Ghif or jif? Mishellanea or Missellanea? Does it *really* matter?
🎵 You say a ghif file
And I say a jif file
A hard g? A soft g?
Without “file”? Or with “file”?
Let’s call the whole thing off 🎶
It still seems surreal to me that my comments have now been read a lot — dozens, probably over a hundred times — on The Young Turks videos that have been watched, live or recorded, hundreds of thousands of times. It’s flattering and mind-boggling.
On two recent episodes of The Young Turks, Ana, John, and now Cenk have talked about how to pronounce my username. And now I feel bad and wonder: should I have clarified sooner how my username was pronounced?
If you made it to my site and are reading this, there’s a possibility you’re interested in the story about my username, how it came to be mispronounced, and a clip of Cenk and Ana discussing it on air.
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Miraculous Ladybug. Eclectic Miscellanea. Both have origin stories and two-word names. Coincidence? Of course!!
Origins
I’m an eclectic person IRL, so I wanted an unusual username. Eclectic is a pretty well-known word. Miscellanea is not — it means a collection of random things, like the word miscellaneous. When I chose the name Eclectic Miscellanea, I didn’t know yet that The Young Turks existed (I described coming up with the name in my first blog post).
I had no idea that even one comment would get read on The Young Turks. By this time, I’d seen Mad as Hell — Cenk Uygur had an entire film about him and the success of TYT. I knew Cenk had been a host on MSNBC. I knew TYT was the longest-running Internet news show on the planet. With billions of views. And he was reading my comments!
The first time Cenk read a comment of mine I was shocked. My heart stopped. Then I was ecstatic that he (or someone at TYT) picked my comment to read. I literally couldn’t believe it.
Then a few more comments were read. Then some more. By Cenk, Ana Kasparian, John Iadarola, Malcolm Fleschner… The first time John read my username, he said he thought it was a cool name. Soon after, he joked that he must be under some contractual obligation to read at least one comment from me every show. 😂
There was even a meme about me and a few other live tweeters at one point who were often getting their comments read. A few people wanted to meet me in person when I went to Politicon 2019 to watch Ana debate Tomi Lahren. For whatever reason, the people choosing comments and the hosts themselves kept choosing and reading my comments.
Miscellanea or Mischellanea?
The storm blew over (I think at least!) about me and several others getting comments read often — they actually read a variety of them from a variety of people on several different platforms: tyt.com, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube…They even have a ticker now for user comments!
So what’s the problem now? Miscellanea is a very unusual word. I didn’t know how to pronounce it when I picked it; I had to look it up to make sure it was even a word. For whatever reason, Cenk thought it was pronounce with a sh sound, maybe thinking it was Italian? Mischellanea! Mamma Mia! Or mischievous? (It sounds from the clip below like that may have been it).
I now know that Ana followed his lead based on how Cenk pronounced it. John and Malcolm pronounced it correctly, to their credit. It’s a weird, uncommon word.
So I had a dilemma. Cenk pronounced it wrong. Do I say, “ahem, I do declare, it’s pronounced “Missellanea”? That seemed like a dick thing to do. They have more important things to worry about, like the real threat of Trump trying to turn our country into a fascist state. Or talking about the founding of Justice Democrats, the election of AOC.
So then I thought, should I change my username? I considered changing it to Missellanea, but then obviously people would assume I’m a woman (which I’m not; some people already assume this maybe because they know how it’s pronounced?). But at least some people who watch the show had started to associate my comments with the handle Eclectic Miscellanea.
So then I thought I was overthinking things, which I often do. After all, does it really matter how Miscellanea is pronounced?
Gif: Jif versus Ghif — a slightly more important pronunciation topic on the Interwebz.
I was happy when the inventor of gif proved me and millions of others right about it being with a soft g. 😀
The jig / gig is up
After my username was read a dozen or so times, and from time to time since then, I thought — maybe I should say something? But by that point, I thought “well, if I point it out now, I don’t want Cenk or Ana to feel bad they were saying it wrong. And maybe people think I want it pronounced that way anyway” — until the ticker, most people just heard the name and/or didn’t know how it was spelled, and/or didn’t know the word. To anyone who noticed or cared about my username, they probably think of it as Eclectic Mishellanea. So that’s what I think of it as now.
So what changed? Why am I writing about this now? A viewer (not me btw) on the tyt.com member site changed their username recently to “It’s pronounced Missellanea.” Their comments had been read a few times the past couple of weeks. They were great comments. The name was also obviously meant to give a hint to Cenk and Ana about how to say Miscellanea.
And Ana figured out that the user was sending a message to the hosts by using that name, and so she asked: is Eclectic Mischellanea actually pronounced Eclectic Miscellanea?
Ana asked John to confirm, and asked if he noticed how Cenk pronounced it. John said he didn’t know. Since Cenk and John don’t often co-host with just the two of them (it’s happened more recently as part of Power Panels), and John has more important things to think about, he may not have noticed. And even if he did, I don’t think he was thinking he should police Cenk’s pronunciation of an obscure word when there are more important things to do.
I was relieved at first. I thought, “the elephant in the room has finally been addressed.” Other viewers had mentioned the mispronunciation before, to me or in general. But then I wondered — what will happen next time Cenk reads a comment by or about me?
And sure enough, it came up: not because of one of my comments, but from Cenk mispronouncing part of another username (containing the name Adele). So Ana asked him what she (probably sarcastically, at least partially) called “an important question.” Here’s the exchange about it.
I can’t tell if Cenk is pretending to be annoyed or if he really is. Or if Ana is annoyed or upset that she followed Cenk’s lead and has been saying it wrong (in this clip she doesn’t seem upset, and it helps that it came up in the context of Cenk pronouncing another viewer name wrong and a media figure pronouncing Cenk’s name wrong).
When Ana talked about it with John last week it seemed like she was, but it’s nice that at the end yesterday, they said no offense was meant. And none was taken — I’m just extremely flattered that they read my comments and bothered to take time to talk about it.
I doubt Andrew Lloyd Webber have this sort of situation in mind when writing “What Happens Now”
So what happens now?
I feel really bad now about the whole thing. I don’t think they’re spending sleepless nights thinking about it. I’m sure everyone except for me has moved on, lol. But at least in those two moments, did they feel bad or mad about pronouncing it wrong?
Did they feel like I or someone should have told them sooner? Do they wish I had changed my username? On YouTube I often go as just Eclectic now, but since others in the TYT Family have used Eclectic in usernames from time to time, and on Twitter there’s another progressive Eclectic with a lot more users than me, I decided to keep it except for briefly being “Eclectic Mistletoe” for the holidays last year.
Should I feel bad? Am I now dead to TYT? What do you do when someone says your name wrong — your username or real-life name? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments below! You can follow me on Twitter or subscribe by clicking here to get updates when new content is posted. Have a good one! 👋
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