# Misinterpreted thread titles **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 17, 2023, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360 "2023-01-17T17:58:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2026, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/361 "2026-02-24T17:21:06Z")
And in my mind it sounds like Parkers is the name of a town or something, and the OP has returned there – they’re back in Parkers. And apparently not happy about it. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2026, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/362 "2026-02-24T17:23:08Z")
_🎶 Oh Lord, I’m stuck in Parkers again… 🎶_ ---
**Author:** ![Karen\_Lingel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karen_lingel/32/18649_2.png) [@Karen\_Lingel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karen_Lingel)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2026, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/363 "2026-02-24T23:25:10Z")
[How to best get myself back in the gym](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-best-get-myself-back-in-the-gym/1027902) Uber? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2026, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/364 "2026-02-25T05:04:49Z")
Okay, I seriously was trying to figure out what the [second 4 in Oregon](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/second-iv-in-or-why/1027948) was… ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/365 "2026-02-27T17:33:03Z")
> [@solost](#): > > 🎶 Oh Lord, I’m stuck in Parkers again… 🎶 As much fun as Lodi? ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/366 "2026-02-27T18:54:12Z")
No, but there’s more public parking. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2026, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/367 "2026-03-04T13:56:24Z")
[Roundabout hysteria](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roundabout-hysteria/1028186/24) I, uh, think there may be a chance that I’m at least somewhat on the verge of, as the expression goes, losing it. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2026, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/368 "2026-03-04T13:59:18Z")
Or wildly excited about the release of a new live Yes album. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/369 "2026-03-05T00:23:00Z")
Or Yes tribute band, more like it. 🤠 ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/370 "2026-03-05T17:56:34Z")
Not here, but on another board there’s a thread called “Retro Rockets”. And I know what retro rockets are, but when I see that I keep picturing rockets from an old Buck Rogers comic or something. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/371 "2026-03-05T19:26:55Z")
Not to be confused with Retro Viruses: [![](https://frinkiac.com/img/S16E01/1061604.jpg) ](https://frinkiac.com/img/S16E01/1061604.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2026, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/372 "2026-03-06T15:29:24Z")
Not confused per se here, but could easily happen in this day and age to the two Weird Al threads, with people mistaking said handle for “Weird Artificial Intelligence”… ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/373 "2026-03-26T05:48:49Z")
[Utah mother arrested for kidnapping her child’s bully (both aged 11)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/utah-mother-arrested-for-kidnapping-her-childs-bully-both-aged-11/1028772) My first thought was “how could a mother be aged 11?” My second thought was, “oh, Utah”. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/374 "2026-03-26T13:17:50Z")
[Interesting obituary: Loenid Radvinsky, who made only fans what it became](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-obituary-loenid-radvinsky-who-made-only-fans-what-it-became/1028785/1) Without reading the actual post itself, I’ve sat here for 5+ minutes trying to parse this title grammatically and semantically, and I simply and utterly cannot. - Did this person make “fans” that blow air on you? And that’s all that was made, no air conditioners or space heaters? - What is the antecedent for “it”? - “It” became _what_? OK so diving in… Oh. “Only Fans” was apparently a porno website that “became” a big deal for porn connoisseurs-so why not capitalize it in the title? ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/375 "2026-03-26T13:20:48Z")
Thank you @John_DiFool. I had the exact same thought. I read and re-read that sentence a few times and kept thinking “what the hell does it mean for someone to have made only fans, like that was his life’s passion?”… but then “what it became… wuh..?!” At first I thought it was some spambot post, but then I saw the Puzzlegal avatar next to it and was doubly confused… maybe she didn’t have coffee yet 😅 ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/376 "2026-03-26T13:32:18Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > Did this person make “fans” that blow air on you? And that’s all that was made, no air conditioners or space heaters? And there’s a Subreddit r/onlyfans, which at one point was about the website, but then later became a semi-joke sub about devices that blow air. I believe that it then became about both at the same time, but I am not sure on the details. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/377 "2026-03-26T13:56:38Z")
Sorry. I thought OnlyFans was well known enough that you’d all parse it correctly. Also, i didn’t realize the proper name was a single word. (Yes, it was in the article… I’m a little dyslexic, and really don’t see differences like that unless I’m carefully looking for them.) As for why i didn’t capitalize… I’m lazy. I almost never capitalize anything. I swype, and stopping to add a capital letter is about as much time as writing two uncapitalized words, so i rarely bother. The phone editor automatically capitalize the first word in a sentence, and stuff it recognizes as names. For a long time, my phone didn’t capitalize the word “I”, so i usually wrote it “i”. Huh, maybe it still doesn’t .. Anyway, thanks to @LSLGuy for pointing out my error. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/378 "2026-03-26T16:21:41Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Sorry. I thought OnlyFans was well known enough that you’d all parse it correctly. We shall see: [Do you know what Only Fans was (or did, before today’s thread on it)?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/polls-only-no-discussion/953642/6672) ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/379 "2026-03-26T17:33:01Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I thought OnlyFans was well known enough that you’d all parse it correctly We’re just teasing 🙂 Yeah, I knew what it was, but my brain didn’t read it that way no matter how hard I tried. I clicked in to find out what the heck you meant, not because I eventually figured it out… > [@puzzlegal](#): > > I’m a little dyslexic I wonder if there’s some sort of anti-dyslexia where words aren’t just compositions of letters but “semantic blobs” of their own. Like when I see OnlyFans written out that way, it immediately looks like a brand name (and blue, like their logo). “…makes only fans…” looks different enough in shape that I never registered it as a brand. Shrug… nevermind my armchair theorizing 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360/380 "2026-03-26T17:58:47Z")
But it’s not “Only Fans”. It’s “OnlyFans”. As @Reply sorta said just above, these coined run-on brand name words are different things from the same sequence of ordinary words. They live in a different spot in all our memory banks. Language changes of course. If here and now you wrote “to day” when you meant “today” you’d confuse modern readers. Folks from the 1800s would have the opposite confusion: " ‘today’ is not a word! Did you mean ‘to day’?" [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misinterpreted-thread-titles/978360.md?page=20)