What’s something you find strange about British culture

@BlueVeins Everybody needs a hobby hun!

@Harriet03 My brother always said the reason people always went around pillaging and slaughtering each other in the middle and early modern ages was because they were bored as fuck in a world without the internet.

@BlueVeins Lest we forget it also brought railways, in some cases the rule of law, a civil service, medicine, ended the slave trade (yeah ok but better late than never), and widow-burning.

I think you're confusing my paternal ancestors with the Vikings. And they weren't all bloodthirsty marauders either

Another British quirk might be being very happy to criticise our own past or present but will damn well defend it if someone from another country criticises!

@Murmurs Here here ✌

@Harriet03 Britannia has really let herself go over Christmas

@Murmurs Basically any hostile invader will make some investments into the lands it has stolen and the peoples who have surrendered do it. Doesn't make it any less selfish, nor does it make the innocent men, women, and children who are murdered in the fighting any less dead. The Empire eventually abolished the slave trade, but Britain was largely responsible for the sheer scale of slavery in that era to begin with. Capturing and selling people was a huge business in the colonial world and without colonialism, it wouldn't have been possible.

If you dig into a crazy aggressor's history, you can usually find something genuinely good they did. Like, the Nazis ran the world's first anti-smoking campaign, and the Soviets empowered women in a few ways that were really ahead of their time. The Japanese Empire... nevermind, there's not much to say on their behalf. The point is, it's not cool to support those kinds of factions as a whole because they were, on balance, incredibly evil.

@Murmurs You tell her, I'm not!!!

@BlueVeins I think comparing the British Empire with the Nazis is a little extreme.

(Understatement : another British trait lol)

@BlueVeins @Murmurs 🍿🍷

@Murmurs Characteristics of the British Empire
-Racial superiority complex
-Rampant genocide of conquered peoples
-Slavery of conquered peoples
-Frequent aggressor in wars
-Generally autocratic
-High military spending

The Nazis were obviously more aggressive in their genociding and more hateful in their rhetoric, but the two factions aren't that different.

@BlueVeins since you appear to be from the US, I advise personal eye care (plank removal) before bringing up noxious racial superiority.

Or genocide of indigenous peoples

Or slavery

Or wars of aggression

Or autocracy

Or military spending.

@Murmurs Don't play with your food hun!!

@Murmurs Yeah, I can definitely agree to that. I don't think I particularly have the ability to fix those things, but it's pretty clear that we've been involved in way too much evil shit, even in the past couple of decades. I would seriously question the character of anyone who supported the war in Iraq, or the installation of a puppet government in Iran.

I guess the only thing I would object to on your list is U.S. military spending. Our military is particularly inefficient, but that's not evil so much as stupid. So much change inexplicably falls out of this nation's pockets it's unreal.

@BlueVeins I'm out now but maybe we'll pick this up layer :)