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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   2958 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 16, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Would you say there has been a trend towards naming events based on the date when they occured (J6, 10-7)? And if so, what do you think of it?

This is historically much more common in east asia and the arab world, the western world seems to have picked it up more widely after 11 Sept 2001. I think one of the reasons it was historically more prevalent in these cultures is that simply referening a date is a very neutral way of referencing an event without using a name that itself contains some judgement about the event. Consider the US Civil War vs the War of Northern Aggression. Now imagine your culture goes back another 2000 years and has dozens of these that some people are still upset about centuries later. Date-names allow some discussion of the event without immediately starting a fight by referencing "The Hopeless Rebellion of the Foolish People" or w/e the winners of that conflict called it.

Downthread the Jan 6 events are referenced. This is a good example.

Nah. When I was looking for information about your Civil War suggestion, there were a surprising number following the style. I think it’s a fad.

Two possibilities come to mind:

1/ The global coverage of media. We don't need to name things more descriptively because "we" all know what happened on those dates.

2/ Following the trend established by 9/11 - it was such an unprecedented event that it's not surprising it got named differently to other catastrophes.

I’ve noticed the same. I think it’s somewhat negative because it doesn’t tell future historians what happened that day. But I do like that it also makes it hard to spin. The events of January 6 can be a riot, insurrection, protest, or a bunch of Karens whining.

The trend has been going for a little while, 2069 years and a day at least to my estimation.

I don't know if there's an earlier example of an event referred to by when it happened instead of what happened that stuck to popular culture, but yesterday was the Ides of March, infamously the day of Julius Caesar's assassination.

It's better than calling things Black [day of the week]

I mean look at this shit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday

Who knows what someone is talking about when they say Black Monday?

They mean the bad guys from Yakuza 3. Nothing else is possible.

And how many Bloody Sundays have there been?

Right off the top of my head there's 1/30/1972 in Derry, and 1/9/1905 in St. Petersburg.

Wikipedia gives me 21 more of them!!

Talk about a case of the Mondays.

Yes and I hate it. There's only 365 days in a year, and so especially with these examples (which are blown out of proportion on purpose) it's so obviously a technique to imply they're earth shattering events that will own a day for the rest of human existence.

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