Technology
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With Twitter still in turmoil from Emperor Elon Musk’s takeover, an Indian Twitter alternative is seeing flocks of new Brazilian users head toward their microblogging platform – but for a rather unexpected reason.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Millions of people downloaded the Koo app in Brazil over the weekend after it was launched in the country with Portuguese language settings. In fact, it become the most downloaded app in Brazil within a day of its release to the market. Plenty of other social media apps, such as Mastodon, are also enjoying some renewed success following the chaos over at Twitter.
However, it appears that Koo’s popularity in Brazil has a unique flavor. It turns out, the name of the app – Koo – sounds distinctively similar to the Portuguese slang word “cu” – which means a**hole. Instead of tweets, user can post “koos,” which no doubt sounds hilarious to a Portuguese speaker.
“Brazilians are signing up en masse for an Indian Twitter clone used by Hindu nationalists because its name sounds like the Portuguese slang word for asshole,” tweeted Ryan Broderick, a podcaster and writer behind the Garbage Day newsletter who was among the first to recognize the trend.
Koo seems to be aware of the double entendre and appears to be handling it well. All publicity is good publicity, after all.
“To our friends in Brazil! Koo is the sound of this cute yellow bird. Not what you think,” Koo Brazil tweeted.
Tech start-ups are no strangers to odd and vaguely NSFW names. You may remember when a German company called Electric Brands revealed their new electric bus with interchangeable modules named eBussy, which just so happens to sound very similar to gay slang for butthole. Doh.
