4 ms·
The word Hustler being the first word of the sentence is unfortunate.
by soheil 6y ago
The word Hustler being the first word of the sentence is unfortunate.
- ggm 6y agowould "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 .. ?
- abiogenesis 6y ago"The founder of Hustler" would be less confusing.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoThat 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.
- abiogenesis 6y agoI 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.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoBelieve it or not, Hustler has a bustling web presence.
- abiogenesis 6y agoNot 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.
- ggm 6y agoOne might call it un-bustling, one imagines less clothes not more, but perhaps a bustle being underwear is more de rigeur
- p1necone 6y agoIt'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.
- dragonwriter 6y agoHustler would be better; italics (or underlining) is conventional for periodical titles, quotations for article titles within the periodical.
- ggm 6y agonot wishing to experiment in the commons, can we "do" markup tricks in the title?
- eyelidlessness 6y agoEdit 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.
- ladberg 6y agoI'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).
- eyelidlessness 6y agoYou have a more charitable assumption than I do. We shall see. Edit: your interpretation was right! And I’m glad for that.
- soheil 6y agoNot 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.
- slibhb 6y agoThe 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
- teh_klev 6y agoDo 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/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117318/ [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt#Legal_battles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt#Legal_battles
- p1necone 6y agoI 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".
- teh_klev 6y ago> 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.
- p1necone 6y agoOf 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...
- dragonwriter 6y agoOnly 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”.
- asxd 6y agoNot 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.
- richrichardsson 6y ago> 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.