I occasionally use a cheap-and-cheerful piece of computer music software called “FLStudio“. Its publishers changed the package’s name from “FruityLoops” a few years ago. Today was the first time I read the explanation for the name change given on the Website of Image-Line Software, the German company that produces FLStudio.

The company offers three reasons: the first is that there is a trademark dispute over the name in US territories between Image-Line and Kellogg’s; the third is that calling the program “Fruity Loops” implied misleadingly that it could only be used for loop manipulation; the second is, I think, rather unpleasant. I reproduce the text from the site as written [the page might be unavailable to those without a licence for the software]:

“‘Fruity’ means gay to a lot of (US based) users. Not that we have anything against gay people but we don’t want to miss out on the hip hop crowd so …”

WTF?! This isn’t just stupid; it somehow manages to patronise and insult both gays and hip hop fans. How about if they’d stopped calling it “JuicyLoops” and explained the change like this?:

“‘Juicy’ sounds like ‘Jewish’ to (US based) users. Not that we have anything against Jewish people but we don’t want to miss out on the Muslim crowd so …”

Not for nothing does the FLStudio logo resemble a knobhead.