RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 14 sourcesSince Americans are apparently now allowed to rename stuff whenever they want, MapQuest is letting users go nuts on poor, beleaguered Lake Ontario. Speaking of nuts and the smallest (by area) of the Great Lakes, Donald Trump’s announcement on Thursday that the U.S. government is unilaterally changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” provoked the expected wave of eye-rolling, baffled outrage, and predictable, slavering obedience from fawning Republican lawmakers. It also provoked a bit of welcome, cheeky disobedience from at least one of the major direction-finding apps.
MapQuest, pulled a similar stunt after Trump decided the Gulf of Mexico didn’t have that all-’Murican ring to it last year. This time, the site announced via social media, “We’re not changing it” with reference to the lake’s 400-year-old moniker while creating an online name generator so users can get in on the fun of renaming bodies of water according to whatever whimsical nonsense swims through their brains.
And while the Trump’s Canada-pwning Oval Office presser will force federal agencies to adopt the scribblings of a sundowning reality show host and would-be dictator as official policy, nobody else in the world has to take the rechristening seriously. Least of all social media users, who have leapt at the chance to flood the internet with their own suggestions, mainly at Trump’s very deserved expense.
MapQuest itself opened the floodgates by renaming the innocent body of water, “Lake Are We Doing This Again?,” which is not terrible for a corporate entity. But the internet joke-mind is coming out strong, with a cursory cast over socials reeling in examples such as “Lake Epstein,” “Lake We Are Sorry Our President Is Being A Dick,” “Lake Obama,” “Lake Him Up,” and “Lake of Mexico,” among many, many others .
MapQuest, long a bronze medalist in the finding-your-way-home race behind Google Maps and Apple Maps, may be using this Trump-topping free-for-all as a marketing ploy, sure. But when both Google and Apple immediately knuckled under with the whole “Gulf of America” debacle (private companies are not required to change place names when a fascist wants to stick it to a former ally), some users are indeed taking this all-too-rare act of corporate defiance as their cue to swap over their chosen mapping app.
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