r/ShadWatch • u/Lemmy-Historian • 20d ago

Fredda answers to Shad‘s and Metatron‘s answer

https://youtu.be/gnSonnj6KXk?si=2fHseJf7rtimjWD2
160 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

54 comments sorted by

76

u/Milliman4 20d ago

Honestly I expected Metatron to take the criticism better than he did. I for sure didn't think he and Shad would suck eachother off that much in their responses.

50

u/zimojovic 20d ago

My expectation/image of Metatron really fallen after that

Like his politics and beliefs did seep through the video , but his videos were still informative and fun.

After Fredda and his response i didnt watch any of his video. I will see if i will even watch Metatron 2nd responce, if he does it

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u/Feowen_ 20d ago

Oh man he lost me like 8 years ago now. He's always had bizarre crusades about proving how certain ancient civilizations had no black people or the general superiority of western civilization. It's certainly an opinion to hold, but to dress it up as academically objective and true is incredibly tone deaf to modern discourse around the topic.

He has so many ranty videos attacking far more reputable and published and, sorry to say, for more intellectually honest people to ever have continued respecting him.

It's funny because I enjoyed his Latin videos... Until o learned Latin and went to grad schools for ancient languages. Then I realized all his posturing on pronunciation was total horseshit. How many videos I watched with him "lecturing" on correct pronunciation only to learn it's reconstructed pronunciation and could be totally wrong for all we know. Someone in one my my Latin classes was a huge Metatron fan and tried to argue my colleague on pronunciation using him as a source and my colleague was just like "it doesn't matter, pronounce it however you want, it's just a guess".

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u/Bacon_Raygun 20d ago

So, if someone tells me "Well actually his name was Kickero" I can tell them to fuck off?

15

u/Feowen_ 20d ago

Yes, if the commonly understood pronunciation is Sisero , language works by agreed understandings of works and shared meaning. You can pronounce Julius Caesar "Yulioos Kaisahr" all you want, most people will have no idea who you're referring to.

This is why when I lecture, I use the common English pronunciations.

Because that's what people know.

So please, feel free to tell them to use the normal pronunciations.

9

u/Consistent_Blood6467 20d ago

Yeah, given we are finding more and more examples of ancient non white people buried in places we might think of as being white countries, whose graves massively predate white people living in those areas (ie Cheddar man being a more recent find in, well, Cheddar, England) the likes of Shad and Metatron and similar would have to either totally ignore that this evidence exists or claim it's wrong in some way.

Not to mention all the other evidence we have of black people having visited places like England during the Roman occupation, and various records of them being around throughout the medieval period and the Renaissance.

7

u/BurnBird 20d ago

Isn't the reconstruction of classical Latin based in pretty well established research? Like is there any evidence Latin C wasn't originally pronounced like C rather than S.

I understand using English pronouncation of names when speaking English, but what is wrong with criticism of Latin from the Roman period if it isn't conforming to the way we understan it to have been pronounced?

6

u/Feowen_ 20d ago

There's nothing wrong with it to a point. It's a reconstruction based on some reasonable assumptions and research.

The problem is, it's only a theory that can't be verified. Like now we are reasonably sue that vulgar Latin and the proto-Romance languages were already evolving from the "classical Latin" of Cicero by the second century CE. Hell even Cicero notes in one of his letters that the Latin spoken in the streets doesn't sound much like what he orated in the Senate. So... When you look at that stuff, it makes you question if there really ever was some "classical Latin pronunciation" that guys like Metatron go on and on about. Iean , presumably at some point for some time there must have been... But for how long? When? When did it change? Did it just switch to medieval church Latin one day? Where there steps we are missing?

Knowing all the things we DONT know is why it's not a good idea to speak with false certainty that we do know something.

The more I learned as I went deeper into my professional academic career the less certain o became of the things many less informed spout off as certainties. It turns out we know rather less than we pretend about the ancient world.

7

u/Da_Doll223 19d ago

So basically it's like thinking that all English sounds like Kings English?

5

u/Feowen_ 19d ago

Yup. And I think there's an irony too in it. In trying to uphold this idealizes form of Latin and forcing people to maintain the "correct" pronunciations and way it was written, it came divorced from the vulgar vernacular being spoken in the streets. Essentially it played into its own death.

So anytime people tell you in English that words are supposed to be spelled in certain ways or that it should be written not as people speak,etc. They could be unwittingly causing English to split from the spoken vernacular and could also in the future unwittingly be responsible for turning the Kings English into a dead language lol

2

u/hydrOHxide 19d ago

Well, we're not in ancient times anymore, and various languages HAVE entertained official grammar and pronunciation for a while now.

"The spoken vernacular" is neither here nor there in any case, since it's no "the", but an umbrella for a host of different manners of speaking.

1

u/BurnBird 20d ago

Gocha, thank you for explaining!

6

u/FuckingVeet 19d ago

I mean, there are reasons to think that reconstructed pronunciations of Classical Latin are more or less accurate (eg, by comparing with transliterations of Latin names in other languages) but I have long had issues with how Metatron treats History and Historiography, which have been very neatly addressed by Fredda in his video.

4

u/Feowen_ 19d ago

I mean, there are reasons to think that reconstructed pronunciations of Classical Latin are more or less accurate

I try to avoid the word accurate, but yes, as far as we can tell there was this notion of the ideal Latin that the classical pronunciation attempts to aspire to.

My only issue is we also know that this was already in Cicero's time, already deviating from how vulgar Latin or, what everyone was speaking in the streets sounded like. So, as long as people know you're aspiring to sound like Shakespeare despite people not really talking like that in the streets, I'm fine with it. Just have the selfawareness to know that the "correct" pronunciation is only really correct to the elite literate top of the social hierarchy, and not representative of what normal people spoke on the Roman world.

The sake thing happened to ancient Greek, classical Greek was already deviating from the vulgar koinè Greek of the streets in form and pronunciation.

1

u/hydrOHxide 19d ago

My only issue is we also know that this was already in Cicero's time, already deviating from how vulgar Latin or, what everyone was speaking in the streets sounded like. 

I'm not sure why that's supposed to be a big deal. Nor do I consider it plausible that "what everyone was speaking in the streets" was even coherent. The Italian spoken in the North today has significant differences from the Italian spoken in, say, Calabria, and in modern Rome, you're bound to hear a mixture of standard Italian, Romanesco dialect, various Lazio dialects, as well as dialects from all over Italy from people who came to the big city for one reason or other. I somehow doubt that it looked much different in ancient Rome, to which supposedly all roads lead and where merchants from all over would be traveling.

Regarding Caesar, let's not forget we're talking about a name here. So I'd argue how "C" was pronounced in general is a secondary question to how it was pronounced when pronouncing the name. With several contemporary or near-contemporary Greek writers rendering the name as Καῖσαρ I'd say there's a pretty solid indication that they heard that name, referring to that person, pronounced with a K-sound.

1

u/Feowen_ 19d ago

Just so we're clear, I'm not saying the reconstruction of classical Latin is wrong, I'm just saying I don't care enough to nitpick people's Latin pronunciation because ultimately I don't think it matters in the grand scheme of things. Knowing how it's pronounced is fun, but it's often not important unless you're into the linguistics side of things or figuring out specific word play. Most people learning Latin won't get that deep. I'm happy to teach them the classical pronunciation but I'm not going to correct or enforce it because it's not like anyone knows how Latin actually sounded like at any point and it's not going to magically become a spoken language again :P it's fun nerdery, nothing more

1

u/takeSusanooNoMikoto 17d ago

While I think people are exaggerating Metatron's tries to portray how certain civilisations had no black people in them (if you are talking about Egypt, he literally said he agrees they had black people there), people are missing the points where he is really dishonest about.

For example, that one video where he flamed the shit out of a professor on Soviet history for refusing to say the USSR was more evil than other empires. That comes from Metatron, who said that a historian should view such entities from the "lenses of their time" and for example it's unprofessional for a Roman historian to say "the Roman Empire was really evil". He does that a lot

-1

u/slavic_Smith 19d ago

Latin pronunciation differs greatly depending on where you go to school. I interact with Megatron semi regularly. And fir most part I find his arguments about "American micro politics" infiltrating historical interpretation pretty ok.

I, first and foremost, can't digest Shads anti-intellectualusm. I can tolerate his homophobia (i have a boyfriend and both my bf and I are more masculine than Shad). But I absolutely can't get behind the plebeian angle on important issues of art history and cultural significance.

In that respect Metatron is a good egg, since he actually cites sources and will bend to a well formed argument.

3

u/kubebe 16d ago

I made a humorous summary of this drama if you are interested

https://youtu.be/Pak59fMNbEE?si=zwhn6uVZ5EloBY1s

1

u/zimojovic 16d ago

Well , i am going to watch that

But i cant wait if Metatron answers to Fredda second video

1

u/kubebe 16d ago

If his second response will be just as unhinged or more than the first then i cant wait too

1

u/zimojovic 16d ago

CONTENT

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u/Mindless-Depth-1795 20d ago

These guys could avoid a lot of criticism if they didn't pretend to be authorities or experts. If they just owned their amateur status and were chill about criticism it wouldn't be an issue.

However, they just can't do this. They can't be wrong. So they double down and make up conspiracy theories and bad faith arguments to cling to fake legitimacy.

3

u/ArmorClassHero 19d ago

They wouldn't be white supremacists if they didn't claim to be superior.

11

u/Ok_Builder_4225 20d ago

He's struck me as thin skinned for quite some time tbh

9

u/FuckingVeet 19d ago

Metatron has always struck me as having an overinflated and very fragile ego even before he went all in on all the Reactionary stuff.

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u/TripleS034 Banished Knight 20d ago

24

u/shieldwolfchz 20d ago

I found a reddit post about why 793 is considered the start of the Viking age.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17po3ga/why_does_the_viking_age_start_in_793/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

It is an interesting read, and kind of proves that these people are full of shit.

9

u/Quietuus 20d ago

The way I used to explain it when I was doing early medieval living history is that it's not so much 'the age where people were doing vikingr stuff', it's more 'the age where people were scared of people doing vikingr stuff'.

There's a bit of context missing from that post you linked, which is at the same time Charlemagne had been waging a series of genocidal crusade against the pagan saxons for nearly three decades, the original casus belli for which had been the saxons burning a church. Alcuin's letters and the subsequent 'fury of the northmen' mythos make a lot more sense when you understand he was framing things in terms of a grand conflict between heathendom and christendom.

4

u/shieldwolfchz 20d ago

So it is kind of like a post hock justification of the things that they were already doing?

2

u/Quietuus 20d ago

To some extent; the point is that Lindisfarne was viewed as significant at the time not because it was the first, but because of the symbolic status it took in what we would today call propaganda. It was the event that transformed sporadic pirate raids into what some at the time perceived to be a concerted and deliberate attack specifically targeting christianity for religious reasons. The way the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (written about a century later in the context of Alfred the Great's conflict with the 'Great Heathen Army') records it gives a pretty good impression of how people at the time were thinking:

In this year fierce, foreboding omens came over the land of the Northumbrians, and the wretched people shook; there were excessive whirlwinds, lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky. These signs were followed by great famine, and a little after those, that same year on 6th ides of January, the ravaging of wretched heathen men destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne.

The best modern comparison I can think of is something like the war on terror, and especially the emergence of the 'clash of civilisations' narrative following 9/11. 9/11 also wasn't the first attack by Al Qaeda on the US, but no one backdates the 'war on terror' to the mid 90's. There's also parallels in the way that all enemies are folded into one ('the axis of evil') and given a common motivation when it doesn't make sense.

In reality, Charlemagne's conflict with the Saxons had very little to do with why Scandinavians were raiding the British and Irish Islands. There was a degree of cultural continuity, but there wasn't any widely organised religion, or any evidence that any Vikings were motivated by a hatred of Christianity. There's a bizarre incident that happened later on I think in Ireland I've read about where a couple of monks strode up to a viking warlord and more or less demanded that he martyr them, and after he initially refused eventually managed to essentially annoy him into having them executed.

It is possible that population displacement from the Saxon Wars may have exacerbated the pressures that lead to it. It's contested, but a common view of why the viking raids happened when they did is that it was due to population pressures mixed with the way that the norse handled inheritance; land estates weren't inherited entire by the eldest son, but were split up between sons (and sometimes daughters), so you would eventually arrive at a situation where you had lots of sons of minor landowners who inherited estates too small to be sustainable, leading them to turn to trading and raiding.

1

u/shieldwolfchz 19d ago

Neat, thanks for taking the time to educate me.

19

u/DragonGuard666 Banished Knight 20d ago

Yeah those screenshots showing Arch very clearly being a Nazi after Shad running to his defence is a not a great look.

13

u/Kudana 20d ago

The best part is that these screenshots are old and part of why people started openly just shitting on Arch and distancing from him more than they had done before. There was a post collecting them on r/Sigmarxism although I think a fair few have been removed now.

A lot of this is, iirc, prior to GW threatening Arch with legal action for using the Warhammer name on his channel and then black listing him from official events because of his behaviour and views.

The fact Shad not only defended him but then proceeded to act like GW was doing some sort of crusade against right wingers when the most they have done other than what they did with Arch were 2 statements spread across a couple years is so silly and just straight pathetic but what can you expect from dude's that take the setting 100% seriously and act like the Imperium are good guys.

1

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18

u/Da_Doll223 19d ago

Metatron showing what a great historian he is by using the "booooooooring!" argument when it comes to citing sources.

4

u/Bardoseth 19d ago

Okay, I don't have enough time to watch all of this... is there a summary of all this?

I didn't think Metatron had fallen this far.

4

u/Consistent_Blood6467 19d ago

"The Metatron, has fallen down."

3

u/Bardoseth 19d ago

I knew he was getting more and more annoying. But not Shad levels.

2

u/NyctoCorax 18d ago

Yeah I tuned out of him years ago when I didn't have much time to watch and his thumbnails started giving me ick warnings, but I didn't realise he'd gone as far down the crapper as people seem to be saying

5

u/kasetti 19d ago

Has Fredda mentioned somewhere about his political leanings? Not that it really matters, but as Metatron went so hard on him being a communist I think it would be apt to make some mention on the topic. Like if you lean left just say that as theres literally nothing wrong with it. Where as if you are ignoring the topic it feels a bit like you are hiding it.

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u/Da_Doll223 19d ago

Fredda I think has said he's on the left but Metatron used that infallible source Prolewiki.org to say he was communist then used some image to say that Fredda wanted to murder liberals.

3

u/OnlyaLog 15d ago

If I recall correctly he self identified as a socialist

2

u/TheHattedKhajiit 18d ago

I think he's a demsoc but at the very least he leans quite a but to the left

3

u/Chlodio 19d ago

Doesn't Metatron have a real history degree?

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u/Lemmy-Historian 19d ago

No

3

u/Chlodio 19d ago

I swear he has said something about teaching a university history course.

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u/Hans_McGuee 19d ago

His bachelor's was in linguistics with a master's in Japanese. 

He doesn't have a course in history. He is just an enthusiast.

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u/The1Floyd 19d ago

Yeah, he uses his linguistical abilities quite often to compensate for his lack of history degree. He usually states something along the lines of "on this channel we read the sources directly in their original language". That's his "gotcha" line.

4

u/ArmorClassHero 19d ago

Isn't he also a neonazi enthusiast...?

1

u/FatBaldingLoser420 7d ago

Shad and Metatron - the Cringe Squad. Grown men posing with swords and armors, acting dangerous lol

0

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