UPDATE: See below for updates, marked with UPDATE in bold
Man Boobz is about to become We Hunted the Mammoth.
That is, I’m changing the name. And I may end up fiddling a bit with the look. The actual content of the blog itself won’t really be changing.
I’ve been kind of frustrated with the old name for a while. I came up with it on the spur of the moment when I first started this blog and, to be honest, it’s kind of a dopey name. It doesn’t really fit what the blog has become, and I’m a bit tired of explaining it to people (“no, boobs as in nincompoops, not breasts”).
The new name, as all you regular readers know, is based on a phrase that’s already associated with the site. Granted, I’ll have to explain its meaning to people, just as I’ve had to do with the old name, but at least it has a better story behind it. (See the FAQ for more details; the relevant stuff is at the end.)
Naturally, a new name means a new banner, and that’s where you all come in. Yep, we’re having a BANNER/LOGO CONTEST. It will run for a week, more or less, and then I’ll pick a winner or two. The prize is … your banner will be the banner! Also you will receive my undying gratitude. [UPDATE: Some commenters here have started talking about setting up a fund to provide the winner with prize money; if you’re interested, check the comments. I’ll make an official announcement if/when we get something set up. And of course I’ll donate!]
The rules are simple: You can submit artwork, or a logo, or a finished banner. It should have a mammoth in it. I like the mammoth artwork above – and if you click on that image you’ll get a high-resolution version of it. But you can use some other public domain mammoth art, or draw your own mammoth. Stick to black and white and perhaps red.
The text should read: We Hunted the Mammoth. In smaller letters, the tagline: “Men’s Rights” and the New Misogyny. I’m inclined to go with the same font I’m using now – the free font Magnum. But if you’ve got a better idea, go for it. You can do the text by hand it you want. [UPDATE: Scratch that tagline, and replace it with The New Misogyny, tracked and mocked.]
If you’re making a banner, make it the same size of the current banner. Give it a transparent background. If you absolutely can’t fit everything into that space, I suppose you could make the banner a teensy bit taller.
I want to thank JohnnyKaje for her outstanding work on the current Man Boobz banners – including that amazing Cock Carousel artwork. I’ll put the old banners up on the FAQ page when the new banner goes up.
Feel free to submit rough sketches, to ask questions and make suggestions about the banner/logo — and about the site look and layout. You can post them online, or email them to me at [email protected].
“We hunted the mammoth” could also sound like Jean Auel fanfic.
::shudder::
I’m not digging the phrase “the new misogyny.” It just sounds like there’s a specific kind of misogyny that you mock and that all other kinds of misogyny are outside of the scope of your blog.
And it’s not really new, their misogyny.
We are terrible back seat drivers, aren’t we? It’s your blog, of course, but we’re all terribly opinionated. XD
I like the “Mocking Misogyny” idea. It retains much of what made “Misogyny. I mock it.” a great tagline, while also working as both a name and url, IMHO.
Jean M. Auel…
I actually sort of liked the first book, even though the inheritance of memories by her neanderthals just about drove me insane. Ignoring that nonsense, a lot of the other biological and anthropological stuff was fairly decent. I’ll admit a huge lack of anthropology knowledge, I depended on other anthropology whizzes to tell me whether it was complete nonsense, or only sort of nonsense.
Only, then she kept writing, and kept using the same descriptions, and then she introduced these random guys in book two, and and I had to keep flipping 10 pages at a time to avoid things that I really had no interest in reading about. And then boy met girl, finally figured each others states of mind out, and then I had to skip even more pages.
Urgh.
tl;dr I liked the new page name, until Kittehs ruined it! Actually, I still kind of like it, but…
I love the name as it is. I wanted to get T-shirts. The name you picked is perfect.
I haven’t thought about Jean M Auel books since high school! Those were such the cool books to read in the 90’s. Now I kind of want to read them again. It’s probably the kind of thing that’s better in memory than reality though.
I really enjoyed the manboobz title, I always interpreted it as insinuating that they were just another useless part of a man. Not that I begrudge the change, it makes sense.
I don’t mind “We hunted the mammoths”, but it does seem one which is hard to stick a subtitle to.
Maybe “Mocking misogyny and other ideas best left in the Palaeolithic era” Bit long, but covers the bases.
This is awesome! You so have to show us all of the entries when the winner is announced. Please! Please! Please!
My work here is done. 😛
I enjoyed the first three Auel books too, but it got So Boring with Ayla and Jondalar humping every few pages. Plus I could’t stand Jondalar. For a bloke we were always being told was so intelligent and sensitive, he was a thundering fool.
Oh, and violet eyes. Please, leave that to Elizabeth Taylor and her contact lenses, hmm?
But can you imagine Auel fanfic? I’m sure it exists but I don’t want to go there!
How about, “The New Place for Misogyny to Hide”? Or “Creative Misogyny”? or “Same Misogyny, Different Era”? or “Misogyny…Yes it still exists…” or “Misogyny; It’s a Feminist Issue” or “Misogyny: Don’t blame us, the feminists made us do it”
or my personal fav:
“But!….The feminists!”.
Or something to the effect of “Misogyny: I (sort it out / track it down / sift through it) so you don’t have to”, which is kinda the effect the site has had, in practice.
Or adding something to the effect of, “Let’s mock it together!”
Whatever we go with, I just want it to be something that *cannot* be accidentally taken as supporting the MRM. So no sarcastic taglines.
“We Hunted The Mammoth” is pretty good, I think. Perhaps this is a silly question, but is the tagline even necessary? Explaining the purpose of the blog elsewhere instead of in the tagline won’t do any harm, given that trolls never even bother to read the tagline in the first place. A descriptive tagline is never going to stop those smug, entitled folks who think that “logical debates” are mandatory at all times in all contexts.
@David: Okay, I’m too lazy to read the comments right now, but an alternate naming suggestion: “Imaginary Mammoths”, viz; the kind that MRAs think they’d be able to catch, & act as though though they would catch.
Ooh! It’s also available as a domain name in .com, .org & .net. 🙂
Ally – I’d like to keep the present tagline for the reason I said above: Yeah, we’re always going to get the clowns wanting a mass debate, but it’s a pithy comeback for them, and a clear explanation for non-troll newcomers to the site. Neither the new heading nor the current one explain just what it’s about, and I think it’s a very good idea to make that crystal clear right at the start. Plus, like katz said, we don’t want any suggestion that we agree with MRAs in any way.
I think “They Hunted the Mammoth – I mock the misogyny.” is a very good idea, dlouwe!
Ready-Or-Not | April 13, 2014 at 7:21 pm
“This is OT, but according to Getoffmyinternets Sunshine Mary is closing her blog…she posted this message explaining why:
http://wiki.getoffmyinternets.net/Asadgood-bye.htm”
I cannot find that entry on Sunshine Mary’s blog. Is this a hoax?
I like the new name! I’m always a little worried that people will think “Manboobz” is some sort of bodyshaming site that mocks fat men rather than misogynists… The first few times I mentioned “Manboobz” to my fiance I got weird looks and had to explain it every time.
Having something about mocking misogyny in there is probably good, maybe “Tracking and mocking [the new] misogyny”, maybe going back to “Mocking misogyny since 2010”.
I approve the name change, David. Please please keep commenting open, because comment registration systems hate me.
If you want to have a mammoth reference in the title, maybe “Mammoth hunters” would be succinct and even sound a bit like the old title.
I also like the old tagline, but the title and tagline should perhaps form a combo that’s not too obscure to casual readers. Maybe something like:
“Mammoth hunters – Mocking the misogynist meat providers of modern stone age”
I’m with dlouwe and pineapplecookies. “They Hunted The Mammoth – I/We mock the misogyny” sounds like the superior choice.
Robert:
I’ve seen some speculation that the Uralic source language of “mamont” was Khanty or Mansi in Western Siberia. These are distant relatives of Finnish, somewhat closer to Hungarian. In Finnish, earth is “maa” and “manala” is archaic for underground, also meaning the realm of dead (with connotations of Hell in modern Finnish).
I have to wonder if there was a similar double meaning, in that mammoths lived not only “underground” but actually in the Land of Dead, and that’s why you only saw them as bones or at best corpses. If that were the case, “mammoth” would be an awesomely appropriate name for a mighty extinct animal.
“No More Mammoths”, you could add “To Hunt”.
I like “They Hunted the Mammoth”, maybe employ the use of the two dot ellipsis at the end.
I do think changing the tagline to “mocking misogyny” would be better. Not that the trolls will read it anyway.
And I’m totally imagining Elam riding that mammoth like the Cock Carousel girl is riding the horse. With a poorly worded sign in his hand. Oh, yes, that would be awesome, and it makes me wish I could draw.
Long time lurker, rare commenter, but just wanted to interject here. First, I do like the idea of a rename. Honestly, I cringe everytime “manboobz” is spotted amongs my browser shortcuts – I feel an immediate need clarify that it is not a link to a pornographic website.
Main thing I wanted to say though: if you want a polished and professional banner design, you’ll want a professional artist to do the work. You’ll also want something that the professional spends several hours doing. Asking professional artists to do their work for free as a contest is… kind of shitty (IMO), especially given the struggle it can be to string a career together as an artist.
Might I recommend having
1) a competition for best banner-design idea/concept
2) a fundraiser to commission a professional graphics designer to implement that idea
#2 would probably still be okay for a “split funds 4-ways, commission 3 designers, each gets 25%, and have vote across the 3-best final products, with chosen desing getting last 25%”.
I don’t want to overly complicate this, but the generic “I’ll do a contest so I can get something for free and struggling artists don’t have to be paid for their work” appeal always raises my hackles a bit, and I’d love to see at least some consideration given to a way to pay someone for their hard work.
I’ll kick off with an open offer; I pledge $20 to a commission fund for this banner design, should such a fund be opened.