Irish woman campaigns to get Effin hometown on Facebook

By Jeff Hughes December 2, 2011

A woman in Ireland has launched a campaign to get Facebook to recognize her home town’s existence. She believes it may have to do with the name of the tiny rural village: Effin.

The village of Effin has only 1,000 residents, and is located near Limerick city in the Irish Republic. Ann Marie Kennedy said that when she tried to add the name of the village on her Facebook profile, there was no Effin option that popped up. ‘

It’s a great little parish. I’d just like to put down (on Facebook), because I’m from Effin, and so many Effin people from around the world, that they’re from Effin,” the woman told BBC. “But Facebook won’t let it because they think it’s obscene or offensive.”

Ann-Marie was not alone, as her friends had similar problems tagging the home town and were only able to select Limerick. The Effin natives would also get options such as Effingham, Illinois or Effingham, New Hampshire.

Effin does have a Facebook presence, with an Effin 219-member strong group page and an Effin GAA page with over 900 members. Ann-Marie herself has created a Facebook page named ‘Please get my hometown Effin recognised’. The woman tried repeatedly to contact the social networking company through conventional channels, but that proved useless. Eventually she got in touch with Facebook through Ray D’Arcy’s 2FM radio show.

Effin’ is, of course, also a contraction of one of George Carlin’s favorite language panacea’s: The f-word. However, Facebook in a statement denied that its excluding of the village had anything to do with the obscenity of the f-word, but rather because of Effin’s size. Ms. Kennedy was informed that she could still ‘check-in’ when visiting Effin and that Facebook would investigate this case of mpping oversight.

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