Do I Dare Disturb The Universe?

Preserving these comments for posterity because it’s been months and they are still stuck in my head

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

It's the finals of a high-stakes Magic the Gathering tournament. Player A has won Round 1 by using the card in the meme, "Borborygmos Enraged". Specifically, they used the last line of the card, "Discard a land card: Borborygmos Enraged deals 3 damage to target creature or player", by discarding a whole bunch of land cards and dealing a whole bunch of damage to Player B.

After the first round of a Magic tournament game, each player has the opportunity to swap cards between their main deck and their side deck. Most players use their main deck for a general-purpose game, and then fill their side deck with things that specifically counteract whatever their opponent is doing.

At this particular tournament, Player B had a card in their side deck called "Pithing Needle". To simplify the text of Pithing Needle, it basically says "When you play Pithing Needle, name any card. Abilities of the named card can't be activated." Player B swaps several copies of Pithing Needle into their main deck.

In Round 2 of the tournament, Player B plays Pithing Needle early in the game, and names "Borborygmos". What he wants to happen is that, if Player A plays Borborygmos Enraged, the Pithing Needle will prevent Player A from activating the ability to discard a whole bunch of land cards and deal a whole bunch of damage to Player B.

Player A, being a sneaky bastard, notices that Player B didn't say "Borborygmos Enraged" when he played Pithing Needle. He said "Borborygmos". Player A also remembers that "Borborygmos Enraged" (originally released in 2013) is the second card that features the character Borborygmos, and that there was a card released in 2006 that was simply called "Borborygmos".

Player A therefore goes ahead with his game plan completely unaffected by the Pithing Needle. He plays Borborygmos Enraged, discards a bunch of land cards, and deals a whole bunch of damage to Player B.

Player B, of course, objects to this, saying that the Pithing Needle prevents the damage. Player A points out that the Pithing Needle is not preventing him from activating the abilities of "Borborygmos Enraged" from 2013, it is preventing him from activating the abilities of "Borborygmos" from 2006.

Both players are fully aware that Player B was talking about "Borborygmos Enraged" when he played the Pithing Needle, but because Player B never said the word "Enraged", the tournament judge rules in Player A's favour. The Pithing Needle is ignored, the damage from Borborygmos Enraged goes through, and Player A wins the tournament.

Also why do people make these

Some of these are a misunderstanding or conflating of true facts.  The Da Vinci one goes here.  Many historians do believe that Leonardo da Vinci had a romantic/sexual relationship with his apprentice(s).  And it’s well-established that his apprentices modeled for some of his paintings.  But they did not model for any of his paintings of Jesus - which was the core point of the post that this fact came from, enjoying the irony.  So this isn’t true because it’s a conflation of several true facts into a false but understandable conclusion.

Some of these are just a victim of internet telephone.  The “Persephone’s daughter” and “fake Greek goddess” ones refer to Mespyrian, who was some teenager’s wattpad OC daughter of Persephone and Hades, that someone else on tumblr accidentally mistook as a real figure from Greek mythology.

Some of these come from people making their own conclusions about history, and then turning around and insisting that the experts therefore must be lying to you.  This is where it gets dangerous.  The “archaeologists broke the noses off Egyptian statues to hide the fact that they were African” one goes here.  Many Egyptian statues are missing their noses, so several years ago someone on the internet claimed that it was because archaeologists deliberately broke them off, and this gained a Lot of traction because it felt true and people wanted it to be true.  People overwhelmingly want to believe that they, ordinary citizens of the world with no special training, are actually smarter than the experts.  People love to believe that, so it’s very, very easy for people to decide the experts are stupid and clueless (the “History Hates Lovers” song, the thing about the dodecahedron or the Roman hairstyles or the leather burnishers) while salt-of-the-earth ordinary folk are smarter than those ivory-tower eggheads.  At worst, people decide the experts are maliciously hiding the truth about the world for their own gain (the Lovers of Valdaro one here is an example of this, but you also see this a lot regarding “all ancient cultures were feminist utopias until the Catholic Church invented misogyny and covered up the feminist past” type posts that are extremely popular with TERFs.)  This is the dynamic I’m comparing to anti-vaxxers and flat Earthers, and yes, this kind of anti-intellectualism is dangerous.

Some people are just trolls because they like lying on the internet and riling people up.  This cannot be discounted.  People do do this.  The tiktok woman who doesn’t believe in the Roman Empire and doesn’t believe that Vesuvius erupted is almost certainly a troll who likes the attention her wild false claims get.

It’s a combination of things, but it’s why you shouldn’t assume that historians are all old homophobic clueless idiots and only you, tumblr user persephonesmassivebadonkers or whatever, know the REAL truth.  Because that’s how you get Flat Earthers, but more pressingly, it’s how you get antisemitic conspiracy theories and transphobic radfem proclamations of We Need To Return To The Ancient Feminist Utopia (By Destroying All Trans People)(And, Usually, Abrahamic Religions). 

But also by believing easily-debunked falsehoods it makes genuinely well-meaning people easier to dismiss by bigots as Brainwashed By Those El Gee Bee Tees Who Will Lie Because They Want To Destroy Academia/Biological Sex/The Church.