to refer to a male prostitute. Therefore your post was "insufficiently sex-work-positive"...or something

Now you’ve misinterpreted me. I was under the assumption that Hustler is a widely known pornographic publication/production house and Larry Flynt a widely known free speech advocate as a defender of said business empire.

I assumed (wrongly) that the objection to Hustler being in the title was a blanket rejection of sex work as a part of the general social contract worth discussing at all. But I assumed that based on very similar views widely expressed here, and a misunderstanding of very specific wording.

Believe me I don’t expect HN to ever be sufficiently pro sex worker. But I’ve seen enough anti that I’ve made a point to push back some when I can.

You've made a point to read into anodyne comments to credulously fit your narrative of what HN users believe or don't believe?

Actually, eat a metaphorical detective. I obviously didn’t make a point to read anything into your comment. I mistook your meaning because I sincerely thought it was other than what you clarified. And not only apologized directly for the mistake but purposefully made an edit at the top of my comment to be clear I recognized my mistake and had no ill intent. You coming for a snipe after is unnecessary.

I wasn’t as charitable in my interpretation as I could have been, but honestly I had no idea Hustler isn’t such a common name that there would be any ambiguity. You could take a charitable interpretation in turn and recognize that I sincerely thought you were upset by the prominence of that publication/brand being in the title and see where the rest of my response follows from that.

The sibling comment to mine interpreted you correctly and I apologize for misunderstanding your intent.

For what it’s worth where I was going was all as explicit as I could make it, and based on a perception that you were reacting negatively to an article openly discussing a sex work publication. It’s been a predictable response to articles I’ve seen here lately on sex work topics and I misunderstood your comment as part of that general reaction.

Sorry again, and I appreciate your productive clarification.

> about SV founders who are viewed as hustlers

Well this is likely an age thing. And to be honest, in my 10 years reading HN, the use of "hustler" to describe a Silicon Valley founder on the front page (and second) is pretty thin on the ground. There is no ambiguity unless you're a bit deficit in the history department (which is not our problem).

I mean, to be fair, the use of “hustler” in the SV way predates the use in pornography. The latter adopted the former, not the other way around. Even still I agree that at least in the US if you have any kind of interest in speech law, you should be familiar with Hustler/Flynt.

Being unfamiliar with Hustler implies a deficit in the history department?

Not sure why this light hearted comment seemed to be so upsetting to some. I understood the title but can grasp how some may misconstrue it as “a founder who is a hustler”. I saw this as at least a slightly humorous observation.

> how some may misconstrue

Only people who lived under a rock for the last 50 years. I'm afraid to say that in the context of the whole headline you'd have to be an actual idiot to not comprehend that Hustler is a company or product if you did not know that already.

Only in that the lack of typographic options for HN titles prevents the clearer Hustler from being used in the title, which might suggest he's a mere “hustler founder”.

would "Hustler" (ie quoted) be better? What specifically about this did you dislike? The idea of a generalised hustler type, as a founder (somebody who founds, and hustles) or .. ?

It's just confusing if you don't know who he is. It's easy to misread it as "(Hustler), (founder) and (free-speech activist)" instead of "(Hustler founder) and (free-speech activist)".

Of course reading TFA alleviates that confusion pretty quickly.

"The founder of Hustler" would be less confusing.

That seems exceedingly nitpicky given the way headlines get meaningfully edited to say different things here all the time. The words are the same in a different order but grammatically identical.

I disagree. It might be confusing for someone who doesn't know Hustler (the magazine). It sounds unlikely but I'm not sure if younger generation know about those print magazines.

Believe it or not, Hustler has a bustling web presence.

Not trying to keep arguing but I wouldn't call it "bustling" with an Alexa rank of 261,156. I don't think anybody who doesn't know the print magazine would know about their web presence.

One might call it un-bustling, one imagines less clothes not more, but perhaps a bustle being underwear is more de rigeur

Hustler would be better; italics (or underlining) is conventional for periodical titles, quotations for article titles within the periodical.

not wishing to experiment in the commons, can we "do" markup tricks in the title?

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