Last night, a follower (Reader? Fan? This is the problem. We don’t know what to call you guys.) said we should choose a name for our flock (ooh, flock could be a good one—adding that to the list below). The reason being, it’s hard to know how to refer to you all.
This was a good point, and is something we’ve considered before. All great entities have names for their followers. Deadheads. Beliebers. I can only think of ones that have to do with music right now but I’m sure there are others. You guys need a name.
There are plenty of possible names out there, ranging from Crows (but isn’t that us?) to Barkers (again, though, isn’t that us?) to Fans of The Barking Crow™ (not us, but too many syllables). The best one we can think of, though, is Murderers.
A group of crows is called a murder, and together, we can all be the Murder (or the Flock, and yes, we’re including ourselves, the Murder needs to be large). Individually, though, we should probably be Murderers.
There’s one obvious problem here, and that’s the issue that “murder,” in its most common definition, is the word we use to describe someone killing someone else. If we ask someone, “Are you a Murderer?” or, “Do you Murder?” or, “Are you part of the Murder?” many will assume we’re talking about killing, which could lead us to accidentally exclude some and—more dangerously—accidentally include others. This is where “bark” comes back in.
If you’re a Murderer (capitalization might help us here, we’re trying it out), and you’re looking to know if someone else is a Murderer, feel free to ask them: “Do you bark?” If you’re a Murderer, and someone else who’s a Murderer asks if you bark, confirm not by saying yes, but by saying, “Bark.” “Bark” is a good word here because it’s vague. We need some vagueness. And by using it to mean, “Yes,” and, “Hello, fellow Murderer,” and, “Help! I killed a man!” we’ll get all the vagueness we could ever want. Really, though, try it. The next time you leave the room and are saying goodbye to a fellow Murderer, just say, “Bark.” It’s like a verbal fist pound. Gives you that little oomph to go live your life.
We aren’t 100% committed to this yet, but it isn’t arising organically and people are asking for it, so we’re putting it out there. Let us know your thoughts. We could also use Flockers, but that’s a lot of consonants. Murderer similarly doesn’t roll off the tongue, but again—“Bark.” And on that note…
Bark.
Why not NITwits