Critics like Malcolm Gladwell have expressed their doubts as to the importance of social media in Egypt’s more or less peaceful revolution, but the Egyptian man who recently named his daughter in honor of Facebook probably thinks otherwise.
Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram (warning: PDF) reports: (h/t TechCrunch for the translation)
A New Day
Man Names His Newborn Girl Facebook
A young man in his twenties wanted to express his gratitude about the victories the youth of 25th of January have achieved and chose to express it in the form of naming his firstborn girl “Facebook” Jamal Ibrahim (his name.) The girl’s family, friends, and neighbors in the Ibrahimya region gathered around the new born to express their continuing support for the revolution that started on Facebook. “Facebook” received many gifts from the youth who were overjoyed by her arrival and the new name. A name [Facebook] that shocked the entire world.
On the one hand, this illustrates pretty compactly the importance that Facebook and social media had to at least one subset of the Egyptian protesters. On the other: She’s going to be stuck with that name for the rest of her life, man. As one NYMag commenter puts it, “the first kid named ‘Wikileaks’ will be a psychic wreck before entering school. parents shouldnt deliver bad jokes about their children on a platter.”
See also: Mark Zuckerberg appears on Tunisian protest banner.
(TechCrunch via NYMag)
