Um… no, not really. A point she makes in the video, in fact… 
We really need to move away from this idea that history and other humanities are unimportant and boring. It’s really helping to drive this present moment, since no one sees a need to understand the past, culture, human beings, and the societies we create. They are just as important and interesting as any STEM field, and I’m kind of bored of having to defend them, honestly…
I know I’m weird, but personally I think “how did things get this way” is one of the most interesting things you can say about almost anything. It turns facts into stories.
I was trying to be quippy.
And my hobby is medievalism. I know that there is no such thing as “boring history”. I work in IT, but what I want to do, one day, is to get a degree in history while there’s a university still around here which teaches them, so that I can call myself a scholar, instead of just cosplaying as one.
But I also know that most people don’t believe that. How about “You’d best start believing in interesting history: you’re living in some!”, then, Barbossa accent or not?
I should also actually watch the video. I was reacting to the quote on the thumbnail. I’m sure she argues against the point, because it’s an excellent point.
But also, there’s a difference between “history is not boring”, and “some history is Not Boring”. I know I could do with living in a bit of boring history for a while.
My profession is modern history… I get that some don’t consider that REAL history, but that’s what I do, because I love it and it matters to me to chart how we got from here to there in the past couple of hundred years.
I also teach about the modern world and US history to mostly working class kids who are POC and immigrants. I’m proud to do that, because they actually tend to understand history better than their white, wealthy peers, because they often live in the “not boring” more acutely.
What do you think history is for, if not teaching others? If not helping others understand the world that they live in based on what came before them? It has no other purpose than helping ground all of us in the present and enable us to move forward, hopefully into a better world.
Okay. Then do it. I’m sure you’ll land a job and do better than I have… It’s not a game, it’s actually trying to make something that we can’t actual grasp more real and relevant to young folks. They need history more than those of us with a few years behind us.
Maybe do that. I posted it because as a historian, I found it interesting and thoughtful. It feels hella dismissive to post a snarky comment without having watched the short thing I posted, because I actually CARE about what she said.
No history is boring, IMHO… Because it’s all about us. How we survive, how we rebel, how we create, how we change, how we build up our lives in the best and worst of times… how is ANY of that boring? It’s the stuff of human drama. It’s not some novelty that is entertaining when a bunch of dudes are slaughtering each other… That’s just the modern ideology of what “real” history is vs. how we understand the past in a more holistic way.
But YMMV… It just sucks to have to defend posting a video defending the humanities (YET AGAIN) to people who claim to care about them. the humanities have been under sustained attack for years now, and no one gave a shit, because, you know, it was just women’s studies, and queer studies, and Africana studies, and that’s not “real” scholarship, after all, because it did not come out of the enlightenment… But what is the enlightenment, but some dudes decision of what matters, during a period of world raping and pillage of those they deemed inferior?
The term comes from a satirical tweet by Twitter user SeanRMoorhead, who wrote in April, “If unemployment exceeds 30% and distrust of the political process becomes widespread, there is a danger that the United States will enter what historians call The Cool Zone.”
I assume it’s a reference to stuff like this…?
Not quite apparently… something far darker… although I think the stuff in Road to Wellville (which is a comedy addressing a real history) had ties to eugenics thinking.
A lot darker.
Indeed, but I think the history that informed the road to wellville was a bit darker than the film, but not nearly as dark as this is. 
I’ll take a million Emperor Nortons over Musk any day…
Yup. No contest.
Now I want to go on one of his tours!
They look fun, don’t they?
Here is the follow up video he recommended…
Geez; is Colm Meaney in everything?
As an aside, Mohonk Mountain House is stunning.
