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Comment by teh_klev | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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