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Ancient Rome Didn't Exist

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member


This historian lady, who also claimed to be a former Buzzfeed writer, had millions of views and over 100,000 subscribers on TikTok. Unfortunately she deleted her original channel due to going a little too mainstream, so we're reliant on reaction videos for much of the glorious content.




It's generally a bad idea to signal boost nutjobs on TikTok, since there are an unending supply of them and they love attention, but in this case there's something fascinating about the mental gymnastics involved. She believes that the Spanish Inquisition made up Ancient Rome. The Youtube reaction video goes through a lot of her content and is entertaining for the parallels you might see for internet discourse in general in 2023.

It's a special kind of brain poison, but you also have to figure that more young people are watching videos like hers than are actually reading primary sources from antiquity.
 

MrA

Banned


This historian lady, who also claimed to be a former Buzzfeed writer, had millions of views on TikTok. Unfortunately she deleted her original channel due to going a little too mainstream, so we're reliant on reaction videos for much of the glorious content.




It's generally a bad idea to signal boost nutjobs on TikTok, since there are an unending supply of them and they love attention, but in this case there's something fascinating about the mental gymnastics involved. She believes that the Spanish Inquisition made up Ancient Rome. The Youtube reaction video goes through a lot of her content and is entertaining for the parallels you might see for internet discourse in general in 2023.

It's a special kind of brain poison, but you also have to figure that more young people are watching videos like hers than are actually reading primary sources from antiquity.

Mind bogglingly brash to say not a single primary source document when we've literal writing on the walls from the Romans.
 

Trogdor1123

Gold Member
Truly wasn't expecting it
Stop It Oh Hush GIF by RØDE Microphones
 

Pejo

Member
The ease of getting idiots to believe a complete re-writing of history on social media is a little scary, I have to admit. My gf follows a girl that proudly proclaims all the stuff she didn't learn until she was like 35 or something. I hope it's just for laughs because it's startling that a grown adult wouldn't know some of these things.

What the fuck happened to schools?
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
I suspect these same folks will then triple down on any narrative that suggests native people's of the America's were a space faring race, sub Sahara African civilizations were circumnavigating the globe whilst Mediterranean peoples were just hugging the coasts, and what not. They will take any scrap of data about a fringe belief but dismiss the mountains of info that fit "the narrative" because eeeevvveerryyy now and again one of those fringe beliefs ends up being a Gallileo type rewrite of what we know of something that was poo-pooed at the time.
 

Puscifer

Member
edit: off-topic
Computer and Information Science guy here and I'm questioning this study lol

Though honestly I'm not surprised at the content of this video all things considered because damn this speaks volumes about some of the folks I know into philosophy who I've seen run circles around people in other fields.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

dave_d

Member
The ease of getting idiots to believe a complete re-writing of history on social media is a little scary, I have to admit. My gf follows a girl that proudly proclaims all the stuff she didn't learn until she was like 35 or something. I hope it's just for laughs because it's startling that a grown adult wouldn't know some of these things.

What the fuck happened to schools?
Well I could make mention of the fact when I was in school (in the 80s) they taught us "True historical facts" like
  • Europe wanted spices so they could mask the taste of rotten meat and preserve food. (Ironically told to us by a teacher of Italian heritage)
  • The US won the revolutionary war through insurgent tactics, IE shooting from behind trees
  • Rome (which they claimed existed) used salt to completely eradicate Carthage.
Admittedly none of those are quite as bad as this though.
 

dave_d

Member
I suspect these same folks will then triple down on any narrative that suggests native people's of the America's were a space faring race, sub Sahara African civilizations were circumnavigating the globe whilst Mediterranean peoples were just hugging the coasts, and what not. They will take any scrap of data about a fringe belief but dismiss the mountains of info that fit "the narrative" because eeeevvveerryyy now and again one of those fringe beliefs ends up being a Gallileo type rewrite of what we know of something that was poo-pooed at the time.
Umm, should I go into what actually happened with Galileo? (I thought the more in-depth story was way more interesting than the myth of "science vs religion.")
 

dave_d

Member
Bruh, look in the middle of fucking Rome. Circus Maximus. They are going to say it’s fake?

This is just a result of “everything is an opinion, nothing is an objective truth” philosophy.

Can be ban TikTok already?
Aren't there literally millions of Roman gold coins still around? That's even hard to "fake".
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Romans did take a lot from the greeks, but they took it to the next level. Id say the greeks were the british empire while the romans are the modern day america (post ww2). no one today gives a shit about england while america is the center of innovation, technology, war (lol) and pretty much the most important country in the world. similar to the roman empire.
 

Cyberpunkd

Member
Romans did take a lot from the greeks, but they took it to the next level. Id say the greeks were the british empire while the romans are the modern day america (post ww2). no one today gives a shit about england while america is the center of innovation, technology, war (lol) and pretty much the most important country in the world. similar to the roman empire.
France be like:

Stop It Bounty Hunter GIF by DefyTV
 

NecrosaroIII

Ask me about my terrible takes on Star Trek characters
What about all of the surviving Cicero texts? Meditations by Marcus Aurelius? Aeneid?
 

MrA

Banned
Kasparov helped to popularize it? :goog_expressionless:
just when you thought a chess player couldn't get crazier than Bobby Fisher

Computer and Information Science guy here and I'm questioning this study lol

Though honestly I'm not surprised at the content of this video all things considered because damn this speaks volumes about some of the folks I know into philosophy who I've seen run circles around people in other fields.
I teach, but my undergrad work was in civil but my undergrad wasn't education. I don't consider myself exceptional or anything, but mercy the almost inconceivable lack of basic knowledge of history technology science any topic is astounding.

also ha ha France, no French people, the resistance did not liberate Paris, all they did was rob cigarette trucks and fight with each other (exaggerating, but the French are the kings of historical revision, calling Churchill tanks French tanks, seriously?)
 
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