This town throws pennies at people. They hurt.
youtu.be
The Honiton Hot Pennies ceremony is the result of 800 years of tradition: from when rich people would entertain themselves by throwing scalding-hot pennies o...

You don’t need to watch the video. Tom Scott/None of the interview subjects ever point out how fucked this is, but basically the story is rich sadists would put coins in boiling water and then throw them at poor children to watch them endure injury for small amounts of money as a form of entertainment.

    • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.netEnglish
      15·
      10 months ago

      what materially does hot pennies reinforce? are the people throwing pennies nobles? are the people catching them doing so to avoid starvation? what is being normalized that is so offensive to our sensibilities here?

      • Neptium@lemmygrad.ml
        111·
        10 months ago

        This is exactly my thought process. I really don’t see a big deal here.

        I didn’t put forward an argument in my original comment because I genuinely thought there was nothing much to argue about.

        It’s so trivial.

        Let the people have fun and participate in community events.

        It is, from what I gather, a small town anyways. It will affect like, what, 0.0001% of the entire population?

        • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.netEnglish
          161·
          10 months ago

          the idea of the nobles

          it clearly isn’t, the elected mayor and citizens are distributing the coins

          The idea of money

          no-one’s eliminated that one yet, you’ll need to be a bit more patient on expecting people to not put cultural purchase on the medium for modern life, even in AES

          We shouldn’t do things that started as a nobel activity

          turn over your keyboard comrade. writing was invented for the noble class’ record-keeping and taxes. <—specious but i want to illustrate why we need to exercise restraint on stuff like this, especially before it gets to points like ‘urbanism and intellectualism are bourgeois’

            • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.netEnglish
              41·
              10 months ago

              writing absolutely encourages past ideas, when people have access to those old ideas written down, or advocate them through writing.

              and is the transformation of this ritual not a sign of encouraging ideas of the present? a female mayor, the ceasing of the heating of the coins, the lack of noble participation, couldn’t i argue that this festival has been ‘reclaimed’ and embraces democratic values now?