- cross-posted to:
- tomscott@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- tomscott@lemmy.zip
You don’t need to watch the video. Tom Scott/None of the interview subjects ever point out how fucked this is, but basically the story is rich sadists would put coins in boiling water and then throw them at poor children to watch them endure injury for small amounts of money as a form of entertainment.
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Least pyschopathic day in Britbong Land
not every tradition need have a nice origin for it to be ingrained into the community.
this particular tradition is not still nobles trying to hurt poor people for their amusement, it’s the townspeople throwing their pocketchange at each other in a vague remembrance, so long as they’re having fun with it and wish to continue i don’t think it’s very problematic.
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i don’t think it’d take very long at all for us to single out something you like & engage in with problematic origins. everyone’s all for complete cultural revolution until someone correctly associates something useful, harmless, or personally fond of with the bourgeois/feudal culture.
a lot can and should be critically examined, reinterpreted, and rejected, but this is a democratic process. the greatest argument for hot pennies is the voluntary perpetuation and participation in the event.
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what materially does hot pennies reinforce? are the people throwing pennies nobles? are the people catching them doing so to avoid starvation? what is being normalized that is so offensive to our sensibilities here?
This is exactly my thought process. I really don’t see a big deal here.
I didn’t put forward an argument in my original comment because I genuinely thought there was nothing much to argue about.
It’s so trivial.
Let the people have fun and participate in community events.
It is, from what I gather, a small town anyways. It will affect like, what, 0.0001% of the entire population?
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the idea of the nobles
it clearly isn’t, the elected mayor and citizens are distributing the coins
The idea of money
no-one’s eliminated that one yet, you’ll need to be a bit more patient on expecting people to not put cultural purchase on the medium for modern life, even in AES
We shouldn’t do things that started as a nobel activity
turn over your keyboard comrade. writing was invented for the noble class’ record-keeping and taxes. <—specious but i want to illustrate why we need to exercise restraint on stuff like this, especially before it gets to points like ‘urbanism and intellectualism are bourgeois’
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but basically the story is rich sadists would put coins in boiling water and then throw them at poor children to watch them endure injury for small amounts of money as a form of entertainment.
I could easily see a version of this done by “MrBeast” with
framing in the thumbnail and it being called the “hot penny challenge” or something horrid like that, with “KIDS COMPETE FOR (.01%; of the rich asshole’s accumulated riches to date)” hype text.The barbaric traditions of western tyrannical monarchies
lol people bringing up the extremely obvious eye safety hazards in the comments are being screamed down by whimsical brits
We have a long tradition of doing silly and dangerous things. Particularly in small towns. Some have formed out of old oagan (pre-Christian traditions), some for more questionable or objectionable reasons like this one. They keep going because a lot of people have good memories of them and it becomes part of a local identity.
I watched this video, and lots of people make mention of how the tradition started, and how the pennies used to be actually hot. And why. Its referred to multiple times. Your post implies this was glossed over, but you clearly got the info from the video, so it’s not exactly hidden. Maybe that’s why OP says, “no need to watch it”, bevause they know they’re telling fibs for outrage bait?
Look up The Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake. People get really hurt doing that.
Jesus fucking Christ, I knew there was something wrong with brits but not this wrong.
I was thinking about this video for some time now. Wonderful, old, quaint custom my ass. I’m sure all those collected pennies add up to a decent sum of money, couldn’t that be used for idk at least feeding the homeless or smth? Also what’s that mayor even wearing? The brits really went ahead and saved every deeply shameful tradition they ever had.
I don’t really see a problem with this to be honest.
Just a quirky local tradition.
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