The strange business history of the Ouija board | Hacker News Reader

The strange business history of the Ouija board

thehustle.co

42 pointspaulpauper10 comments

And to think how far we have come. Now we have bots and social media to create a veil of deniability over our preferences, and to attribute their veracity to unseen forces, while duping the credulous and trusting.

> Kennard suggested they go into business together, but Reiche failed to see a profit in something people could make themselves.

Why I too suck as a businessman.

I always thought it was odd growing up that everyone called it a “weegee” board. Because that’s certainly not what its spelling would suggest. Is that pronunciation universal, or just local to where I grew up?

Anecdata - where I grew up in the central US, it was specific to families and friend groups. Even in the same grade school, some people called it wee-jah, some called it wee-gee.

i grew up in Daytona Beach FL and Abilene TX during the satanic panic even and it was known in both places as "weegee" board. Given what i was told about it growing up you'd think it was a loaded handgun with a hair trigger pointed at your head 8 days a week haha.

We said oh-WEE-gee in Kansas, ha ha. Since the “oui” is purportedly a reference to “yes” you are probably closer than us Kansans.

(Not in this article but another I read suggesting “oui” + “ja” to get “yes-yes” in French/German.)

The right pronunciation is Luigi board.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=15nNY7uofNw

Do you not have a word for glass-displacement? That's the name of this practice in German, Gläser-Rücken.

I don't know an English word for that. "Seance" is the word for an attempt (usually in a group) to talk to spirits.

I think most Americans are used to seeing the commercial-style boards with the teardrop shaped indicator, not a drinking glass, so that idiom would not translate.

Is it used as a shorthand for anything spooky? "We are doing science here, not glass-displacement!"

Not a native speaker, but that's how it is commonly pronounced in TV shows. I also found it odd, but got used to it

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