Egyptian bloke dubs sprog 'Facebook' A young Egyptian dad has dubbed his newborn daughter "Facebook" in honour of the role the social network played in deposing Hosni Mubarak. The unnamed man, in his 20s, condemned his poor sprog to a lifetime of ridicule "to express his joy at the achievements made by the January 25 youth", as local paper al-Ahram put it. …
As pointed out, this child is going to have to live with this abject humiliation until she's old enough to change it (and there I only assume Egyptian law allows deed-poll-type changes). Not only that, but as far as I can tell he's completely missing the important element of the revolution.
I admit quite freely I wasn't there; I don't know anyone who was there. My knowledge of the situation is limited to what the western press chose to tell me about it. And maybe the point is that Facebook (the social network) enabled people to get around press restrictions and media biases and so on. But as far as I can tell, the fact that the Egyptian revolution happened at all, and that it was relatively bloodless as these things go, is tribute to the courage of the people and the common sense (so far) of the military in refusing to do what Libya's are allegedly doing.
To imply that the whole thing was enabled by bloody Facebook is to detract from the achievement of the Egyptian people. If the Egyptians themselves disagree with that then I can't really argue with them, but I will still believe they're selling themselves short.
Plus, if Facebook (the site) continues as it is, Facebook (the person) is presumably going to have to grow up dealing with "I'm on Facebook"; "all my friends are on Facebook"; and so on...
People just don't think sometimes.
"Plus, if Facebook (the site) continues as it is, Facebook (the person) is presumably going to have to grow up dealing with "I'm on Facebook"; "all my friends are on Facebook"; and so on..."
Well, considering that these puns work in English, and Egypt isn't an English-speaking country...
People just don't think sometimes.
Matter of fact, and aware that I can't prove this, I did spend a good few minutes wondering about whether to cover this point. Given that Egyptians primarily speak Arabic, I did consider that the colloquialisms might not work the same in Arabic, or even Egyptian English (that's English, incidentally, as it's "widely understood by educated classes" in Egypt - at least according to the CIA).
In the end I decided I probably didn't. That bit was a throwaway joke secondary to my main point, and besides, I reasoned, Reg readers are clever techie types. They'll work it out for themselves.
*sigh*
Probably not - the only thing thats changed after all is the government, shes still female, so she'll still have all the usual abuses and lack of rights to deal with - and we are assuming that Mubarak is gone for good, and history shows us that things out there can take unusual turns... if Mubarak, or more likely Mubarak sympathizers get back into power...
Hmm.. and then theres your fundamentalist Muslims who hate anything to do with the west.. and think women are there to be owned/raped/hanged/shot every time there is an R in the month... so theres a double whammy for this poor girl again...
Its not really any different, or any more wise, that a person in Prague in Feb 1968 calling their kid Dubcek or calling them Facebook now.... it puts both the kid and the family in danger because it outs them as supporters of Dubcek or the revolution movement in Egypt respectively... and we know what happened in Prague.
And, then we have Libya - who decided it was a great idea to loose Mirage II fighter/bombers on their own people, who's to say they wont sort out their own little uprising and then send their militia over to Egypt - Facebook; meet AK-47...
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