this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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History Memes

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Many modern standards are... frighteningly recent. (media.piefed.social)
submitted 1 month ago by PugJesus@piefed.social to c/historymemes@piefed.social
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[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago

There were some that were pre-WW2, but those are almost unrecognizable when compared to the modern version.

I love it when people say "we've been this for really long" and it turns out that people have been doing something called by that name, but the actual practice is completely different.

We (in)famously have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas in the Netherlands, which, yes, is like 1500 years old. But then we added some people in blackface playing the most racist imaginable version of slaves in the 19th century. And when we finally realized that maaaaaybe wasn't ok, all the assholes and bigots started pretending that the version of the celebration we basically invented in the 1970s is a deeply traditional celebration that started in pre-christian Europe.

And to show how absurd that is, the whole myth features a damned steamboat as a core concept.