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- He/Him
I mean...yes they do? I've heard lots of stuff about how dragons were based on dinosaur bones from people interested in this kind of hypothesis, and so on. They say pretty much exactly this about the Loch Ness monster as well.
What's the most Cringeworthy take on Actual History/Archeology you've ever read?
- Thread starter Teen Spirit
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I mean...yes they do? I've heard lots of stuff about how dragons were based on dinosaur bones from people interested in this kind of hypothesis, and so on. They say pretty much exactly this about the Loch Ness monster as well.
Not the same thing at all.
The claim isn't that knights in the Middle Ages actually fought relict dinosaurs, it's that someone found dinosaur bones and made up a cool story about it.
As opposed to the idea that if Non-Europeans describe a fantastic creature, they must have had actual encounters with an actual animal, and then, again ignoring the details of the description said non-Europeans give in favor of whatever Europeans think is cool.
(I believe the current theory among mainstream folklorists or whatever the correct term is is that Mokele-Mbembe is the black rhino, in much the same way manticores are tigers)
I'll grant point B is not a strong point, but it is something that is present, and agian, will also point to Points A and C.
And Ancient Aliens types all say Stoenhenge was built by aliens, people don't take that as evidence that they aren't racist.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
"The Loch Ness Monster is a relict dinosaur" is a fairly routine element of entry-level cryptozoology nonsense. You don't get more 'white people folklore' than Nessie.
I think a big part of the reason cryptozoologists do this isn't simple racism; it's that they know that if they claim there are weird cryptids living in Europe they will be laughed at because Europe is an extremely densely populated and documented part of the world from their perspective. Even so you get exceptions.
Honestly, I agree that this is a double standard but I think it points in the opposite direction.
A lot of 'ancient aliens' theorists seem entirely willing to believe that white pre-literate cultures were, without alien help, just as incapable of building monumental stone structures as brown pre-literate cultures.
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Yes, but see below.
Fair enough.
This does track, I guess.
I feel you could make the case that finding ways that folklore could be grounded in an apparent reality is probably more respectful than saying that (from your perspective) it's functionally all made up after all, though I've seen offense taken to both philosophies one could take there so I guess one's mileage can vary.
Mandemon
Gentlemen, I love brawl.
- Location
- Cookie Jar
Well you see, someone discovered that in 2006, someone planted olive trees near the site. Their logical conclusion was that the Big Archeology was trying to erase the site by having trees grow their roots into the site and destroy it, thus hiding The Truth that (European) civilization was older than thought.
Meanwhile, in reality, trees are result of human greed. In 2006 Turkish government went around buying the land around the site and was buying them on value, so to increase value of the land farmers planted olive trees which raised the value, this increasing the price the government was going to pay.
Because people who most heavily push this sort of stuff tend to be "All these civilization clearly could not achieve this on their own, it must be Superior Proto-European Civilization" or otherwise indicate that everyone except Europeans somehow got help from someone else, while Europeans (being the best ones) never got any help and therefore their achievements are "better"
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Fair enough. CF gorillas.
Again, I am not saying that cryptozoology is inherently racist, I am just saying that it's got some yikes stuff in it that doesn't seem to get noticed as often as other forms of pseudoscience, even when people are taking the piss out of it.
TY
Counterpoint: a lot of this stuff is also promulgated by people who like the idea that Ancient people knew something we moderns don't; for example IIRC that was where a lot of the hype about the Mayan Doomsday of 2012 came from. Also, as noted there numerous example were various colonized peoples have theorized that the Ancient Master Race was their people. Which, granted, is still often racist but I feel like, say, African Americans insisting that modern Euro-centric archeologists are hiding The Truth about Black Egypt shouldn't be treated the same way as stuff like what you quoted to start this.
Again, I am aware why this assumption exists, I just don't think it's fair.
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- Right Where I Am
First Ancient Aliens stuff that I ever saw explained how it clearly continued to the modern day, and mentioned along the way that the British Empire couldn't have happened without alien assistance.
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
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- Ruritania Illinois
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The first conspiracy theorist I gained any great awareness of tried to position Jesus and the Church as Ancient Aliens nonsense, so that does probably color my view on the whole racism angle.
Thread Tax: What the internet libertarians made of him vs what Killdozer is actually like causes me visceral discomfort including but not limited to cringe.
Thread Tax: What the internet libertarians made of him vs what Killdozer is actually like causes me visceral discomfort including but not limited to cringe.
Always when we watch youtubeTV at my uncles house we get metric fuckton of suggestions for Ancient Aliens episodes about how aliens invented Christianity...And that Aliens influenced European history
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- Mid-Atlantic
Do you mean Marvin Heemeyer, or someone else the epithet's been applied to?
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
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- Ruritania Illinois
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Marvin, yes.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
And what makes you uncomfortable is the way some people lionize him, when the underlying truth is that he was a stubborn ass who kept making escalating and unreasonable demands and bad choices that fucked over his situation until he "felt" that he had no recourse but a sort of weird large-scale murder/destruction followed by suicide, wildly endangering any number of innocent people in the process?
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16 characters
Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired
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- Alta California
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- They/Them
I'm not going to lionize him or deny that he was 'a stubborn ass' . I won't deny he was recklessly endangering people either...but wasn't he also dealing with several personal tragedies like family deaths also? As in it might be unfair to attribute all motivation to spite rather than also internal anguish?
My memory from when I last tried going down that rabbit is that ultimatley he didn't end up killing anyone other than himself and might not have intended to kill anyone else with the way his shots were fired? Like I feel this summary with what was going on with Marvin is either just being a bit undescriptive/ under described or I might be off about this? Maybe I'm even even greatly misinformed?
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
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- Ruritania Illinois
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- He/Him
He wanted to dump his shit in the water supply and nearly pancaked a bunch of kids, even beyond the general threat having a psuedo-tank trundling along down town is to everybody involved. But if you were to believe the internet, he was some kind of martyr of for freedom.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
He bulldozed the town library, only moments after the children inside were evacuated.
The fact that he was the only death was luck, not his own good intentions.
16 characters
Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired
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- Alta California
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- They/Them
Ah okay I'll {hopefully, not unfairly} chalk that up as 'mildly misiniformed/missing crucial details ' then. since I knew about a library getting 'dozed but not about the timing of the evacuation.
That does change things a bit in that with that piece of info it certainly makes it seem like he could not have possibly cared if material was falling on others or not.
I'm probably getting other details wrong too from the sound of things then.
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That does change things a bit in that with that piece of info it certainly makes it seem like he could not have possibly cared if material was falling on others or not.
I'm probably getting other details wrong too from the sound of things then.
EDIT:
Huh, I thought he had succeeded with the dumping part. Yeah I definitely have to go through a bunch of this material again and from more sources.
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- Location
- Georgia, US
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- He/Him
Frankly even without that bit of information it is enormously obvious that he was a selfish asshole who didn't give a damn about anyone's life other then his own. The dude ran a homemade tank through an inhabited town. That concept inherently accepts the possibility of crushing random pedestrians.
His actions were monstrous and selfish, the context just makes it even more obviously damning.
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- Location
- Ireland
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- They/Them/She/Her
The most important thing to take away from the killdozer is that it's important to separate art from the artist.
16 characters
Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired
- Location
- Alta California
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- They/Them
I don't think at any point I ever said he wasn't selfish though..nor not an asshole aren't the two synonymous in this colloquial usage? Hell I acknowledged he was reckless, in the sense of recklessly destructive also. It just hadn't struck me initially some time ago when I was first looking at this that he may have wanted anyone dead or that he wouldn't have cared.
I say initially because I hadn't thought about the topic in several months before seeing this pop up here and my interest was piqued
Now, that's probably because I hadn't really thought about the whole thing enough to have done more more research followup and the like, carelessness anyone can paint on me in that.
I do plan to do more follow-up and I had hoped that asking around here when I saw it brought up might give me a better starting point and more context than I already had.
If what I'm supposed to get from your response you think you've run into someone who thinks[or thought} this was great or even okay then you have the wrong person here. Is that in fact the message I'm supposed to be seeing?
BalerionTheDrake
Pacta sunt servanda
Just look at the development the Kenyan military is making on the platform in Haiti rn
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
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I suppose I should probably acknowledge my own hypocrisy in that I think Thomas Jefferson was on to something with both the Yeomen Farmer Ideal and the 20 year constitution thing and he pretty objectively did more damage to the world but on the other hand I sure don't seem to recall ever suggesting actually the Slave Trade is Cool, so.
- Location
- Not your place of residence
Are you talking about a different Lafayette? The one I know notably did not get killed by the revolution and actually outlived Jefferson himself by nearly a decade.