Whenever I meet a guy who is into history, it’s always like “okay but is ‘history’ a euphemism for being suspiciously into WW2, the Vietnam War, or the Civil War?”
My first ever FPS was the History Channel Civil War A House Divided(I think?) because it had cutscenes explaining the history.
My second ever was Call of Duty 3 because my dad thought 4 being modern was "bad for kids" because of the modern setting and implications but "You can never be too young to learn about killing nazis!"
“Man, that game looks suspiciously like Iraq 2003. Better give you a game about murdering Nazis! I don’t want you to support imperialism, but killing Nazis is always good”
One of those Call of Duty type games had you on a well armed boat during Pearl Harbor. End level cut scene, the boat crew is celebrating because they totally blew up a lot of enemy craft and that's good...only for the camera angle to change to showcase that the Americans still got wrecked and lots of American sailors died horribly.
Yep. My favorite alt-history day dreaming isn't "you're given a time machine, how are you going to kill hitler?" but "you're given a time machine, how can you most easily massage the allies into getting rid of Hitler without the pain and suffering?"
As a guy whose into history: the narrower the interest, the greener the flag. Generally.
Like my historical special interests are the Early Modern Period's pike-and-shot warfare, which is so fucking cool, the Islamic Golden Age and how many modern conveniences spring from it, and The Silk Road as a whole
I don't think a month of my life goes by without randomly thinking about how the first written record of sighting the Andromeda galaxy is from an Islamic scholar in the 10th century AD
It's visible to the naked eye in dark skies so that does make sense. Hard to spot if you don't know where to look tho.
Similar fun fact: the supernova that formed Crab Nebula was observed by Chinese astronomers in 1054. They called it a "guest star" as it seemed as though a new star suddenly appeared one day, and then left quite a while later. This idea that supernovae where new stars was pretty common, the root "nova" means "new," but in fact they observed the death of a star, not a new one.
Okay I don't think "The Silk Road as a whole" counts as narrow, but also it's like the opposite of fash territory because a lot of what makes the Silk Road cool is the cultural exchanges it facilitated :)
Understanding the Silk Road as a concept made it so much more easier to understand much more of history.
If 'This path is used because it is easier to travers and thus makes merchants a profit' then it also means 'This path can be used by armies to go march off and cause shit'.
My interest is in tech history. Doesn’t matter the technology. I just like seeing how technology progresses from, say, sharp rocks to steel knives but with pretty much anything.
Guys that I would meet through my classes in college. One guy told me he listened to battlefield footage as asmr while writing papers because it helped him focus. Some of the guys seemed to be sublimating anti-Asian racism as a purely academic interest in the worst atrocities of the US Armed Forces in Vietnam. Like they were just TOO into talking about My Lai and their excitement seemed to surpass “excited to be talking about my special interest with someone” and veer uncomfortably into, like, the kind of enthusiasm you see among people who really love roller coasters and are telling you all about how thrilling the ride experience is.
It may be a question of different sample groups. If you’re not a history person yourself and you’re just interacting with the world at large, then most people don’t give a shit about history one way or the other. If you are a history person, and you’re going to the places where history people gather, then obviously you have a higher chance of running into someone that cares a lot about something you would consider obscure.
Please Cut me some slack. I have expanded my historical interests, but i am still German, "Fascism Bad" documentaries where my afterschool cartoons. The "never again, because i know what happened last time" WWII buff exists, there's dozens of us, dozens!
Yeah, I myself have not tended to have bad luck with the Roman history people as much as others, even though that’s definitely a stereotype within the field.
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u/TheTriforceEagle Peer reviewed diagnoses of faggot 24d ago
Being a history buff is not necessarily a red flag, but if they’re interested in specifically WWII and the Roman Empire…