Syfayl

· by · in Misc.. ·

This has already been picked up by a ton of people, but I’m going to record it anyway — for posterity, or that time in a year or two when what was the Sci-Fi channel collapses under the weight of its management’s idiocy.

Wanting to change the name is, in itself, already bordering on lunacy. Is Animal Planet suddenly going to call itself NML PLNT? Sure, cuz that’s how I’d text it! And it’s almost young-speak, and we may not understand them but we sure want those young-speak dollars.

Changing it to possibly the lamest thing that ever existed since Larry McLamebastard won the Laredo Lameness Lament goes beyond lunacy and is just laughable. Unlike some, however, I doubt Syfy will be laughing all the way to the bank. Someone actually got paid to come up with that.

This may actually beat the Great British Telecom Logo Disaster of the 90s (for those of you who a) know what that was and b) can remember that far).

epic_fail

15 responses to “Syfayl”

  1. Yep. A case of: “If it ain’t broke, then let’s make sure we completely screw it up.”

    One of the things I thought they did well before, was with their marketing the middle two letters of SciFi as “If.” It pretty much summed up the spirit of Science Fiction; “What if.”

    Now I guess they’ll use “Yf”

    /em forehead-slap

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  2. Isn’t Yf something two furries do? Yf so this would probably be apropos (pooch screw ..)

    /facepalm

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  4. Can you say “New Coke”? Moving “Murder She Wrote” to Thursday night? Whoever thought this up is right up there with those marketing genii.

    They couldn’t OWN “Sci Fi”? And this is a reason to make up a word????

    The guy they quoted as saying “if I were texting, that’s how I’d spell it”? That’s why I don’t text…. In 50 years there will be no more vowels….

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  5. Y thynk that thys ys the best ydea ever.

    Jason (resydent drunken ydyot of Channel Massive who lykes to sygn hys comments because yt makes them 10x more valyd)

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  6. I hate the stigma of the term sci-fi. I immediately think of the cliche little green man. It’s too bad, because I actually like a majority of the the stuff that is termed sci-fi…except…of course…little green men. But syfy? Isn’t that a nickname for someone with a VD? “Hey, syfy, has that cleared up yet?”

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  7. I read yesterday the part about how “SyFy” is spelled the way youngsters would text it. Yeah, about that. I’m a youngster, and neither I nor the people who text me replace I’s with Y’s as a way of texting faster. Maybe I’m just an anomaly — I never shorten my language for a text, except maybe the occasional “u” in place of “you” — but “SyFy” as the shortened, text-friendly version of “SciFi” is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in a while. It’s only one letter fewer, FFS!

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  8. @Jen — quite. Regarding “shortenings” that aren’t, I always grimace at forensics shows using “GSW” for “gun shot wound” because it doesn’t actually take any less time to say. Course that’s probably acceptable since it most likely represents written jargon (assuming it’s used that way in RL forensics) — as far as the shows go, I’m sure it’s just used to sound more official and investigator-ish.

    @Makkaio — I can’t remember where I read it, and it was years ago, but there used to be a debate regarding Sci-Fi versus SF. “Sci-Fi” used to be seen as more derogatory to the genre than “SF” and was therefore not used by “real” science fiction fans. This was years ago though, back when SF really was still a ghetto genre instead of the slightly-less-mainstream offshoot it is now. (I suspect it was in some book about Science Fiction by Brian Aldiss, but I can’t be arsed to go look it up.)

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  9. I’m a sad cow. 😉

    Trillion Year Spree

    I remember it mainly because a) I was able to do a Science-Fiction course for my Eng Lit degree years ago (even though it was only one term), and b) I actually met the co-author, David* Wingrove, who’s got his own books out. I’m even mentioned in one of the acknowledgements on one of them. Oooo claim to fame, eh? /head_swell

    *Ahem – David, not Brian. Did I mention I’m really not good with names? Who the hell are you lot anyway?!

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    • I did a Sci-Fi course last semester. Unfortunately our text book, The Norton Anthology of Science Fiction, only included works from after the 1960s. We also read a couple of novels, but they were from a more recent era and mostly comprised of “soft science fiction” — Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Wanting Seed, etc.

      It was definitely a fun class though!

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      • Funnily enough that sounds a lot like the course I took waaaay back in 1988. 😉

        Thing is, while there certainly is SF prior to the 60s, as a distinct genre (and not an offshoot of pulp fiction which is an offshoot of penny dreadfuls etc etc) it really only emerged post-WWII, so it’s not too surprising that courses will tend to use that as a cut-off point.

        Besides, the 60s and early 70s had some really excellent and exploratory SF.

        This discounts non-US/UK science-fiction, which has had a relatively different early history (France has a long-standing but idiosyncratic tradition, Russia has one, etc etc.) and is — or wasn’t in my day — usually not dealt with much in “standard” intro to SF classes.

        Man, can you tell I’m supposed to be working and don’t want to?

        Thanks for the quick ramble down memory lane though! 😀

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  10. It;’s just awful, like whatever it was that rebranded to Dave (UKTV Comedy I think) or something that’s rebranding to Watch.. I don’t even remember what the channel is anymore. Syfy is horrible, really, it won’t mask that they show sci-fi!

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