Then there is Australia. Naming a swimming pool after a Prime Minister that drowned.
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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We love dark humour here, but he was also an avid swimmer.
Not a good one but avid.
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They need to rename the maccas where scomo shit himself.
"Allegedly " drowned 😉
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER
Most buildings named after people are done because they donated money for it. In most cases it's still kinda cringe.
Funding for buildings is sometimes driven by recurring donations in exchange for someone’s name on the building. These funds pay for deferred maintenance and renovations.
yeah it's cool that buildings are maintained and so on, but it's cringe to pay a bunch of money for clout. rich people basically view botting IRL
It’s similar to Kickstarter, where a certain level will get your name in the credits.
oh yeah rich people do that with movies, too! "executive producer" sometimes means "i donated to put my name here"
Hmm, this sounds a lot like you're thinking of someone specific. I wonder who that could be...
Trump is literally unable to see the difference. It doesn't matter if it was but there by him or someone else, the important thing is that "big thing has my name on it". He doesn't see how miserable it is, in his mind he's winning
This is a guy that wears shirts with his own name and branding on them. He's as crass as they come.
Maybe you already listened to her, but Mary Trump has insight...
What about being named after a building?
That's a brilliant idea, Mr Bungalow
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In german we have the saying "Eigenlob stinkt" which can be translated to "honouring yourself stinks" which fits perfectly here
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I dunno, Doofenschmirtz Evil Inc. is quite good
Tbf that was the company name not the building
That goes for steaks as well. /s
And universities
And vodka
And bottled water
And magazines
And morality
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There is also an escalation of this, between naming a building you own, after yourself and naming other's buildings after yourself let alone monuments
What dictators do is to erect their own monuments, and wreck the memorials of their opponents.
Naming things after people frequently backfires. The person later turns out to be politically divisive, or a nazi, or a rapist, or a pedophile, or some other awful thing.
I’m so tired of seeing “XYZ memorial highway” signs everywhere. And schools should just stick to naming themselves after the region (north/south/east/west), or going by PS numbers. It’s all just asking for trouble and a waste of taxpayer money.
See the perfect example: Star Trek Discovery namedropping Musk in-between the Wright brothers and Zephram Cochrane (in-universe inventor of the warp drive), and even having a high school named after him.
This, mind you, happened right before his "pedo guy" comments - the episode aired in early October 2017, whereas Musk made the comment on 15 July 2018. So within a year Musk managed to kill off the respect of a large chunk of nerds just by letting his inner Nazi appear for a moment.
In my mind, I rewrote the episode’s script. Essentially, Elon laid himself down feet first in front of a steam roller, after giving away everything he owned to fund Universal Healthcare.
So, they named a local elementary school after him, as it was literally the very least they could do after he was squeezed out like a tube of toothpaste.
It's fascinating to think that if Elon hadn't spent so much time hanging around with former sexpats such that the word Thailand meant paedophile tourism to him, America could have a functioning democracy right now.
Nah, the issue is much deeper rooted. fElonia has been a white supremacist moron for a VERY long time.
When he sold his first company, Zip2, to Compaq, the latter said that the code was practically unusable.
Later on, he funded the formation of the original X dot com, an online bank, where he fired all other founders within the first half year due to "creative differences", basically stole their work, and within a year they merged with Peter Thiel's PayPal/Confinity. A few months later Musk got ousted as CEO because of mismanagement. Go figure.
Half his ventures since have been abject and utter failures, which would've ruined anyone else financially, but because he's got his rich emerald mine owner daddy, he always had a nice little trust fund to fall back on.
And his views also go back to his father, who was a fervent supporter of the Apartheid state, and is essentially a white supremacist (also an elitist piece of shit). Don't even get me started about mummy dearest, to whom muskie had to run just so he didn't have to fight Zuckerberg...
At SpaceX there literally used to be a "Musk management department", solely tasked with giving the imbecile random tasks that don't affect mission critical stuff, and making sure he's not saying absolutely moronic BS in interviews.
He's basically stuck on the mental and emotional level of a 13yo teen who just hit puberty, combined with that Cybertruck shaped body, more gender affirming care than your average post-op trans person, and a botched micropenis he can't even use. Him going full on alt-right wasn't a question of if, but when.
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I'm happy to use it to memorialize someone who is long dead (like, at least a century; long enough that we can be pretty sure what kind of person they were in life), or to mark a notable feature or plant or animal in the region. Even an institution (College Park, Museum Way, High School Rd). Not everything has to be purely functional. And if the local government has to pay for the signs to be printed anyway...
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That's okay.
It is mostly possible to erase a person's legacy, at least in the physical sense. Egypt almost erased a whole-ass pharaoh from history. (Akhenaten)
Yeah just like how all of those Civil War Generals were erased from history for betraying their country for the sake of preserving slavery.
Let's be real. Americans are incapable of shame. As long as USA continues to exist, Trump's actions will be whitewashed and there will be statues of him made in the future.
Yeah just like how all of those Civil War Generals were erased from history for betraying their country for the sake of preserving slavery.
This is nowhere near an appropriate comparison to Akhenaten.
Let’s be real. Americans are incapable of shame.
The 2025 elections, where every Donald-won district from 2024 flipped, is empirical evidence to the contrary. It seems that people were on-board for a mass-deportation, but not for the targeting of legal immigrants and the military occupation of American cities.
But sure. It's your world and your algorithm. Think what you want.
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Fun fact, the hollywood walk of fame is a bought honor, you pay for it, you get it. It's not given out based on some achievement criteria
Yes and no.
You need to have +5 years of history in entertaiment business and/or in community work and somebody else needs to nominate you. Then if the commitee acepts you and you pay the sponsor fee you get the star.
But yeah. If you have lots of money and friends in right places you can pretty much buy it, but its not like any bluecollar worker can just take a loan and buy one for themself without any merit.
Its not really that different than how people get wings in hospitals or libraries named after them. Except Hollywood star does not benefit normal people in any way.
Another fun fact is that once a star is there it’s there - no mechanism to get it removed.
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That's normally how naming things works in general tbh.
Except a lot of rich people “donate” large sums of money and places “honor” them by naming it after them. Really they’re just paying to put their name of stuff…. which, yeah, falls under cringe.
While it's true that they essentially pay to have their names added to a room/hall/floor/wing/building, don't forget that those donations tend to fund actually important research and equipment (this mostly happens to hospitals and universities or research facilities).
It's also a common occurrence for scientific research locations/institutions to name an area after an important scientist, upon their passing.
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In South Australia, we had a bloke put up signs with his surname on all the real estate places he bought. Apparently the dad was okay, but the son is a complete arsehat.
Not the first time that's happened either.
This tends to happen with nouveau riche - the generation that makes the initial wealth usually grows up in relative scarcity and is better due to it (learning money management and the importance of not overspending, but saving as much as one can). But they lack the skills or ability to pass this education on, the second generation is spoiled because the parents want to give their kids everything they couldn't have in their childhood, and thus that generation becomes entitled little shits who care not about money because they always seem to have enough for anything they want, let it be a new car, a new bachelor pad, or paying off the right people to get out from a DUI or drug charges.
This even tends to happen to people whom aren't even rich rich, just well off enough so that money isn't really an issue. Real estate can be one of those businesses where one can get to that level of well off.
I agree with you and have, as someone who has known plenty of folks who are "old money" (think British landed gentry e.g. Saltburn-type folk) and they often don't realise their privilege but also don't flaunt their wealth. They never want for anything but they don't go around with a "look at me" attitude. They're often quite odd and disconnected from reality though - lacking an entire knowledge base of street smarts.
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