I have minor quibbles with some of the existing ones which I'll summarize:
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Gab has a semantic problem: Twitter has "tweets" a separate term derived from but separate from the site name. Gab uses the exact same term for posts, leading to confusion as to whether someone is talking about a post on the site or the site itself.
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Parlor doesn't even seem to try to come up with a name for posts.. what do you call them, Parls? Plus it seems to lack an online component or URLs altogether. Something trying to get by purely as an app is doomed and can't win me over TBH
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Mastodon has an interesting take on the semantics by using "Toots". It's not derivative of the name but I guess is meant to emulate the sound elephants make via their trunks? I would've liked "Trumpets" but I guess you want to keep it monosyllabic. Elephants are the GOP mascot so I guess this is a natural thing to gravitate to, so I'm not sure why it hasn't gotten more traction. Too decentralized/open-source for controlled opposition?
One idea I had this week was perhaps the idea of appropriating the democrats' donkey mascot. I know that ".key" is presently not a top-level domain, but could we make that happen?
If so "Don.Key" could be our appropriation, and what's attractive about such a URL should be obvious to residents of TheDonald
You could call posts "Brays" which are the sounds a donkey makes, and that works like a nice shout-out to WWE star Bray Wyatt who is a manufactured villain and conspiracy theorist who mocks the "clown world" we live in.
It also appeals because they see us all as ASSholes so we might as well embrace it and steal their mascot.... MULE it so to speak.
I can also see depressed Eeyore as a mascot for our current mood.
Without the .key domain name I feel like such an effort is doomed though. We would need someone trustworthy to park don.key as soon as it did become available.
What other things could work? ".ke" is Kenya's domain name so "Don.Ke" perhaps? That could work because you don't really need the Y and "Donkeh" is how Shrek pronounces it so that feels pretty ripe to me TBH
How reliable could a Kenyan domain be for us to use? Who could be in charge of such a project? I certainly couldn't.
Is this something we could build up from something open-source like Mastodon?
Parler uses "Parley" for posts/tweets, "echo" for re-posts/tweets.
Echo sounds great for the equiv to retweets since it's also 2 syllables and actually fewer letters...
Parley OTOH is extra syllable and letter compared to Tweet so doesn't seem attractive...
Gab/Parler don't seem to have hit upon the "animal mascot" idea that Twitter does with a bird, which I think Mastodon hit upon.
I guess I can understand that as you want to go in a new generic direction, but sometimes you can get TOO generic and I think actually having "elephant instead of bird" or perhaps "donkey instead of bird" helps to make the site memorable by contrast.
Has anyone tried "Chirper" making "Chirps" ? Perhaps that would be too close and result in concept lawsuits?
I know the indians recently did Tooter based on Mastodon's use of "Toots". I just wonder if that's a bit too flatulence-adjacent for us to embrace with conviction.
Being an occasional /wooo/ poster I thought maybe "Wooos" as post names woudl be cool but I'd worry people wouldn't remember how many Os to use... and what would be call it? Wooer? Maybe "Fla.ir" since Iran doesn't control this extension since 2014?
Always called gab posts gabs... just made sense in my head.
me too but think about it "hey look at this gab" could be referring to the site or a post
you can say "toot on mastodon" or "tweet on twitter" but "gab on gab" just sounds bad
"read that Bray on Don.Ke" sounds amazing
I just realized another attraction: Bray sounds like Brave
The official marketing is "Get on gab" or "gab us at @ASDF"
whatever opinion on gab is (tbh liked the earlier layout before they converted to mastodon arrangement) we definitely need multiple alternatives so there' s no single point of failure
we always need something to go on if one thing goes down, and people should be registering for several of these and co-posting to them
even without mirroring you need a spot to discuss wtf happens when one gets taken down. Actually even better if there's not exact copy since then differnt justifications would be needed.
Lesser-known alternatives (gab has some infamy) are also useful as there would be delays in targeting them