Minor rant on naming companies

People, if you’re going to name a company, just fucking name it! Faux-disguising the name is annoying and stupid, and not funny nor amusing.

Not to pick on Sampico specifically, but he gives a prime example.

I figured it out. It’s “TIAA-CREF.” Do I get a gold star? A chocolate chip cookie? A voucher for a free Blockbuster rental? No? Then why the hell are you making me play this stupid little cat-and-mouse game? If you don’t want to name the company, don’t name the company. And if you are going to name the company, just fucking do it, for Og’s sake; don’t waste everyone’s time!

sigh

And here I thought I was going to get the prime opportunity to make a company naming joke about…

WANG.

I love that company name. Yes. I am about five years old. :smiley:

Not to pick nits here, but I think you mean Sampiro.

Dammit. Apologies, Sampiro.

Jesus, Troy.

You are aware that there are search engines that have spider-bots crawling over the web indexing words and stuff, right?

And you’re further aware that many larger companies employ people specifically to peruse the web for things that are pertinent to their interests, right?

Naming a company is tantamount to hanging a big sign on your thread reading “Company X Legal department, please read this!”

Hence the obfuscation.

So this thread has a big sign on it reading “COMPANY X LEGAL DEPARTMENT – PLEASE READ THAT -->”

Nice.

I don’t think there was anything in Sampiro’s original post that would have caused problems with the legal department at TIAA-CREF, and that’s generally true of most posts that reference corporations.

I know of someone this happened to. She mentioned the name of a certain device in her blog, which she was using for what the manufacturer deemed an unwholesome purpose, and she was threatened with a lawsuit if she did not remove the trademarked name from all blog entries that referenced her usage of said device. Maybe the manufacturer could have successfully sued, maybe not. But she wasn’t taking any chances that her blog could be shut down, since she is a well-known and published author and her blog is a large part of her creative identity and people who read it tend to buy her books. So she made up a fake name for the device to avoid any trouble and went back and changed dozens of blog entries.

That’s why people do what Sampiro did. Although I kind of agree that his was a little bit cumbersome. But no huge inconvenience.

I’ll get behind Troy McClure SF on this one. If the company actually did what you say they did, then where is their legal grounds for suing you for libel?

It absolutlely bugs the hell out of me to no end when people write these enormous pit-threads against a company but then decide not to say what company it is because, hey, we don’t want to step on any toes here, right? If a company does something stupid and people should know about it, tell us, and don’t say, “a large multinational technology firm with six letters in their name.”

WANGGG?

[sub](sorry, couldn’t resist)[/sub]

HSHP , I just shot rice out my nose!!!

I LOOOOOVE the sound that makes! Wanggggg!

Oh yea, and I apologize for the hijack.
Can you imagine what the bots would turn up if WANG used them? :smiley:

So if your company is so sue-happy, then don’t mention the damn company at all. We’ve had fifty thousand people wander throught this site; if something needs to be kept a secret, one does not post it on such a forum, as several SDMB members can attest to.

Larry, are you implying that I have a responsibility to not mention the Big Secret aloud?

It’s no big secret – but it’s only polite to maintain the level of obfuscation that the poster sets.

If you don’t care which company is being discussed, fine.

It isn’t hard to “figure it out,” as you say. So it takes a couple of seconds.

If someone gives their e-mail address as “somedoper@hotNoDamnedSpammail.com” are you going to turn around and post that you’ve “figured out” that their address is actually “somedoper@hotmail.com” ? Bitch that it’s not funny to disguise it? The principle is the same.

If someone posts in the Pit about how much they hate their prick boss and the stupid policies he sets, avoids mentioning the company by name, and calls attention to the fact that they’re avoiding mentioning the name, but provides enough information that any sentient creature reading the post with fleshy orbs will know exactly who’s being discussed, you wouldn’t post “Aha! You work at McLellan Forster!” That would be rude. (Interesting that only Ass For A Hat was clueless enough to post the name in the thread. Everyone else obscured it.)

Disguising a company name isn’t intended (primarily) to be funny or amusing, so don’t be pissed off that it isn’t.

The either/or you suggest in your OP is a false dichotomy. Sometimes someone might wish to communicate the specific company under discussion while minimizing the chance of attracting the Eye of Sauron. Requiring the reader to command a level of semiosis that a machine reader is incapable of is a simple way of achieving that end.

So people do it.

I thought this would be a rant about companies giving themselves stupid names.

Such as, oh, TIAA-CREF. I mean, what the hell is that?

Megh. I’m not prepared to start altering the way I communicate on the chance that the company I work for may or may not send spiders out looking for people dissing their boss so they can take disciplinary action against me, and I see no reason to do so for others.

If it’s such a big deal that the company never finds out, don’t mention the company at all. Simple. Or maybe ask explicitly that no one else mentions the company by name (which is stupid as well, but at least it’s clear).

No, figuring out the company from the “clues” isn’t a huge deal, but neither is closing a pop-up ad or reading red text on a black background. But they’re still dumb, useless things, that waste everyone’s time.

Look! Over there!

It’s common courtesy. Easy to overlook, I know.

Here ya go:

Not clear enough?

Seriously Troy don’t decode a company name that someone else has encoded simply because you can. Sometimes it could be as simple as someone wanting to indicate which company they work for, without it being easy for that company to see that the doper has been posting on company time (og forbid). True they don’t need to mention their company but sometimes it may be helpful.

But you are prepared to start altering the way others communicate? Yeah, that’s a dick move.

–Cliffy

Wouldn’t it also be common courtesy to not make people play word scramble in GD, and expect everyone else to play along with you because you’re scared of getting caught?

No, not really, no. I don’t know nor care why Sampiro’s royal “we” isn’t saying the company’s name. Maybe he’s trying to be cute, maybe he doesn’t want Big Brother to find him, maybe he forgot what the initials stood for and is taking a stab at it. If it’s important to him that we follow suit, he should say, “Please don’t mention the company name,” and maybe give a reason.

We’ve covered this topic through and through in the Pit, specifically in the threads in which people ask we don’t use swear words in thread titles because someone at work might walk by and see them on the SDMB front. It is not the responsibility of the community at large to ensure people can push the boundaries of what they can and can’t do on their employer’s time with their employer’s equipment. Especially if they apparently know it’s wrong enough that they takes steps to hide what they’re doing.

If you’ll notice, I was referring to myself. And yes, people can choose to refer to their employer as anything they want, but without a good reason, I see no reason to do the same.