Older Than They Think/Other Media: Difference between revisions

* Troll dolls weren't introduced in [[The Nineties]], they were re-introduced. These toys actually date back to 1963.

* When Dubreq (makers of the Stylophone) introduced the Super Stylophone circa 1971, it flopped (as could have been predicted, since it lacked both the qualities which made the original such a hit -- cheapness and simplicity). So they withdrew it, only to reintroduce it four years later as a "new hi-fi synthesiser" -- a description almost hilariously wrong on all three counts, since "hi-fi" is not applicable to non-imitative sound ''generation'', and it was a divider organ, not a synth.

* This editor has met [[What an Idiot!|people who thought that the phrase "skeleton in the closet" was invented by Eminem]].

** And this one has seem someone claim that "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" originate from [[Marvel Comics]].

** Similarly, the concept of evolution is also much older. [[Aristotle]] wrote down theories of natural selection. Charles Darwin's own grandfather also worked on evolution theories. Darwin was the first who clearly explained all the important elements of evolution, as well as a workable concept.

** The word "evolution" does not appear in ''On the Origin of Species'', and the word "evolve" only appears once at the very end ("[E]ndless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."). Darwin avoided the word because, at the time, the word "evolution" referred to [[Lamarck Was Right|Lamarck]]'s ideas. Darwin preferred the phrase "descent with modification".

* The idea of "glasnost", namely partially opening up a system to protect its ultimate survival, predates Gorbachev by over a century.

* [[In Soviet Russia, Trope Mocks You|"In Soviet Russia" jokes]] are literally older than Yakov Smirnoff.

*** The word "Aryan" is very old. It appears in the oldest text in Indic, the ''[[Rigveda]]'', the oldest portions of which date from approximately 1500 BC, and in the oldest text in Iranian, the ''Avesta'', dating from around 1000 BC. [[Newer Than They Think|What is new]] is applying the word to non-Indo-Iranians, which started in the 19th century.

** Mussolini and Hitler were often openly saying that they imagine their countries as modern versions of, correspondingly, Roman Empire and Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which has made elements of both taboo. In Italy, the fasces (an ancient Roman symbol) have been removed from many emblems due to the fascist connotations, and the Roman salute has also suffered a similar fate.

** In the early 20th century, in the US, the swastika was widely used as a good luck sign (alongside the horseshoe, the four-leaf clover and the wishbone) on everything from playing cards to coins to souvenir spoons!

** Prior to the rise of Nazism, the US Pledge of Allegiance involved stretching out one's hand towards the flag, similar to the Ave salute. This gesture was dropped by WW2, for obvious reasons.

* The phrase "trick out" seems like an example of modern, urban slang. Actually, John Austin used it in ''The Province of Jurisprudence Determined'', first published in 1832, and the phrase is probably much older. It's even used in the modern sense of [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trick+ out "to adorn or decorate in an extravagant or gaudy manner"].

** In the show ''The Naked Archaeologist'', host Simcha Jacobovici once presented evidence that non-pictorial written language was first invented by Jewish rebels in Egypt as a code their enemies couldn't read, and part of his evidence was graffiti in an ancient Egyptian work camp reading "El [God] save me." So our alphabet could have been created ''specifically for'' graffiti.

** The theory that the alphabet was invented by the Jews in Egypt is also rather old - there is a [http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/1932521/ 1903 Russian book] claiming that.

* There are many, many turns of phrase from This Very Wiki which are [[Older Than They Think]]. [[Lampshade Hanging]] is chief among these. There was an amusing example on [[Kangaroo Court]] where someone assumed the [[Phoenix Wright]] localization team were tropers because they used that phrase. And, if this wiki is the context in which you've learned the words "deconstruction", "subversion" or even "trope", it's advisable to look them up in a dictionary before trying to use them elsewhere.

** Chaucer's Miller's Tale (d. 1400): "[[Middle English|But with his mouth he kiste hir naked ers]]" -- and this is not [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe]].

** Also, the self-same "Götz" had a iron prosthetic hand, which makes those [[Older Than They Think]] as well.

* Someone on the webite ''The Escapist'''s forums declared that [[Charlie Brooker]] was ripping off [[Zero Punctuation|Yahtzee's act]]. While they may not have known that Brooker had been doing the [[Deadpan Snarker|snarky]]-[[The Mean Brit|British]]-[[Accentuate the Negative|slating]] thing for a while, or that ''Screenburn'' and probably ''[[Screenwipe]]'' predate ''[[Zero Punctuation]]'', it just sounds dumb given that Yahtzee has credited Brooker as an influence on his ZP style.

* Cosplay. There are early examples of a large number of young men [[wikipedia:Sorrows of Young Werther#Cultural impact|dressing up as the title character]] from [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]]'s ''[[The Sorrows of Young Werther]]''.

* [[The Internet]] itself is older than most people think. Most people would not have heard of it before the mid-1990s, and thus assume that was roughly the time it came about. The World Wide Web dates from 1991, but it is actually just one of many applications built on top of the actual Internet. Unfortunately, an exact date for the birth of the Internet cannot be given, since it was a continuous development over several decades. Some years which may be considered candidates for this include:

** 1968, When Arpanet was started

** [[Cyrus the Great]] in the 6th Century BC enthusiastically encouraged multiculturalism throughout the empire he founded, the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

* The United States engaged in wars at a distant land against a Muslim faction. [[War On Terror]]? No, the [[wikipedia:Barbary Wars|Barbary Wars]] in the early 19th century.

* Based on comments on [[YouTube]] on the Max Headroom Incident, you'd think that the idea of trolling on the internet is only about 15 years old and that the internet was invented around 1994 (see above for details). Truth is, it dates back to the late 80s at the very least, but back then it was an initiation process for newbies where someone would ask a question everyone knew the answer to for purpose of weeding out the newbies and only the newbies would answer, it was called "trolling for newbies". [[Snopes]] is someone who participated in this early form of trolling. However, the direct ancestor to what's known as trolling today dates back even further, to at least the late 70s, but until the term "trolling" evolved, these people were known as "griefers". Evidence of this behaviour can be found as early as 1981 on Google Groups archives of Usenet.

* A couple of examples from the automotive industry:

* The [[Totally Radical]] adjective "groovy" is most commonly associated with [[The Sixties]], but it dates back to the 1940s.

* The slang term "phat" is often thought to have been created recently, some time in [[The Nineties]]. In reality, the term has been in use since at least 1963 and was already being used to describe something desirable back then.

* The concept of a backronym is much older than most people think. As early as the second century A.D., Christians were using the Greek word "ichthys", meaning fish, as a backronym for "Iesous Christos Theou Huios Soter" which translates to "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior".

* [[Dude in Distress]] is not a result of feminism. Many a [[Fairy Tale]] features an heroine rescuing one -- or several.

* Most people think [[Abraham Lincoln]] coined, "A house divided can't stand," but actually [[Jesus]] did.

* If you ask someone when was color photography invented, a typical answer would be something like "I don't know, maybe in the 50's?" The answer would be correct, except that it refers to the wrong century. Color photography was first developed in the 1850's.

* The word "earthling" was first used in 1595.

* [[LEGO]] has had specialized parts and sets devoted to building one particular thing (as opposed to big boxes of random generic bricks) since the early fifties, no matter what that guy in his late twenties who just walked into a toy aisle for the first time in years and thinks [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks]] says.

* [[Knight in Shining Armor|Cataphracts]] were sporting shiny armor waaay before anyone in Europe had the idea and most certainly [[Follow the Leader|copied it.]]

* Many people thought that the accusations that [[Barack Obama]] was born in Kenya/Indonesia was pretty much the first time a US president accused of being not constitutionally eligible on the grounds of not being a "natural-born citizen". However, the first president with that dubious honor is actually [[Chester A. Arthur]] who was rumored to have been born in a certain British colony we now call Canada.

* Back in the ninth century, Arabic scholar Al-Jahiz discussed the theory of evolution. That was a millennium before [[Charles Darwin]]'s theory. See an article about the author [http://gulfnews.com/culture/people/the-father-of-the-theory-of-evolution-1.1079209 here].

{{quote|''"Animals engage in a struggle for existence; for resources, to avoid being eaten and to breed. Environmental factors influence organisms to develop new characteristics to ensure survival, thus transforming into new species. Animals that survive to breed can pass on their successful characteristics to offspring."''|'''Al-Jahiz'''}}

 

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