Effin is a village in the county of Limerick in Ireland. It is also a word used to delicately replace a vulgar term for sexual intercourse.
And it is a place which Facebook refuses to accept in the "hometown" field of one woman's social networking profile.
BBC News reports that Ann Marie Kennedy, an employee in the department of nursing and midwifery at the University of Limerick, recently noticed this oddity when she attempted to acknowledge her hometown on Facebook.
Instead of recognizing or simply accepting the village's name, Facebook's interface suggests that perhaps Kennedy meant to enter Effingham, Illinois; New Effington, South Dakota or a number of other places.
Kennedy has attempted to reach out to Facebook in order to ask for some sort of fix, but had no success due to the social network's lack of customer service contacts.
When we contacted Facebook to inquire about the absence of Effin on the social network, we were initially informed that someone is "looking into" things. A follow up email explained that "from time to time [Facebook is] alerted to oversights such as this in [its] mapping system," and that the company will "look to correct it to ensure places like Effin can be liked on Facebook."
Facebook also said it doesn't prevent people from discussing Effin or delete any pages mentioning the village. The location's name wasn't found offensive, but simply missed by the system which pulls in suggestions for the hometown field.
But based on what Kennedy told BBC News, even that is still disparaging:
I was born and raised in Effin and my family come from here. There's a great community spirit. Our best known export is Effin cheese.
It's a great little parish. I'd just like to put down (on Facebook), because I'm from Effin, and so would so many Effin people around the world, that they're from Effin.
But on the bright side: Most of us got a little bit of a chuckle out of this particular Facebook quirk. And some folks — such as Justin Lacy, one of my Facebook subscribers — even used it as an excuse to show off their poetic sides:
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