People on this website will really mock anti-vaxxers and flat earthers for ignoring scientists and getting their alternative facts from facebook, and then turn around and insist they know more history than historians and more archaeology than archaeologists because they read an unsourced tumblr post once
Is there a real life example of this?
It happens a lot.
I know it's bad but I kind of want to know more about the woman who thinks the Roman Empire never existed
Oh shit i believed the Leonardo Da Vinci one
Also why do people make these
What do you hope to gain
There are a lot of different misinformation dynamics at play here. Only some are innocent, only some are malicious. But that’s why it pays to fact-check things, because the innocent misunderstandings, the arrogant personal hypotheses stated as fact, and the malicious lies are all jumbled together.
- Some of these are a misunderstanding or conflating of true facts. The Da Vinci one goes here. Many historians do believe that Leonardo da Vinci had a romantic/sexual relationship with his apprentice(s). And it’s well-established that his apprentices modeled for some of his paintings. But they did not model for any of his paintings of Jesus - which was the core point of the post that this fact came from, enjoying the irony. So this isn’t true because it’s a conflation of several true facts into a false but understandable conclusion.
- Some of these are just a victim of internet telephone. The “Persephone’s daughter” and “fake Greek goddess” ones refer to Mespyrian, who was some teenager’s wattpad OC daughter of Persephone and Hades, that someone else on tumblr accidentally mistook as a real figure from Greek mythology.
- Some of these come from people making their own conclusions about history, and then turning around and insisting that the experts therefore must be lying to you. This is where it gets dangerous. The “archaeologists broke the noses off Egyptian statues to hide the fact that they were African” one goes here. Many Egyptian statues are missing their noses, so several years ago someone on the internet claimed that it was because archaeologists deliberately broke them off, and this gained a Lot of traction because it felt true and people wanted it to be true. People overwhelmingly want to believe that they, ordinary citizens of the world with no special training, are actually smarter than the experts. People love to believe that, so it’s very, very easy for people to decide the experts are stupid and clueless (the “History Hates Lovers” song, the thing about the dodecahedron or the Roman hairstyles or the leather burnishers) while salt-of-the-earth ordinary folk are smarter than those ivory-tower eggheads. At worst, people decide the experts are maliciously hiding the truth about the world for their own gain (the Lovers of Valdaro one here is an example of this, but you also see this a lot regarding “all ancient cultures were feminist utopias until the Catholic Church invented misogyny and covered up the feminist past” type posts that are extremely popular with TERFs.) This is the dynamic I’m comparing to anti-vaxxers and flat Earthers, and yes, this kind of anti-intellectualism is dangerous.
- Some people are just trolls because they like lying on the internet and riling people up. This cannot be discounted. People do do this. The tiktok woman who doesn’t believe in the Roman Empire and doesn’t believe that Vesuvius erupted is almost certainly a troll who likes the attention her wild false claims get.
It’s a combination of things, but it’s why you shouldn’t assume that historians are all old homophobic clueless idiots and only you, tumblr user persephonesmassivebadonkers or whatever, know the REAL truth. Because that’s how you get Flat Earthers, but more pressingly, it’s how you get antisemitic conspiracy theories and transphobic radfem proclamations of We Need To Return To The Ancient Feminist Utopia (By Destroying All Trans People)(And, Usually, Abrahamic Religions).
But also by believing easily-debunked falsehoods it makes genuinely well-meaning people easier to dismiss by bigots as Brainwashed By Those El Gee Bee Tees Who Will Lie Because They Want To Destroy Academia/Biological Sex/The Church.
Spreading misinformation on tumblr is an understandable consequence of the existence of the internet, but it’s not harmless and really ought to be challenged when it’s seen.
And it’s not remotely helped by the fact there’s plenty of similar true stories that can be pointed to. Like, here’s a list of things: Brits in the 1800s used to eat Egyptian mummies, numerous gay relationships in history were called “friendships” by Christian historians, the Vatican is hoarding almost all history ever written and refuses to let anyone access it, the original biographies of the Sons of Liberty were all works of fiction (like Washington and the apple tree), Greek and Roman statues were painted but the people who discovered them found it garish so they stripped the paint off, DaVinci invented a tank, Lancelot is a fanfiction OC, and the Catholic Church was founded after numerous other Christian churches and proceeded to burn the holy books that didn’t support their version (like the Gospel of Judas, which establishes that the “betrayal” was Jesus’s plan because how was he supposed to die as planned, and they plotted it together). It’s easy to believe bullshit when the truth is just as rank.
This is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about: confidently firing off a mix of half-remembered and out-of-context factoids with “lies and coverups in history!!!” to make them seem like they’re correcting the record rather than reducing a mix of truth, common misconceptions, conspiracy theories, misunderstandings, and poor reporting to pithy one-liners. Let’s go through them.
Brits in the 1800s used to eat Egyptian mummies,
It's complicated. There's definitely a grain of truth to this, but it's not quite what the common narratives suggest. For example, eating mummies was a Medieval thing more than it was a Victorian thing; Victorians did "Scientific" mummy-unwrapping parties, but they didn't then eat them - they were collectible antiquities. For another, the mummies used by Victorians for paint were rarely ancient Egyptian humans. I'll let @thatlittleegyptologist take this one because they've talked about it. A lot. Like a lot. So often.
numerous gay relationships in history were called “friendships” by Christian historians,
It's complicated. Have historians in the past denied that their favorite historical figures could possibly be gay? Absolutely. But people who were romantically and sexually involved with each other in the past very often did call each other "friend." (Or, in ancient Egypt, "brother"). Even husbands and wives would call each other "friend." (it's midnight and I am blanking on how to search for sources that show this but I have transcribed 18th century letters and diaries, I have seen this.) Like, while historical squeamishness and denial of gay relationships has been a thing... the modern assumption that friendship cannot possibly ever include any gay stuff is also not helping. And heteronormatively taking words at face value is somewhere in between. It's sometimes malicious, but you have to give space for simple hetero brain too. And give space for all the queer and queer-affirming historians working in the field. And for people like Oscar Wilde who were arrested for sodomy and the Ancient Greeks who were Ancient Greek so it's hardly like anyone's denying that, even if their interpretation was that it was Bad. It's not cut and dry.
the Vatican is hoarding almost all history ever written and refuses to let anyone access it,
This one isn't actually complicated, it's just a bizarre misunderstanding (generous interpretation) or an Evangelical conspiracy theory (less generous interpretation) of what the Vatican Apostolic Archive, formerly known as the Vatican Secret Archive, is. They're not "hoarding almost all history ever written" (how would that work?). It's an archive of the Church's and the Vatican's records, accounting, correspondence, declarations, decisions, and other various affairs. Over the past several hundred years of dutiful documentary-keeping, that does add up to a lot of history about the development of European politics, culture, and colonization! There are in fact two archives; one which has been accessible to scholars since 1881, and one which is owned unilaterally by the Pope and only extremely rarely opened for any sort of access to outsiders. John Paul II actually made it easier for researchers to access those archives, though "easier" does not mean "easy" and is still very much at the Pope's discretion. However, they are archives pertaining to the Pope's and Church's affairs, not all of human history.
the original biographies of the Sons of Liberty were all works of fiction (like Washington and the apple tree),
True! But also a little complicated. The story about Washington and the cherry tree is complete fiction, and we know who to blame for it: Mason Locke "Parson" Weems, who wrote his famous biography of Washington right after Washington died and the nation was clamoring for tributes to him. He was kind of shameless about writing for the masses things that would sell. But at the same time, it was part of the myth-making of the new nation, part of a very common process at the time of nearly deifying Washington. But it is also true that we do in fact have a lot of letters and diaries written directly by these guys. We don't need to rely on Weems for fanciful stories about them, even if they have entered into the mythology-building of the US as a nation.
Greek and Roman statues were painted but the people who discovered them found it garish so they stripped the paint off,
Have you ever seen what happens to painted stone when left out in the elements over time? The paint chips off. Being exposed to the elements or buried in the dirt for hundreds or thousands of years does a number on the painted exterior of a statue. Here's a Jesuit scholar from 1913 lamenting this: "It is a notorious fact that the remains of colour fade very fast from marbles that are exposed to the light after centuries of burial and concealment. It is the universal experience of classical archaeologists. A French explorer describes some colours vanishing from sarcophagi found at Carthage "comme de la fumée" [like smoke]. Add to this the perfectly intelligible cleaning consequent on first discovery in the earth, and the still more disastrous and less pardonable washings with acid that, until recent years, were the fate of all classical statues. Even still another risk has to be remembered, the taking of casts […] Add these fates together, and say whether their total does not offer an explanation for a prejudiced view." Honestly, as Gisela M. A. Richter (1944) says, "The fact that any color at all remains is really more remarkable than that it has disappeared in the majority of cases." Greek and Roman statues, probably even marble statues, were painted! Yes! But there was probably little paint remaining even when the Renaissance sculptors and art collectors got ahold of them. And while the discoverers deliberately stripping off the paint because they decided it should not have been there is one potential reason (note the reference to acid-washing), and the pure white marble was a very ideologically-loaded Enlightment-era aesthetic highlighting the purity of the form, and 1700s-1800s English archaeologists and antiquarians had vicious debates over whether the marble statues were painted like the fate of their cultural hegemony rested on it, "removing the paint for its garishness" was not even close to the primary reason the colored paint does not remain. These are some resources about the Gods in Color exhibition that did experimental reconstructions of the colors of some statues.
DaVinci invented a tank,
Leonardo da Vinci drew designs for many devices, including a war machine that does resemble a modern tank! It's frequently described (with hedging descriptions) like "has been seen as a prototype of a tank." But there's no evidence that it was ever built, and it's unclear if the wheels and gear system would have worked. Can he be said to have "invented a tank"? I guess it depends on your definition of "invented."
Lancelot is a fanfiction OC,
This is either a flippant or deeply disingenuous way to describe the origins, evolution, and recording of King Arthur mythology, its use in literature and nationalist propaganda, and the way this is different from the way fanfiction interacts with a canon. @chimaerakitten knows much more about this than I do.
and the Catholic Church was founded after numerous other Christian churches and proceeded to burn the holy books that didn’t support their version (like the Gospel of Judas, which establishes that the “betrayal” was Jesus’s plan because how was he supposed to die as planned, and they plotted it together).
Ohhhh boy it's complicated. I am out of energy and by god it is late but there is a reason that books and books and books have been written about the history of Christianity, the early schisms, the creation of the canon, Gnosticism, and the origins of the Catholic Church.
Basically: if it can be summed up in one sentence as a "gotcha!" it is probably More Complicated Than That.
OP, you deserve many medals for not simply having many of the replies to this post become your supervillain origin story. Sympathy from the very bottom of my soul.
Adudu art I’ve posted on Twitter (ft. other characters)
"His Computer" [Redemption AU]
I forgor to post the continuation of @anikiain ‘s Redemption AU… my deepest apologies
Bonus: They’re getting somewhere, at least…?
Extra Bonus: Silly doodles involving Probe
I'm fascinated by how the formatting of different social media sites affect how text is read.
For instance, a line break on Tumblr indicates a new idea.
But a reblog break indicates that time has passed.
Anonymous asked:
You're 19? Do you think things will get better or worse from here?
i think i will grab things by the throat and make them what they need to be
life will be better and life will also be worse. and i will be angry and upset and miserable, and i will be happy and content and proud. and i will live. i will live.
Ooh. Please please make more self-inserts. Not only is it fun you have no idea how much it can help you be kind to yourself. Have the hero of the franchise fall in love with you for what you think are your annoying quirks. Have the wisest man in that fictional world, tell others that your are the kindest and the smartest person he has ever met. Have the evil guy fall for you and revoke his evil ways cuz youre just that hot. Allow yourself to be loved by the fictional characters you look up to and in time you may also begin see how wonderful you really are.
If Dante gets his self insert fanfic turned into classic literature and that Sword Art ONLINE guy can have his self insert as an anime that makes millions. You're allowed to have one too.
when you’re out at a restaurant or a coffee shop or a target or whatever with your friends and you overhear/eavesdrop the same snippet of some stranger’s conversation, and you look at each other for a second to check that you both heard this stranger say the same weird/funny/baffling thing and just break out in knowing grins and quiet laughter… that’s a love language
I was eating alone at a mexican restaurant once and a group of college kids were chatting over tortilla chips. There was some jabber and then..
“ ..we had to climb over the bob wire!”
“Dude, did you just say ‘bob wire’?”
“Yea man, that spiky shit!”
“You actually think it’s called bob wire? Like fucking Robert wire? You think it’s called Robert wire?”
“Well what the hell do you think it’s called?”
“It’s BARB wire you idiot! Like Barbara wire!”
*the third guy* “Oh my god. You guys. BARBED wire. Because the wire has barbs, it is BARBED.”
“Oohhhhh!”
“Fucking Robert and Barbara wire. Fuck you guys.”
consuelodoodles
I hope Robert and Barbara Wire are in a happy and committed relationship.
captain-price-officially
Psychology textbook diagrams never cease to amaze me
captain-price-officially
ok y'all this isn’t a psych textbook gaslighting you into thinking it’s normal and ok for your boss to yell at you, it’s specifically about understanding that other people’s treatment of you is usually more about them than you. If your boss is pissy with you, it’s absolutely more healthy to understand that behavior as a reflection of his mental state rather than of your worth as an employee. It’s not a psych textbook’s job to advise you how to improve your workplace or say what is/isn’t acceptable treatment by a boss. It’s an example of detaching your own self-worth from how other people treat you.
^^THIS!
In fact, if you let yourself think of other people’s treatment as a reflection on YOU more than it is on THEM, it can prevent you from getting things done.
Or, in other words,
ok, im rb'ing this again because this actually helped me finally be able to take advantage of cognitive restructuring in a way i’ve struggled to do for a long time. Ive been able to get to the my boss was having a bad day part, but i’ve always struggled to use that mental change to do something that would improve the situation. but because of this diagram, i THINK ive got it figured out. Here’s a rough explanation of how I interperet this.
Real life example:
Boss yelling: My mom is snapping at me, calling me “disrespectful” no matter how I speak to her, and getting mad at me for having missing assignments He was having a bad day: She’s stressed due to my grandma being in the hospital He shouldn’t take it out on me: just because she’s stressed doesn’t mean she gets to be mean to me. Unionize: I advocate for myself, saying that I’m not being disrespectful and that it’s okay to have missing assignments because I’m doing my best Fuck his wife: I am unapologetically proud of myself for what i manage to do in a day, especially if my mom disapproves of it or doesn’t view it as productive, as my own little “fuck you” to her.
End result: no depression.
This actually works and its amazing. Thanks to the meme side of tumblr for accidentally developing a highly effective method for coping with people who treat you like shit
i hope you realise i have immediately added ‘unionise! fuck his wife! no depression!’ to my mantras for living
you called???
shit not you
ok and???
HOW MANY OF YOU ARE THERE
don't do this to me
im here too!
joke is over
im being hit over the head multiple times with comically large mallets by a bunch of clowns rn
AHHHHHH YOU'RE KILLING ME
no i am
i am simply a ghost now
no dats me
this post is rapidly spirally out of control
Spirally
FUCKKKKKKKKKKKK
yes :3
Hey guys what’s AUGHHAHHDHDJ waaaaaaaaaaghghh ow!!!
Wow this is great guys! Great post :D
“cain instinct” this “cain instinct” that. what about the reuben instinct where you hate your youngest sibling's guts but will still go out of your way to minimize the harm that comes to them. what about the judah instinct where you instinctively ask to be punished in place of your youngest sibling. what about the jacob instinct where your sibling is very hungry so u pettily make them promise you unreasonable things so that you'll give them food. what about the miriam instinct where you secretly watch over your baby sibling to make sure no harm comes to them.
[ID: the farquaad pointing meme. it shows lord farquaad from shrek pointing and smiling. overlaid is text that reads, "youngest sibling" in all caps. end ID.]
In which Ejojo has finally realized something that answers things for him
I'd say [Redemption AU] but could also be applicable to canon lol
A follow up to my previous Adudu post.
I headcanon that even after the Ejojo incident, Adudu still had a bad habit of taking Probe for granted. (Which took a very a long time to work on)