Thursday, July 10

The Dangers of Auto-Replace



The American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site has a standard practice of using the word “homosexual”* instead of “gay” when referring to the gay population. They set up a filter to automatically make the change but this little faux paus got past them.

The article is about the sprinter Tyson Gay but as you can see his last name was automatically replaced with homosexual. This resulted in the rather comical headline:
Homosexual eases into 100 Final at Olympic Trials

as well as:
Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: ‘A little fatigued.’


The website corrected its error (without apology) but not quickly enough that no one noticed.

Source.

5 comments:

timidvenus said...

wow. i'd like to see what automatic filter theyd come up with for my name.

'sara erection moves to fresno: full story at eleven'

Lulu said...

haha, you too would probably be a victim of auto replace.
I tried to think of something else funny with sara erection (btw maybe that should be your roller girl name) but my brain is baking from the heat and I've got nothing.

Adam said...

Well, if she won the lotto, the headline might be, "Erection hits it big, gets massive payout."

Lulu said...

Nice Adam, I knew you would come through;)

carly said...

Glorious.