this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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jeez. These velcro people don't mess around
If you think they're being greedy arseholes, you shouldn't! They aren't doing this for themselves, they're doing it because it's the right thing to do god damnit!
Explanation
If anybody's curious why they're so adamant about us not calling velcro shoes velcro shoes if velcro doesn't make the velcro, there's a little thing called trademark genericisation. Basically, when a product becomes so popular that people begin crawling similar generic products the trademarked term, the company can lose their trademark and then anybody can call anything the trademark. A couple of notable ones (stolen from Wikipedia, so may not have ever been trademarked here); laundromat (and launderette), air fryer, escalator, and sellotape.Also xeroxing documents. and hoovering the carpet. They sound all fire and brimstone, but people are going to people and they are fighting a losing battle. And they know it.
esky, doona
Kleenex, biro and band aid.
I've never actually heard another aussie call a tissue a kleenex before tbh
Although I am surprised glad wrap and googling haven't been genericised yet.
And only tangentially related but I used to get a bit annoyed when (mostly old) people would use "iPad" as a general term for anything larger than a phone but smaller than a laptop, until I realised if people did that and apple lost the trademark, there'd be one less thing for the rich kids with their i devices to bully people for
Texta is another one.
I can smell that word lol
Huh. I always thought they were spelled texter
Nope. Texta and aussie owned too.
I don't think I've ever used a texta branded texta before, just whatever the kmart version is called
They were big in the 80s. These days many more brands on offer.
None of the schools I've been to really had name brand things, so that doesn't help
Google is a little different, because people don't say they'll "Google something" and then use a different search engine. They actually use Google. It isn't synonymous with "search". It's just the search engine most people use.
They're hoping people call it "hook-and-loop fasteners" or "hook-and-pile fasteners" or "touch fasteners" instead ๐ค Good luck to them with that.