Honest to gods, this conversation happened today, and it may have cost me a job opportunity. The customer was super impressed with my menu design and animation, and wanted to know who we got it from. When I said I did it, their face lit up! Too bad as soon as i said GIMP, they weren't interested anymore. Has anyone else experienced this? What do you say in similar situations?

Picture of post from my Bluesky of a convo between me and a customer... {Convo between me and a customer today: "neat menu, i really like it."  "thanks, I made it." -me "Really? How?" "I used Gim... and an online program, Canva to animate it." "Im sorry, Gim?" "Umm, GIMP. It stand for GNU Image Manip..." "GIMP?? Like the suit?" "No, not like the suit."  why, gimp dev!? }
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[–] 15 points 9 months ago (17 children)
  • [–] 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

    From Wiktionary:

    • A person who is lame due to a crippling of the legs or feet.

    • (slang, derogatory) A name-calling word, generally for a person who is perceived to be inept, deficient or peculiar.

    • (BDSM) A submissive dressed in a full-body suit of latex or a similar material.

    I'm vaguely sure the first two meanings above appeared earlier. Perhaps the name was taken as a nod to ‘geek’ and ‘dweeb’, which were slurs for programmers back before the profession became mainstream. Edit: apparently not: "The software was originally named the General Image Manipulation Program. Kimball and Mattis formed the acronym GIMP by adding the letter G to '-IMP,' inspired by a reference to 'the gimp' in the 1994 film Pulp Fiction."

    Somewhat relatedly, Torvalds called his versioning software ‘git’, which is also a derogatory term, a British-specific one at that. (And the original name of Linux was 'Freax'.)

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  • [+] 7 points 9 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (3 children)

    Merriam has the definition I knew it by before I saw Pulp Fiction, which is a synonym for limp. I think I was also vaguely aware it was an offensive word for someone disabled.

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gimp

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  • [+] 1 point 9 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    How did you learn it? Did you maybe grow up in an English speaking community

    Yeah I'm a native speaker and read a ton as a kid, and then ended up being a lit major, so I guess my idea of what words are normal could be somewhat skewed. But I think that one I probably heard it from my dad.

    Looks like the gimp usage peaked in the 1860s, at least in books.

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  • [+] 11 points 9 months ago (5 children)
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  • [–] 19 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT?

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