‘Muff Wiggler’ Now ‘Mod Wiggler’ Synth forum Muff Wiggler has officially changed its name to ‘Mod Wiggler‘, in response to user feedback.
The name has been controversial among site users for more than a decade, with about two-thirds of the visitors in a 2008 survey either ambivalent about the name or characterizing the name as: unacceptable; mildly offensive; or stupid, but harmless. Only about one-third of the visitors were strongly in favor of it. While the site’s late founder Mike McGrath said he named it after a pair of popular Electro-Harmonix effects pedals, the ‘Big Muff’ and the ‘Wiggler’, the name was seen by many as a single entendre – a phrase with a bawdy meaning, that’s not really cleaver enough to have the dual meanings of a double entendre. In recent years, interest in renaming the site has only grown, because users had the same issues as ‘Gearslutz’ users: the name was seen as unprofessional; it was broadly considered sexist; and the name led to the site being blocked or avoided in schools and workplaces. Site organizers released this statement: “Today marks the 2 year anniversary of Mike’s passing, so I thought it would be a good time to detail the often hinted upcoming changes to the site that will be going live over the next week: Effective today, we are now Mod Wiggler. ModWiggler.com is now active, although your old bookmarks will continue to work until the old DNS registration expires, on November 21, 2022. Images and site configuration will be updated over the next couple days to match the new name. If by Monday I’ve missed anything, please shoot me a message. We will not be rewriting history. We will not be changing old post contents. We are not banning or scrubbing words. I’m not going to go into details about why the name was changed. That and settling on a new name was hard enough. It’s done and not open for debate.” |
