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What's Mavis Beacon Up to These Days? (2015)
- nobody9999 6y agoTeaching typing, maybe?
- aazaa 6y ago> "She's our Betty Crocker. She's our symbol of excellence," Joe Abrams, one of Mavis Beacon's creators told VICE in an interview. Abrams was one of the founders of The Software Toolworks, the company that designed Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing!. About fictional people as spokespersons, we might as well add: - Modern Santa Claus (Coca-Cola) - Aunt Jemima - Uncle Ben - Uncle Sam - Colonel Sanders - Ronald McDonald And many more... It's almost as if humans are wired to respond to a benevolent spokesperson.
- wincy 6y agoColonel Sanders was a real man who made chicken, though. He’s just as much a fiction as Dave Thomas who founded Wendy’s.
- GavinMcG 6y ago"No more a fiction than" might better convey your meaning here.
- wincy 6y agoYou’re right, but it’s too late to edit now.
- djur 6y agoThe Colonel has been fictionalized, though. He's moving away from Dave Thomas and toward Santa Claus.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoYou're telling me that the Lifetime original movie "Recipe For Seduction" isn't based on the actual life of Colonel Sanders?
- kaitai 6y ago...I'm devastated...
- philwelch 6y agoTo your point, there was also a historical St. Nicholas.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoI remember in the 70s Colonel Sanders was sued by KFC for saying disparaging things about their food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders#:~:text=In%201973%2C%20Sanders%20sued%20Heublein,%22wall%2Dpaper%20taste%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders#:~:text=In%201.... So perhaps it means that the smiling pusher of KFC stuff is fictional in comparison to the real Sanders.
- chokeartist 6y agoThis made me chuckle - it appears the Colonel did his own hands-on quality assurance: > As late as 1979 Sanders made surprise visits to KFC restaurants, and if the food disappointed him, he denounced it to the franchisee as "God-damned slop" or pushed it onto the floor.
- molticrystal 6y agoWired perhaps, but they were not benevolent enough, at least for Jemma, Ben, and Sam: "Aunt Jemima brand to change name, remove image that Quaker says is 'based on a racial stereotype'" - [0] "Uncle Ben's Changing Name To Ben's Original After Criticism Of Racial Stereotyping" "Mars also said it will remove the image of the elderly Black man in a bow tie from its packaging." [1] "73,000 signature petition calls for takedown of landmark Uncle Sam billboard" "The billboard sits off Exit 72 on private property and has been in Lewis County since the late 1960s." [2] [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/aunt-jemima-brand-will-change-name-remove-image-quaker-says-n1231260 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/aunt-jemima-brand-will-... [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/09/23/916012582/uncle-bens-changing-name-to-ben-s-original-after-criticism-of-racial-stereotypin https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racia... [2] https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/73000-signature-petition-calls-takedown-landmark-uncle-sam-billboard/Q5DVKB5WCFESVFFBMAXSWFJWZM/ https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/73000-signature-petition-ca...
- djur 6y agoThe third example doesn't seem to be about Uncle Sam, but about the messages appearing by Uncle Sam on the billboard.
- apocalypstyx 6y agoMaybe their next spokes-character can have black-and-white stripes or an orange jumpsuit, just like the prison slave labor they utilize.
- Igelau 6y agoDon't forget Slash.
- Traster 6y agoQuestion for the Americans - is Mavis Beacon a reasonable name for someone to be called where you come from? I grew up in the UK and for me it was always obviously just a company who had an eponymous avatar that lead the teaching. I would put that down to the fact that I would never expect Mavis Beacon to be the name of a person but a perfectly reasonable name for a company.
- MrRadar 6y ago> Question for the Americans - is Mavis Beacon a reasonable name for someone to be called where you come from? I would say so. Mavis is a bit old fashioned, but it was a very common name at one time[1]. Beacon is not a common last name, but IMDB does list a few people with that as their last name[2] (and a lot more with "Deacon" as their last name; I could totally buy the B and D getting switched out at some point in the family's history, especially if they immigrated in the 19th century when record-keeping was much less stringent). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavis [2] https://www.imdb.com/find?q=beacon&s=nm&ref_=fn_al_nm_mr https://www.imdb.com/find?q=beacon&s=nm&ref_=fn_al_nm_mr
- geoduck14 6y agoAmerican here. It is a totally weird name.
- casion 6y agoWhere are you from? I'm from the "deep south", and I find it to be a perfectly reasonable name.
- geoduck14 6y agoDallas, TX I don't know any Mavises
- stan_rogers 6y agoIt's just an old name that's a couple-three generations out of fashion. It was a common-enough name for older female characters in 1960s sitcoms, so for a lot of HN types it would likely be a great-grandmother-era name.
- cat199 6y agoWas a 'mario teaches typing' kid myself: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Mario_Teaches_Typing_1992 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Mario_Teaches_Typing_1992 ^ ... now, can play online in the browser
- the__alchemist 6y agoLove it! That's how I learned too.
- gandalfian 6y agoWe had an all in one keyboard gadget called a type-right. Tiny LCD screen. Actually very good. Much better than Mavis beacon.
- harel 6y agoFictional or not, she taught me touch typing when I was a kid and I loved it! I couldn't wait for those story tasks. Thanks Mavis.
- Zelphyr 6y agoOn the subject of touch typing; I’m curious how many people here are touch typists vs not? I am also curious what your thoughts are, if you’re a hunt-and-pecker, of how much that does or does not affect your productivity? I have this ongoing argument with my kids because they want to hunt-and-peck with one or two fingers per hand and to me that’s like swimming with one arm when you have another arm and two whole legs to use.
- Talanes 6y agoI'm somewhere inbetween, which honestly just means that I'm a bad touch typist. I don't hunt-and-peck, but I'm also not perfectly keeping at rest on the home row. The result is mostly touch-typing, but if I don't have the keyboard in my peripheral vision, I start to drift. Really just means I can't sit in complete darkness, but I'm sure it would have some implications if I were to try and use VR with anything that requires actual typing.
- bstar77 6y agoI never had an aptitude for touch typing, but became very good at hunt and peck typing. This year I finally started to use proper form and not look at my fingers to type. I’m still slower than I was hunting and pecking, but I can pretty much write anything now without looking at my hands. Only took 35 years.
- seibelj 6y agoI’m self taught and have a strange style. I am hunt and peck touch typist, at about 70wpm, and use my left thumb for space and left pinky for shift. Otherwise I just use both my index fingers very quickly, but there is an upper limit on how fast two index fingers can move. An unexpected benefit is my hands and wrists are positioned in such a way that I don’t get much strain / carpal tunnel. My hands get more stressed from using the touchpad than typing.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoI'd probably be classed as a hunt and peck typist, but I've never had issues with typing speed or accuracy. So I don't think it has affected my productivity at all. Of course I don't know what would have happened if I'd started with touch typing. Although in fact I tried to learn touch typing with Mavis Beacon not long after it appeared, but it cramped my fingers almost instantly, so I stopped. As for typing in general - depending how old your kids are, I'd consider the possibility that by the time they reach college age typing will be as much use to them as handwriting is to current students. I.e. some value, but not as important as other skills. I'd be very surprised if we don't have conversational interfaces with human-level comprehension within twenty years - possibly ten at a push. You might think code will always be typed, but I honestly wouldn't be sure about that.
- Animats 6y agoThere are advantages to using a fake identity for your product. There's no risk of a McAfee situation.
- tomphoolery 6y agomayvis baycon tayches tayping
- aj7 6y agoI never once thought MB was a real person. It was SO obvious.