I love the fact that a 35 page letter roasting a person’s documentation book survived the annals of history and managed to be shared to millions of people to become remembered for ages past its prime.
Thats because the Robin hood reference has been well researched multiple times (its not the one in the scotichronicon) and his topic was Tiffany, which hasn't been researched
@@TokuNorth Well I know, but... Alright, you win. I just think reading it the "normal" way would at least lead some non-historical people towards trying to learn Roman numerals. Of course they're as useful in modern times as Latin itself, sed sicut Brianum Davidus Gilbertus dixit, "Scientia potentia est". - written on X.IX.MMXXI
I love how Alexander Pope's message was essentially "Thomas Hearne is a hoarding prick" and Grey, after months of excruciating work, basically confirmed it.
The scottish history section being located in a perpetually unlit section of an English library is the most beautifully poetic thing I think I have seen
"Provided nothing of value" - actually, I will be sending this to a friend who is a history teacher who will most likely use it as a way to demonstrate to students how misinformation can take root and be passed down through the centuries and why checking the original source material is so incredibly important. It may actually provide far greater value than you realize.
Certainly! One could go so far as to say that highlighting these difficulties is even more important than ever before in *gestures broadly* _these_ current times! Showing how doing proper research might take a lot of time, and not lead anywhere
Grey is relatively lucky here. For a researcher, you'll often be frustrated by sloppy scholarship that allows inaccuracies to be written down as truth. It's rare that you'll actually find the direct source of the misinformation *and* get the schadenfreude of watching him get brutally dunked on by one of the greatest satirists in the English language.
Alexander Pope would probably love how much trouble Hearne's mistakes have frustrated Grey's research. I'd imagine he'd write an open letter to the public criticizing Hearne for causing so much hassle.
he would've written an open letter *praising hearne for "inducing in others so much scholarly effort and doubly admirable for doing with so lightly of his own"
I think this is important as it shows how a single person's incompetency can spread misinformation for literally hundreds of years. This is a small thing but how many of these small things are there out there that end up changing the total narrative either through this same level of incompetency or intentionally? The idea is so fascinating to me that it almost makes me wish I took up history.
Right!!?? Makes me really interested in theory of information and communication. We see it in things like childhood games of "telephone," in common misconceptions, etc, but we give too much credit that things will get shaken out and that sources speak from a place of professional practice or well studied confidence, when in reality misinformation is so easy to spread... Suuuper interesting.
@@greywolf7577 "Know" is probably too strong a word for it. We are "relatively confident" that Hannibal crossed the Alps and a couple of his elephants survived the journey. Okay, maybe we just suspect it, but we're relatively confident that the Punic Wars happened. Probably.
@@greywolf7577 Yes, isn't that obvious? You have the power to test anything you want within reason. If you have skepticism, then by all means, attempt to debunk whatever it is you're skeptical about.
WHY THE POEM IS A JOKE: It's a pun based on "coming out of Britany". William's mother was named Britany. The poem is implying that his mother gave birth to the man, his wife, his maid, and his dog. It's an ancient "yo mama" joke.
I completely disagree, Grey. This was not at all a waste of time. This was an incredible adventure for you and for all of us. Getting lost in the world's largest library over the course of a year sounds like one of the most fulfilling adventures one could embark upon. After years of freeloading this wonderful content, I'm happy to be able to contribute financially for once.
The moral of the story is "Life is a journey not a destination, " and/or, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Yes, basically this is a fable.
Indeed, the thought that 50 years from now, Grey's video (and it's AI-written auto-transcript no doubt) will be one more stone in the path surrounding the bibliographies of these ancient people quoting each other.
cgp grey, exasperated: "I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF ANYONE IS STILL LISTENING AT THIS POINT!" me, being entranced by the centuries old drama about Hearne while eating a Klondike bar: "ya, I'm with ya"
a thing we take for granted about internet information is that someone put it there out of the goodness of their heart/archival instincts. Wikipedia is a large collaborative project. Even mentioning info is a huge deal. I was trying to find the source of an obscure quote I thought i heard from a sports commentator, and I only found one forum post from 2004ish on it, from a now defunct forum about TV. Sidenote: i don't like that forums have gone away. it's useful to have conversations between random strangers preserved and web-crawlable, and it's not as easy to do with external tools with twitter or facebook.
Here's a research hole for you - look to see if the late neolithic tribes in western France migrated to central Algeria (a wetland at the time) and later were the source of the Atlantis myth after a mud volcano to the south erupted. That's enough to start on, oh, here's a clue to get you going - look to see where the Clovis point stone spearhead migrated to around that time. Obviously you'll need to read the Plato mythology on it too, the Pillars of Hercules were considered to be between Sicily and Africa at the time the original myth was written, not Gibraltar. There's also gentic data on Europedia that can help, it's the later (post 30,000bce) mtDNA X that you'll need to follow. If you assume that the population in Africa got mostly wiped out in roughly 9850bce (aside from a few Berbers that have mtDNA X) you can see that the survivors migrated to the Levant and Greece. Old Sparta was certainly one of those colonies. And Gobekli Tepi as well. Only do this is you enjoy the torture though, it's a very deep hole. Just ignore anything written after the Greek about it though.
I’m a PhD student and I just got back from a 7 mile hike turned 16 miles by a wrong turn and, suddenly, the forest of all knowledge analogy just got 1000% more relatable
"This path went absolutely nowhere, provided nothing of value, and drained many hours of my sadly finite life." My research mentor said almost exactly the same thing to me years ago, talking me out of pursuing a PhD. Not all heroes wear capes.
There's truly no worse feeling than wasting an afternoon looking thru a pile of dusty old books just to not find what you were looking for. Or even worse to find out that the thesis for your paper is wrong and you have start all over.
Tbh when I browsed the channel, this video is way more interesting than author's stories about his GF. [that's the feeling about videos' content I got; note: English isn't my main languange]
9:00 Alexander Pope literally wrote down: *"To future historians:* This guy's a hack." And here *we, future historians,* goggle at his spiteful, beautiful foresight.
There once was a researcher named CGP Grey, Who whilst hunting Tiffany lost his way. A poem's date he did chase, it's source be erased, Hearne's antiquarian ways did dismay.
So Grey is the only one capable of entering and exiting the backrooms at will? Pretty selfish of him to be leaving the tens of thousands of people stuck on the various floors of a very inhospitable and dangerous place I must say
A detailed list of every time Grey mispronounced Scotichronicon: 5:26 Scotchinomicron 5:54 Scotchicromicon 6:05 Scotchironomicon 7:36 Scotchichronicon 15:11 Scothrinomicon
One day, I hope Grey writes a book called "The Chronicles of a mad man and his less than auspicious journey through the Forest of All Knowledge" where he documents all of these stories. I would cherish such a book. It would be taught in colleges.
As someone who recently fell down a similarly niche rabbit hole of research, this video entirely encapsulates the feeling of being possibly the only person who cares about X subject/question in the modern world. We take Google for granted until it turns up zero results, or when the Wikipedia footnote trail runs dry or lacks any page to begin with. It’s genuinely fascinating to me
Or days of searching 1400 pages of microfilm on each of a hundred rolls microfilm to find that one land record sentence that proves when your ancestors came to Canada. ❤️ It
There were a few photos of great great grandfathers headstone, brown and covered in lichen on the ground. Online cemetery websites shared the same few photos that cropped off the last line. There is seemingly no paper records in all the land regarding his origin place in Scotland. But behold, one distant cousin found on Ancestry took a snap in the 80s and scanned it to me 40 years later. The last missing line? “Native of Kirkcudbrightshire” Makes me feel like Indiana Jones
When tracing back the roots of knowledge, inevitably we will either reach bedrock or find the root end snapped, its origin separated by a long forgotten incident or oversight creating a gap in the vast time abyss.
I fell asleep twice while watching this. But i did rewatch it after waking up more. Was hard but wanted to watch the whole thing to be supportive in my own way
As someone who studied Math and GRSJ (Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice) in university and is now studying Law, this comment is deeply accurate and insightful. I feel Grey’s pain in my soul.
This took the butterfly effect to the extreme. A few hundred years ago some guy made a fanfic about the scotronomicon and a few hundred years later some random guy is going insane wondering how someone lived 89 years before he was born
When you said: "This script is so long. Is anyone still here?" I nodded and said yes, then forgot you can't see nor hear me. I don't know how to feel about that.
The only problem with immortality is that the human mind really isn't equipped to comprehend its implications. Even our sun has a finite lifespan, and we can't live without it. What happens when the sun goes red giant, possibly incinerating the earth (and definitely making it uninhabitable) in the process? I'm not sure he would want to make that a video topic, though; it sounds like he might find it depressing... but then, after making this video, maybe that wouldn't be an issue for him, given the line that has been quoted above.
@@jacksonstarky8288 Well, even if we become Immortal, that doesn't mean we can't die. Let's say you become ageless and immune to disease. Let's also say you leave the house everyday for you're job, or on a walk. Eventually, probably within a thousand years you're going to trip and break you're neck. Or die in a car crash, or hell struck by lightning. When you're Immortal, the small percentage chance of dying by any of those things steadily increase until it eventually happens
I don’t think I ever actually understood how historians do research until watching Grey. Truly insightful and fascinating. Thanks for all you do to teach the world.
I still don't think I do but Mike Duncan does a great explanation of his process somewhere in his Revolutions podcast. I don't think I have ever seen someone else explain it.
we historians do have rules and methods, until we hit the decisive madness that is humanity. after that fact we write down is whatever that makes sense chronologically in a cause and effect relationship.
It's not for nothing. It teaches a sense of the fragility of information. You can't read a description of the problems a fact check runs into and understand it in the level you can after this video
It‘s not for nothing. It teaches about research and how important it is to be accurate for a singly, small mistake might go down in history for hundreds of years.
There once was a man named Hearne. A studious man who wanted to learn. With terrible sourcing, and errors discoursing, after 300 years he still makes people gurn.
I learned absolutely nothing of importance for 20 minutes and loved every second of it. You and your team are a treasure and I look forward to the next meandering excursion into the Forest of All Knowledge, whether there's a destination or not.
This is another time for that old Ralpha Waldo Emerson quote: "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." Whether or not we learned anything of importance, just how Grey went about finding that knowledge is very insightful about how our history is kept (and often how badly). This and the Staten island video have made me really think differently about written history and recorder knowledge in general.
As a student who doesn't have my life and finances in any semblance of order, it always warms my heart to hear Grey's insistence that students shouldn't contribute to his channel if they aren't financially stable. Thank you, Grey. Just a couple more years and I hope to join the Bonnie Bee Brigade. In the meantime, I'm watching and re-watching your videos.
There are a few channels this being one of them who I definitely plan on donating to when I am done school. It's amazing how much some UA-camrs do for students now.
I did watch all the way to the end of the "Someone Dead Ruined My Life... Again." video because I felt a certain shared frustration. I've gotten a lot of laughs from your videos and appreciate all @CGPGrey has done to inform the world.
I feel like in 300 years some historian will look back, hopelessly researching some random topic, and find Grey commenting on Hearn and Pope, then spiral even further, seeing Grey as one of the great 21st century historians.
It's interesting how these ancient historians were probably exactly like Grey - hopelessly curious random ppl, and that's the same way he'll be seen. That's why I like your use of "21st century historian"
I was having this exact thought while watching... he is now a member of this long line of historians and archivists producing works that show the path back to other older works
I hope that UA-cam or some of its successors has ported forward these videos by then. Because by their mere existence it will be inferred to some future historian chasing down the same rabbit hole. And in that distant day in the future somebody will write a textbook saying how cgp grey is the most awesome historian of industrial / post-industrial America. And some poor school kid will have to sit around watching video after video of Grey's research that we presently do for fun.
Hearne was so bad at his job that he literally would've done less harm if he just preserved all the stuff he hoarded and did absolutely nothing else? That's impressive, almost aspirational.
I knew a guy like that. He was a government employee, and a horrible worker who screwed EVERYTHING up, especially when he was loaded, which was most of the time. It was almost impossible to fire him at the time, so they kept getting promoted, to jobs were he did less and less, and ultimately was responsible for nothing. The premise was, "if we can make him useless, it will be a huge improvement."
@@bcubed72 Oh man, I want that job. Getting paid very well to do nothing is a dream. Getting promoted due to incompitance also a dream. Though, this makes sense assuming it is the US government. Our tax dollars at work. >.>;
Hearne was far from alone, and his practices and attitude persisted until at least the early 1900s. I have made a minor study of armour (the kind you wear) and quite a few of the most popular Victorian-era sources are, shall we say, hilariously wrong. I suspect that at least part of this is because, these days, we have much readier access to information than at any previous time in history. I am speaking of the free availability of public museums and libraries-of-record, not the Internet, although that too is a combined boon and curse. Many of the worst Victorian sources are tertiary sources (at best), which should underline for you Grey's insistence on primary sources in his research.
As a Tiffany and a historian, these videos have been such a delight. I am sorry you felt alone in this research, but I am thankful and grateful for you and the work you do. I used your videos in my history classroom, and still enjoy watching them as I support others in their teaching endeavors. Thank you!
Have you by any chance read Terry Pratchett's delightful series of books about Tiffany Aching, witch-in-training? They're worth a read for the humour alone, but as a historian, you'd get a lot more out of the references and allusions that Pratchett, amateur historian and folklorist that he was, packed all his works with.
I can almost picture Alexander Pope mocking Thomas in the afterlife about how he polluted history for the future generations, screaming "THIS GUY GETS IT" every time Grey critiques Hearne.
There's something so cozy and _nostalgic_ to research someone that no one cares about by yourself, knowing that you are the only one that will ever have the experience, and to think about how you revived a person's memory from the dead for just a little bit longer.
I also love those 2, the bestagons are a religion now 😂, but Capt. Billop also deserves a place, it seemed Grey was going to use a oujia board to get an interview with Disoaway
You're right, but I wish mine were as varied and broad as Grey's! As it turns out, there exist only so many articles, books, and papers on the history of Taekwondo...
@@kinseylise8595 there is always a rabbit hole to go deeper in. the question is how deep is deep enough. Like you could dive in to the production of the sports equipment and who make them and why in that (exact) way. just keep digging until you don't even know that the start was Taekwondo.
@@thebiggestcauldron Basically when your conversation partner spams you with demands to provide evidence for every little thing you state, and then demands evidence for _that_ evidence, in bad faith - not because he wants to get to the truth of a matter, but purely to annoy and then discredit you.
I have only just discovered this channel, watched this before the other Tiffany videos, and I am enjoying it so much I let out an exasperated cry at 16:30. Thanks, Hearne.
Exactly! I have just discovered this channel, well not 'just' but about some 10 days ago, and felt as if I watched a thriller movie. Again revisiting this video!
As a librarian, this reminded me that work matters. Old dusty books that no one has touched in 50 years allow dedicated people like you to tell us about the past through incredible work, Grey. Thanks for being you. And as someone who obsessively researches topics, this is also just really validating and enjoyable to watch. Finally, I think you're actually modelling great dedicated research practice, and probably teaching thousands of people how to find sources!! ❤️❤️
Agree with you on all points, brava! I love his content, am willing to wait for it, which he talked a bit about at the end. He is really grateful for his fanbase and patrons, wish I could give.
"This path went absolutely nowhere, provided nothing of value, and drained many hours of my sadly finite life." - An honest conclusion of every other phd thesis
I really do love videos like this, they show passion in a way people don’t get to see from creators all the time. Also thank you for telling us to take care of ourselves before taking care of you. Idk I guess I just needed to hear that
“But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
Knowing that there is a library that must be explored, at least in part, by flashlight (would that be torchlight in England?) brings so much joy to my life.
Kinda brings the idea of fantasy book libraries to life. I imagine Grey as an aging mage looking desperately for an obscure tomb that was though to be lost...I am realizing as I am writing this that I just described Gandalf. Grey is Gandalf.
Historiography is honestly just as interesting as the actual real history. To figure out how people of the past recorded history and what they got wrong is incredibly meta. Videos like this will always be appreciated.
and I'd say it's also very important. It's sort of a clean up mechanism for history, figure out what was actually true and not random bs is important if we want to truly understand the past.
As a family historian, looking at records from the 1400s, 1500s and 1600s, and so often finding myself on a winding trail which leads me back to the beginning without solving any of the puzzles along the way, I can identify with this so much!
The UA-cam gods are cruel. I left a near-identical comment over a day before yours and it received no attention, while yours is the second comment I see when clicking on the video. And I'm sure there was another before me, with an equally ill-fated, but identical comment.
as a student, sometimes it's easy to forget the true meaning of "learning" and "pursuing knowledge" amidst such a rigid educational system. this video is a great reminder of what it really means to learn just for the sake of it. hopefully one day i find my own tiffany rabbit hole. great work grey :D
As someone writing my masters dissertation, it's now making me self conscious about all my sources I've used without really questioning where they got things from
Man, just be careful though. You don't want to have the tendency of falling into every rabbit hole there is. It's fun as hell, but exhausting. Know when it's enough and don't lose yourself. (Speaking from experience)
"This book hasn't been checked out since 1995" -- I don't have the words to describe how that makes me feel, but it sure does make me feel it. Taking these treks through the forest of all knowledge would be that much more difficult in any other place, but then access to so much of written history is totally why you live in London, isn't it! :P
Never having been in a library without the Dewey Decimal system, I imagine myself looking for one book in that library and coming home with 27, and needing to find a castle wherein to hole up and read them all!
I really enjoyed this video. I also think its incredibly important. Someone had to do this research and in the future you saved people time that also might come across the poem.
I understand your immense frustration, but I absolutely love this. The explination of your research process and the things you find along the way are honestly just as interesting as the final videos you make. Thank you for taking the time to making a video for this rant, totally would watch more of these.
no one cared for 300 years prior to this (thus no one fact and source checking this poem), so I doubt that with today's sped up generation, and especially ones that follow, anyone will care about little things like this in 100+ years.
@@dmpmomof3 1) I'm not saying Seven's writing is wrong 2) I did mean "by now", that was not a goodbye. Or was that comma superfluous? I can't always tell in English.
To me, a lot of the fascination stems from being able to convey it all back to an audience cohesively. I have no problem following rabbit trails all day; thanks, Wikipedia! Realizing I'm on a rabbit trail, orienting myself, document where I am, where I've been, and where I need to go are all incredibly difficult for me.
This was glorious. The animator deserves a bonus for the incredible range of emotions they can express through stick figures. And yes, I'm one of those people who loves seeing behind the scenes so thank you for the hilarious to us (but agonizing for you) details of the journey.
This demonstrates that I don't need to do a big thing to be remembered. I just need to get my writings in an archive and Grey will eventually stumbles upon those in some very specific research
watching the Hearne/Pope thing feels like that feeling when you read a 300 comment argument between 2 strangers that happened 10 years ago on some music video you found by chance
*sheepishly raises hand* Guilty. I literally just did this earlier today. I cut myself off way later than I should have, time-wasted wise, yet still before I saw the final comment in the chain.
One of my favorite things is accidentally finding beef between two academics in the form of writing that is ultra-professional. When I was trying to find a citation for a single sentence in a paper that I was writing, I found beef between two scientists about phylocode that had been going back for THIRTY YEARS in PEER REVIEWED JOURNALS. I spent a week reading more into it and ended up not even using anything related to my original idea in my final paper.
If you want a computer science beef, specifically in the field of random number generators, there's a minor feud between Melissa O'Neill and Sebastiano Vigna where they argue *a bit* about whose random number generator is better, and it even ends up with arguments in GitHub repositories in the form of issues raised with the code, where one of them complains that the other's random number generator is being used in fairly popular open source libraries.
I honestly want you to make more of these "AYO ALL THE PROBLEMS AND SIDE PATHS I ENCOUNTERED WHILE MAKING THE TIFFANY VIDEO" videos. They're so much fun for nerds like us
OK, now I'm at the point where he finally found a historian he could call and talk about this all over coffee with, only to realize he's been dead for over 125 years. Amazing.
Grey's videos often give me this existential terror of the sheer weight of all human knowledge that no person alive has given a second thought to. How many books and letters and poems have been lost to time. How many names and records and deeds have been lost or are about to be lost to a coffee spill or termites or mold. Christ, we don't even have a complete history of the big picture stuff if you go back more than 1000 years.
In addition to losing pieces, its pretty fked how some ppl deliberately cut information out of books, or just don’t care about preserving knowledge. Like id be so pissed to be those yr 1300 monks after writing my version of the complete history of the universe for some dude in the 1700s to edit and cut how he saw fit.
Your efforts were no waste of time, they were _historical scholarship!_ Which is always endless hours resulting in one tiny but *TRUE* thing being added to our collective knowledge. You have done real work here, and I thank you for it. 🙏
Absolutely. I also learned Alexander Pope was a murderer with words, and Thomas Hearne is rolling around in his grave as we speak. Still the dedication Grey puts in is astounding
Returned to our knowledge for a brief moment before misquoted or lost into obscurity until at some point in the future another grey could dig it up again
This is honestly one of my favorite videos. As someone who has fallen down more rabbit holes than I care to think about, I really appreciate the effort you put into your work. Thank you for all you do.
In the RPG " Call of Cthulhu" one of the great dangers was going insane researching by reading ancient tomes, and here is a video of it happening. Great video an pretty fascinating, and thank you for the effort put in this.
Grey, any time you need to talk about Tiff just give me a call.
Neat
Nice to see you here!
The greatest minds gather themselves on places you would never expect
You two should do some kind of colab where you make/prove some kind of physics claim and Grey has to dive endlessly into the historical significance
Hahaha I legitimately hope Grey gets back to you. This is the collab we need
I love the fact that a 35 page letter roasting a person’s documentation book survived the annals of history and managed to be shared to millions of people to become remembered for ages past its prime.
Past it's prime? No sir, it's been aged well, and can probably stand for another 300 years.
If he would have had more time, he would have written a shorter letter.
I love how Grey just casually brushes off the earliest known reference to Robin Hood in order to search for Tiffany
She was well known to his men around the camp.
Thats because the Robin hood reference has been well researched multiple times (its not the one in the scotichronicon) and his topic was Tiffany, which hasn't been researched
And insists on reading roman numerals as letters.
@@karolkozik5918 Well, that IS how you read them
@@TokuNorth Well I know, but... Alright, you win. I just think reading it the "normal" way would at least lead some non-historical people towards trying to learn Roman numerals. Of course they're as useful in modern times as Latin itself, sed sicut Brianum Davidus Gilbertus dixit, "Scientia potentia est". - written on X.IX.MMXXI
I love how Alexander Pope's message was essentially "Thomas Hearne is a hoarding prick" and Grey, after months of excruciating work, basically confirmed it.
Grey’s willingness to dive absurdly deep into the most seemingly simple topics just shows how incredibly complex and interesting our world really is
Indeed
and this is making me want to do it myself
"Everything is a universe unto itself"
@@Skemmm make a video about it
Who?
The scottish history section being located in a perpetually unlit section of an English library is the most beautifully poetic thing I think I have seen
ok
Presumably the Irish history section is just a pile of self-congratulatory texts by an assortment of Englishmen.
@@jospinner1183 It's a baked potato stall
Truth
@@jospinner1183 It would be, but the books went to war and all but the most important texts got burned in the ensuing scuffle
"Provided nothing of value" - actually, I will be sending this to a friend who is a history teacher who will most likely use it as a way to demonstrate to students how misinformation can take root and be passed down through the centuries and why checking the original source material is so incredibly important. It may actually provide far greater value than you realize.
Certainly! One could go so far as to say that highlighting these difficulties is even more important than ever before in *gestures broadly* _these_ current times! Showing how doing proper research might take a lot of time, and not lead anywhere
But the lesson here is not to obsess over the source until you check that the content of the material is of any factual accuracy to begin with
Grey is relatively lucky here.
For a researcher, you'll often be frustrated by sloppy scholarship that allows inaccuracies to be written down as truth.
It's rare that you'll actually find the direct source of the misinformation *and* get the schadenfreude of watching him get brutally dunked on by one of the greatest satirists in the English language.
Yeah, this is one of the best videos that I have seen that depict misinformation.
check the sources of your source's sources
Grey has just done the real, actual, unironic job of a historian.
Alexander Pope would probably love how much trouble Hearne's mistakes have frustrated Grey's research. I'd imagine he'd write an open letter to the public criticizing Hearne for causing so much hassle.
"This scholar and writer of pamphlets for the education of the public was driven to madness."
alexander pope sounds like a hilarious guy
“His misinformation and inclusions of useless misquoted works cost true researchers of valuable time”
he would've written an open letter *praising hearne for "inducing in others so much scholarly effort and doubly admirable for doing with so lightly of his own"
I think Grey might have been possessed by Pope's spirit for a bit.
There's nothing more CGPGrey than "I thought I had someone I could finally talk to about this, but he died 100 years ago"
Yeeah, that made me laugh out loud xD
I love how centuries later Grey finds himself in agreement with Pope's despise of Hearne
Pope despising hearne was not unwarranted
@chula chalupa it wasn’t pointless
@chula chalupa Wasn't pointless. It proved that Hearne was a shithead that couldn't do his job right.
@chula chalupa yeah no hearne definitely deserved that from making grey go insane from this poem
Alex Pope wins again...
I think this is important as it shows how a single person's incompetency can spread misinformation for literally hundreds of years. This is a small thing but how many of these small things are there out there that end up changing the total narrative either through this same level of incompetency or intentionally? The idea is so fascinating to me that it almost makes me wish I took up history.
Right!!?? Makes me really interested in theory of information and communication. We see it in things like childhood games of "telephone," in common misconceptions, etc, but we give too much credit that things will get shaken out and that sources speak from a place of professional practice or well studied confidence, when in reality misinformation is so easy to spread... Suuuper interesting.
So do we know anything about history? Should I question the truth of anything that happened before I was born?
@@greywolf7577 "Know" is probably too strong a word for it. We are "relatively confident" that Hannibal crossed the Alps and a couple of his elephants survived the journey. Okay, maybe we just suspect it, but we're relatively confident that the Punic Wars happened. Probably.
@@greywolf7577 Yes, isn't that obvious? You have the power to test anything you want within reason. If you have skepticism, then by all means, attempt to debunk whatever it is you're skeptical about.
I want a netflix series about this just so we can see some character acter gnashing his teeth into the scenery playing these historical people
"Is anyone still even watching?" Yes, me. And loving every second of this batshit crazy journey through minor points in history.
Yup, me too.
"Is anyone here?" Yup, me too!
Same
Same!
“Anyway, snap out of it, carrying on.” broke me :D
WHY THE POEM IS A JOKE:
It's a pun based on "coming out of Britany".
William's mother was named Britany.
The poem is implying that his mother gave birth to the man, his wife, his maid, and his dog.
It's an ancient "yo mama" joke.
I’m 99% sure your 100% right
I think your right and I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse
...Ah, a yo-mama joke...
Truely worthy of baseline of Tiffany.
That's hilarious, and I hope it's true
That's awesome.
I completely disagree, Grey. This was not at all a waste of time. This was an incredible adventure for you and for all of us. Getting lost in the world's largest library over the course of a year sounds like one of the most fulfilling adventures one could embark upon. After years of freeloading this wonderful content, I'm happy to be able to contribute financially for once.
The moral of the story is "Life is a journey not a destination, " and/or, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
Yes, basically this is a fable.
@@guest_informant Exactly.
Loved that too and don't forget the sweet sweet roast. >:D Have to look up Alexander Pope. I like his style and sass.
@@guest_informant ah, a John Lennon fan I see
Indeed, the thought that 50 years from now, Grey's video (and it's AI-written auto-transcript no doubt) will be one more stone in the path surrounding the bibliographies of these ancient people quoting each other.
cgp grey, exasperated: "I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF ANYONE IS STILL LISTENING AT THIS POINT!"
me, being entranced by the centuries old drama about Hearne while eating a Klondike bar: "ya, I'm with ya"
😂
This really makes you appreciate just how much knowledge is out there, perhaps published in only a single book, just waiting to be lost forever.
a thing we take for granted about internet information is that someone put it there out of the goodness of their heart/archival instincts.
Wikipedia is a large collaborative project. Even mentioning info is a huge deal. I was trying to find the source of an obscure quote I thought i heard from a sports commentator, and I only found one forum post from 2004ish on it, from a now defunct forum about TV.
Sidenote: i don't like that forums have gone away. it's useful to have conversations between random strangers preserved and web-crawlable, and it's not as easy to do with external tools with twitter or facebook.
You sir are depressing
And then you remember about the Library of Alexandria
@Marci Schneider You must be trolling. .__.
I love that this channel is just “proper research is agony”
Because it kinda is
Yes!
Here's a research hole for you - look to see if the late neolithic tribes in western France migrated to central Algeria (a wetland at the time) and later were the source of the Atlantis myth after a mud volcano to the south erupted. That's enough to start on, oh, here's a clue to get you going - look to see where the Clovis point stone spearhead migrated to around that time. Obviously you'll need to read the Plato mythology on it too, the Pillars of Hercules were considered to be between Sicily and Africa at the time the original myth was written, not Gibraltar. There's also gentic data on Europedia that can help, it's the later (post 30,000bce) mtDNA X that you'll need to follow. If you assume that the population in Africa got mostly wiped out in roughly 9850bce (aside from a few Berbers that have mtDNA X) you can see that the survivors migrated to the Levant and Greece. Old Sparta was certainly one of those colonies. And Gobekli Tepi as well.
Only do this is you enjoy the torture though, it's a very deep hole. Just ignore anything written after the Greek about it though.
"DON'T GO LOOKING."
How many cows did that guy own? I don't know! It's just numbers you prick! Write them like a normal person!
I love how hundreds of years later Hearne is being dumped on by YET ANOTHER popular scholar.
A. Pope is amazing
@@StarDude1 yes he is
Well, based on what we've been shown he clearly deserves it.
Also I'm never ordering copper from Ea-Nasir. His customer service was dreadful.
Hearne is rolling in his grave that people still haven’t let it go lmao
I’m a PhD student and I just got back from a 7 mile hike turned 16 miles by a wrong turn and, suddenly, the forest of all knowledge analogy just got 1000% more relatable
"This path went absolutely nowhere, provided nothing of value, and drained many hours of my sadly finite life."
My research mentor said almost exactly the same thing to me years ago, talking me out of pursuing a PhD. Not all heroes wear capes.
Damn.
Was he the world's foremost expert on anteaters, by any chance?
@@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 Ahhh, I see you're also a person of culture
There's truly no worse feeling than wasting an afternoon looking thru a pile of dusty old books just to not find what you were looking for. Or even worse to find out that the thesis for your paper is wrong and you have start all over.
Grey: "The poem didn't even make it into the -main video-"
The "main" video: 2.4 million views
This video: 3.3 million views
That .2 million is me. I've come back here a lot...
Holy mother forkin' shirtballs- this is the main video
Tbh when I browsed the channel, this video is way more interesting than author's stories about his GF.
[that's the feeling about videos' content I got; note: English isn't my main languange]
3.2 m already
@@ChaoticEnigma92 The Tifanny video is now showing at 2.3 million. WTF??
9:00 Alexander Pope literally wrote down: *"To future historians:* This guy's a hack."
And here *we, future historians,* goggle at his spiteful, beautiful foresight.
You mean google?
*giggle
*gaggle
*wiggle
ETYMOLOGY-MAN, HEEEEEEEELP!!!!
There once was a researcher named CGP Grey,
Who whilst hunting Tiffany lost his way.
A poem's date he did chase, it's source be erased,
Hearne's antiquarian ways did dismay.
I love limericks, thank you
Thank you, Senpai.
Wow he must be in love with this Tiffany girl
Fricking Limericks are awesome
Now time to re-edit it via bad editing and call it out via shade.
Grey coercing the viewer to join him in the back rooms is absolutely terrifying.
Yeah...😔
And then they keep scooting back.
So Grey is the only one capable of entering and exiting the backrooms at will?
Pretty selfish of him to be leaving the tens of thousands of people stuck on the various floors of a very inhospitable and dangerous place I must say
Terrifying yet totally on brand
What do you mean terrifying? I'd be 100% down for that! I'll either get shanked, or get told a story, a win-win situation!
I love the “being held hostage” vibe in this video like he just kidnapped us all to rant about a historian with bad memory
A detailed list of every time Grey mispronounced Scotichronicon:
5:26 Scotchinomicron
5:54 Scotchicromicon
6:05 Scotchironomicon
7:36 Scotchichronicon
15:11 Scothrinomicon
Scothrinomicon
Scotcrhiconormicron
Scrotumommicon
???
Understated comment
Most people would be proud to dig up hundreds of years old source. You go on further and manage to fact check it. Amazing work.
One day, I hope Grey writes a book called "The Chronicles of a mad man and his less than auspicious journey through the Forest of All Knowledge" where he documents all of these stories. I would cherish such a book. It would be taught in colleges.
That is genuinely something that I would love to have.
And then another person 300 years later can go through a mountain of research and use his book. This is a great idea
A book like that would be invaluable for teaching people how to research.
THIS. THIS IS THE BEST THING IVE EVER SEEN
Hexagoneth art thy best-agoneth
This is what "did my research" actually looks like. Snark aside, this journey was incredibly fun to hear about!
Did you do it? Did you do it? Did you do it, huh? Did you crunch the numbers?
As someone who recently fell down a similarly niche rabbit hole of research, this video entirely encapsulates the feeling of being possibly the only person who cares about X subject/question in the modern world. We take Google for granted until it turns up zero results, or when the Wikipedia footnote trail runs dry or lacks any page to begin with. It’s genuinely fascinating to me
What hole did you fall down?
Or days of searching 1400 pages of microfilm on each of a hundred rolls microfilm to find that one land record sentence that proves when your ancestors came to Canada. ❤️ It
@@kjw79 This is the sort of stuff I love to see!
There were a few photos of great great grandfathers headstone, brown and covered in lichen on the ground. Online cemetery websites shared the same few photos that cropped off the last line.
There is seemingly no paper records in all the land regarding his origin place in Scotland.
But behold, one distant cousin found on Ancestry took a snap in the 80s and scanned it to me 40 years later. The last missing line?
“Native of Kirkcudbrightshire”
Makes me feel like Indiana Jones
When tracing back the roots of knowledge, inevitably we will either reach bedrock or find the root end snapped, its origin separated by a long forgotten incident or oversight creating a gap in the vast time abyss.
"Ardent STEM stan slowly discovers the Humanities, descending into madness" has been a wonderful plotline so far. Can't wait to see what's in store.
+
It's been the antithesis of my past 6 months, which has been "Ardent Humanities stan slowly discovers STEM, descending into madness."
I fell asleep twice while watching this. But i did rewatch it after waking up more. Was hard but wanted to watch the whole thing to be supportive in my own way
As someone who studied Math and GRSJ (Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice) in university and is now studying Law, this comment is deeply accurate and insightful.
I feel Grey’s pain in my soul.
A return to the question of truth.
Thank you for developing unhealthy obsessions with obscure topics for my entertainment
Yee
Agree
I feel the same
Agree
OUR
"I didn't come to this library to look the earliest reference to Robin Hood."
Something tells me he will someday
HE DID! Just after he hinted at it! So he fell down a rabbit hole while down a rabbit hole.
But that's a story for another time.
@@Superhrnet so while down in a hole he found a cave, poor guy
I would love to hear his historically accurate take on Robin Hood, with all the romance and mythology stripped away.
I'd say throw the man a rope, but we'd probably end up with a video on the history of rope making.
This took the butterfly effect to the extreme. A few hundred years ago some guy made a fanfic about the scotronomicon and a few hundred years later some random guy is going insane wondering how someone lived 89 years before he was born
When people say "I've done my own research", this is the level you have to go to to over turn the experts
If they do this level of research, they ARE the expert. Grey is the world’s foremost expert in Tiffanys, there is no doubt in my mind
When you said: "This script is so long. Is anyone still here?" I nodded and said yes, then forgot you can't see nor hear me.
I don't know how to feel about that.
How could anyone leave such a fantastic story. I had to watch it a second times right after finishing just to make sure I captured all the fun.
Me as well.
Online work really did a number on us, huh?
Love it when I read the comment section and someone refers to a section of the video at the same time that part is playing
@Drizzle I did the exact same thing :D
"...provided nothing of value and drained many hours of my sadly finite life."
CGP Grey is one of the people who deserve to be made immortal.
I'm not sure if that would be a blessing or a curse for him. :p
The only problem with immortality is that the human mind really isn't equipped to comprehend its implications. Even our sun has a finite lifespan, and we can't live without it. What happens when the sun goes red giant, possibly incinerating the earth (and definitely making it uninhabitable) in the process? I'm not sure he would want to make that a video topic, though; it sounds like he might find it depressing... but then, after making this video, maybe that wouldn't be an issue for him, given the line that has been quoted above.
@Alex Munz with an exit option.
For what purpose?
He does nothing important.
@@jacksonstarky8288 Well, even if we become Immortal, that doesn't mean we can't die. Let's say you become ageless and immune to disease. Let's also say you leave the house everyday for you're job, or on a walk. Eventually, probably within a thousand years you're going to trip and break you're neck. Or die in a car crash, or hell struck by lightning. When you're Immortal, the small percentage chance of dying by any of those things steadily increase until it eventually happens
Watched this with my fiancée. We're both PhD researchers and this was just perfect.
E
That's awesome! What's your PHD in?
That's sweet man
@@loganfaucher mine’s in autonomous vehicles and game theory. Hers is in clinical research and patient reported outcomes.
@@IsamBitar that's do cool
What an interesting rabbit hole to fall down in.
Yes
The pains of making a video about a topic that some people or even noone has made before.
I love your channel btw, your vids with merk are great
Fall down? CCP Grey swan dives into rabbit holes.
@@RIPToot Why?
I don’t think I ever actually understood how historians do research until watching Grey. Truly insightful and fascinating. Thanks for all you do to teach the world.
I still don't think I do but Mike Duncan does a great explanation of his process somewhere in his Revolutions podcast. I don't think I have ever seen someone else explain it.
we historians do have rules and methods, until we hit the decisive madness that is humanity. after that fact we write down is whatever that makes sense chronologically in a cause and effect relationship.
@@TheNord06 That sentence is very difficult to read.
@@Hallowed_Ground Well he's a historian, not an author, cut him some slack.
Also not native speaker, sorry guys.
It wasn't for nothing. It is a story about citation, erroneous historians, and your passion for knowledge! Thank you, CGPGrey. :3
It's not for nothing. It teaches a sense of the fragility of information. You can't read a description of the problems a fact check runs into and understand it in the level you can after this video
Still, though. It was for nothing
It‘s not for nothing. It teaches about research and how important it is to be accurate for a singly, small mistake might go down in history for hundreds of years.
Still, though, It was for nothing
Yes!! I teach a research class and will be using this video to show the frustrations that come from tracking sources.
Reading beef between historic writers is the most entertaining thing ever, I would have never knew about this EVER without you Grey
There once was a man named Hearne.
A studious man who wanted to learn.
With terrible sourcing,
and errors discoursing,
after 300 years he still makes people gurn.
Cut the studious out of the second line and it's perfect
Except for the last line don't know what to do with that
Bars
Spitting bars
@@magnumsmth For centuries he still makes us gurn
269 likes.
I learned absolutely nothing of importance for 20 minutes and loved every second of it. You and your team are a treasure and I look forward to the next meandering excursion into the Forest of All Knowledge, whether there's a destination or not.
This is another time for that old Ralpha Waldo Emerson quote:
"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me."
Whether or not we learned anything of importance, just how Grey went about finding that knowledge is very insightful about how our history is kept (and often how badly). This and the Staten island video have made me really think differently about written history and recorder knowledge in general.
I learned a lot. Trying can be video even if you fail and that could be successful.
Amen
Didn’t expect to see you here, great job on the 30th anniversary comic!
I learned that Alexander Pope came up with the phrase, damning with faint praise, so that's something.
As a student who doesn't have my life and finances in any semblance of order, it always warms my heart to hear Grey's insistence that students shouldn't contribute to his channel if they aren't financially stable. Thank you, Grey. Just a couple more years and I hope to join the Bonnie Bee Brigade. In the meantime, I'm watching and re-watching your videos.
Dear Sam I could not agree more. People like that are who inspire us to work towards the success and be rich enough to become patrons ourselves
if you are watching, you are contributing
There are a few channels this being one of them who I definitely plan on donating to when I am done school. It's amazing how much some UA-camrs do for students now.
Same
its no better as a museum assistant these tangents are soo easy to make
I did watch all the way to the end of the "Someone Dead Ruined My Life... Again." video because I felt a certain shared frustration. I've gotten a lot of laughs from your videos and appreciate all @CGPGrey has done to inform the world.
I feel like in 300 years some historian will look back, hopelessly researching some random topic, and find Grey commenting on Hearn and Pope, then spiral even further, seeing Grey as one of the great 21st century historians.
Revenge of the Grey
It's interesting how these ancient historians were probably exactly like Grey - hopelessly curious random ppl, and that's the same way he'll be seen. That's why I like your use of "21st century historian"
I was having this exact thought while watching... he is now a member of this long line of historians and archivists producing works that show the path back to other older works
I hope that UA-cam or some of its successors has ported forward these videos by then. Because by their mere existence it will be inferred to some future historian chasing down the same rabbit hole. And in that distant day in the future somebody will write a textbook saying how cgp grey is the most awesome historian of industrial / post-industrial America. And some poor school kid will have to sit around watching video after video of Grey's research that we presently do for fun.
I hope to remember grey as we remember Thomas Hearne, as a semi-crazy dude who loved random papers and just put stuff in cause why not
Hearne was so bad at his job that he literally would've done less harm if he just preserved all the stuff he hoarded and did absolutely nothing else? That's impressive, almost aspirational.
I knew a guy like that.
He was a government employee, and a horrible worker who screwed EVERYTHING up, especially when he was loaded, which was most of the time.
It was almost impossible to fire him at the time, so they kept getting promoted, to jobs were he did less and less, and ultimately was responsible for nothing.
The premise was, "if we can make him useless, it will be a huge improvement."
Reminds me of Arthur Dent.
@@bcubed72 Oh man, I want that job. Getting paid very well to do nothing is a dream. Getting promoted due to incompitance also a dream. Though, this makes sense assuming it is the US government. Our tax dollars at work. >.>;
Hearne was far from alone, and his practices and attitude persisted until at least the early 1900s. I have made a minor study of armour (the kind you wear) and quite a few of the most popular Victorian-era sources are, shall we say, hilariously wrong. I suspect that at least part of this is because, these days, we have much readier access to information than at any previous time in history. I am speaking of the free availability of public museums and libraries-of-record, not the Internet, although that too is a combined boon and curse. Many of the worst Victorian sources are tertiary sources (at best), which should underline for you Grey's insistence on primary sources in his research.
Really gives me hope, as I glance around at all the sh1t laying around my place
That was the most well-spoken, balanced, and inviting Patreon pitch I've ever heard.
If there's any research that needs funding, this is clearly it.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 what would humanity do if not find the true origin of Tiffany?
Yes, agree
It’s very yar.
02:58 I love how it says here that a blonde Tiffany is "practically unknown" but cgp always draws Tiffany as a blondie
Tiff is the type of girl to dye her hair.
As a Tiffany and a historian, these videos have been such a delight. I am sorry you felt alone in this research, but I am thankful and grateful for you and the work you do. I used your videos in my history classroom, and still enjoy watching them as I support others in their teaching endeavors. Thank you!
you ruined this poor mans life. you monster! get out a’here!
Have you by any chance read Terry Pratchett's delightful series of books about Tiffany Aching, witch-in-training? They're worth a read for the humour alone, but as a historian, you'd get a lot more out of the references and allusions that Pratchett, amateur historian and folklorist that he was, packed all his works with.
Grey wasn't completely alone... Tiffany was with him. She even sang about it.
"I think we're alone now..."
@Joel JinisKalpadikkal Rhakjellg is obviously joking, no worries 😉
I can almost picture Alexander Pope mocking Thomas in the afterlife about how he polluted history for the future generations, screaming "THIS GUY GETS IT" every time Grey critiques Hearne.
"Look at this scholar sent on a goose chase because SOMEONE couldn't fact check their work." Alexander Pope.
When he dissed dude right after he died, I suddenly had more respect for Drill music. Post mortem disrespect has been around a while.
I like the idea that pope just starts watching this whenever hearnes about
If nothing else, this video saves anyone else who ever finds Thomas Hearne as a source a lot of time.
@@chrishale5213What Alexander Pope did was the 18th century equivalent of putting coin sound effects over the names of every op who died.
There's something so cozy and _nostalgic_ to research someone that no one cares about by yourself, knowing that you are the only one that will ever have the experience, and to think about how you revived a person's memory from the dead for just a little bit longer.
I keep rewatching this from time to time. This and hexagons are the bestagons are my favorite grey videos for pure enjoyment factors.
I love the bestagons video.
Hexagons are the bestagons is a great video
I also love those 2, the bestagons are a religion now 😂, but Capt. Billop also deserves a place, it seemed Grey was going to use a oujia board to get an interview with Disoaway
Airport codes squad, where art thou?
hexagons are the bestagons
Main takeaway: The "Scotichchronicon" sounds like what you might use to conjure up an army of zombie Braveheart cosplayers.
Or something from D&D
It looks like it too
Or some eldrich Scotsman... im imagining Cthulhu in a kilt
This is an excellent idea
"Did you speak the exact words?"
"Look, maybe I didn't say every single little tiny syllable, no. But basically I said them, yeah." 😂
We all have our rabbit holes. You're not alone. Great video!
Hah lorl
You're right, but I wish mine were as varied and broad as Grey's! As it turns out, there exist only so many articles, books, and papers on the history of Taekwondo...
@@kinseylise8595 there is always a rabbit hole to go deeper in. the question is how deep is deep enough. Like you could dive in to the production of the sports equipment and who make them and why in that (exact) way.
just keep digging until you don't even know that the start was Taekwondo.
Not everyone, just people worth talking with.
How deep is your rabbit hole?
Whenever someone says, “do your own research” I’m going to show them this video.
To be fair, I've come across _so_ many people sealioning me that I might consider this fate sufficiently schadenfreudig.
@@fds7476 Schadenfreude?
@@saikgamingproductions
Ja.
@@fds7476 Sealioning?
@@thebiggestcauldron
Basically when your conversation partner spams you with demands to provide evidence for every little thing you state, and then demands evidence for _that_ evidence, in bad faith - not because he wants to get to the truth of a matter, but purely to annoy and then discredit you.
I have only just discovered this channel, watched this before the other Tiffany videos, and I am enjoying it so much I let out an exasperated cry at 16:30. Thanks, Hearne.
the drama is real, hearne reached through the ages to specifically troll Grey
Exactly! I have just discovered this channel, well not 'just' but about some 10 days ago, and felt as if I watched a thriller movie. Again revisiting this video!
As a librarian, this reminded me that work matters. Old dusty books that no one has touched in 50 years allow dedicated people like you to tell us about the past through incredible work, Grey. Thanks for being you.
And as someone who obsessively researches topics, this is also just really validating and enjoyable to watch.
Finally, I think you're actually modelling great dedicated research practice, and probably teaching thousands of people how to find sources!! ❤️❤️
Thank you for your work.
And I also love to research.
Agree with you on all points, brava! I love his content, am willing to wait for it, which he talked a bit about at the end. He is really grateful for his fanbase and patrons, wish I could give.
Thomas "The Chronological Order Hitman" Hearne.
Gotta say, one of the the funniest comments I’ve ever read. Love your channel
Please do more Marciano breakdowns I beg you
Basically a written chopping right 0_o
😭😭😭😂😂😂
This comment is absolutely legendary
"This path went absolutely nowhere, provided nothing of value, and drained many hours of my sadly finite life."
- An honest conclusion of every other phd thesis
I really do love videos like this, they show passion in a way people don’t get to see from creators all the time. Also thank you for telling us to take care of ourselves before taking care of you. Idk I guess I just needed to hear that
When the Necronomicon of Scotland is in a section of a library where the lights are incapable of turning on, you know it's a bad omen.
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
@@COLDCHEMICALpresents this is exactly the passage I thought of when he said the lights were out!!
I thought that was usual English humor about Schotland.
That book 1000% has a demon bound to it. I don't make the rules.
I'm still at the 4th book, but I miss those early humour
Knowing that there is a library that must be explored, at least in part, by flashlight (would that be torchlight in England?) brings so much joy to my life.
Kinda brings the idea of fantasy book libraries to life. I imagine Grey as an aging mage looking desperately for an obscure tomb that was though to be lost...I am realizing as I am writing this that I just described Gandalf. Grey is Gandalf.
Do *NOT* use *torches* in a library full of ancient tomes!
@@MajinOthinus You can't stop me!
*Burns down the library of Alexandria by accident*
right? like, all of those old books, all of that information! *nerd time*
@@MrWhangdoodles Gandalf the Grey.
It all comes together.
WHY, PLEASE WHY, GREY'S RESEARCH PROCESS IS EVEN MORE FASCINATING THAN THE ACTUAL VIDEO
I know. If I knew where to start, I’d like to go on my own maddening journey into the forest of all knowledge just to track down a footnote.
This. Exactly this.
Anyone can make a video. Not everyone can make a video about making a video.
Imagine someone creating a caricature of you and calling it WORMIUS. Hearne might wanna put some cold water on that huge burn.
Historiography is honestly just as interesting as the actual real history. To figure out how people of the past recorded history and what they got wrong is incredibly meta. Videos like this will always be appreciated.
It’s almost like the history version of zoomers going from playing Fallout 4 to playing Fallout 2. It really is fascinating
That is amazing. Do you have any suggestions of videos based around that. I'm fascinated now
@@anjetto1 seconded
@@artistwithouttalent thirded
and I'd say it's also very important. It's sort of a clean up mechanism for history, figure out what was actually true and not random bs is important if we want to truly understand the past.
The fact that you've actually made this video the most entertaining thing I've seen in weeks speaks volumes to how amazing of a storyteller you are.
Agreed. I loved listening to this.
This was my favourite video :D
This man just made me waste 20 minutes of my life on a story of how he went down way to many rabbit holes and I enjoyed every second of it!
@@softti4846 *too
And there is no such thing as way too many rabbit holes usually the more you dig the plentiful the bounty.
As a family historian, looking at records from the 1400s, 1500s and 1600s, and so often finding myself on a winding trail which leads me back to the beginning without solving any of the puzzles along the way, I can identify with this so much!
h o w
I felt like I was on the verge of dying of laughter for around 5 minutes straight at the beef between two writers from the 1600-1700s
Grey shouting in a high screechy voice: "WHEN WILL YOU LEARN, HEARNE, THAT YOUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES??"
Alexander Pope is rolling in his grave right now!
I love how grey pronounces “Scotichronicon” differently every time
sciencetes have foud that it is physically impussble to say it more that once the same way exept for those monks who wrote it
Skaw-ti-kraw-ni-kawn
The UA-cam gods are cruel. I left a near-identical comment over a day before yours and it received no attention, while yours is the second comment I see when clicking on the video. And I'm sure there was another before me, with an equally ill-fated, but identical comment.
@@icwatto reading your comment was painful
@@icwatto impussble
as a student, sometimes it's easy to forget the true meaning of "learning" and "pursuing knowledge" amidst such a rigid educational system. this video is a great reminder of what it really means to learn just for the sake of it. hopefully one day i find my own tiffany rabbit hole. great work grey :D
As someone writing my masters dissertation, it's now making me self conscious about all my sources I've used without really questioning where they got things from
Man, just be careful though. You don't want to have the tendency of falling into every rabbit hole there is. It's fun as hell, but exhausting. Know when it's enough and don't lose yourself.
(Speaking from experience)
This video explains Grey's obsession with immortality, it wouldn't be such a waste if his life wasn't finite 😂
"This book hasn't been checked out since 1995" -- I don't have the words to describe how that makes me feel, but it sure does make me feel it. Taking these treks through the forest of all knowledge would be that much more difficult in any other place, but then access to so much of written history is totally why you live in London, isn't it! :P
Never having been in a library without the Dewey Decimal system, I imagine myself looking for one book in that library and coming home with 27, and needing to find a castle wherein to hole up and read them all!
+
1995 was when they digitised the library system and stopped stamping the due date in the back of the book.
@@oliversissonphone6143 Plus, many more people may have read the book without checking it out.
No he moved to London mainly just because he felt like living abroad no really that's it.
I really enjoyed this video. I also think its incredibly important. Someone had to do this research and in the future you saved people time that also might come across the poem.
Fifty years from now:
"SO MY ONLY SOURCE... OF THIS ENTIRE TIFFANY A-N-Y THING... WAS THIS WEIRD VIDEO ON THIS ANTIQUATED WEBSITE"...
I gotta be honest. I don't know if anyone "had" to do any of this. But I'm glad he did
1kth like!
And there's more evidence about how unreliable a source Thomas Hearne was. That will definitely come up again.
Yep, in the next 200 years, there would've been about...3 people who would stuck on this poem if not for him.
The *SASS* of Alexander Pope is the most amazing thing ever. Roasting dudes even after they're dead
If he were alive today he could be a rapper
I think that's called "cremation"
Announcer: Thomas Hearne is dead
Announcer: BUT WAIT HERE COMES CGP GREY FROM THE TOP ROPE
@@DuranmanX If Hearne was alive he'd run a drama channel with a cartoon avatar
Alexander Pope is my spirit animal. My life is surrounded by a plague of Hearnes.
I understand your immense frustration, but I absolutely love this. The explination of your research process and the things you find along the way are honestly just as interesting as the final videos you make. Thank you for taking the time to making a video for this rant, totally would watch more of these.
Someone in 100 years is going to fall down this same rabbit hole snd be extremely happy that this video exists. Your work is never wasted grey!
no one cared for 300 years prior to this (thus no one fact and source checking this poem), so I doubt that with today's sped up generation, and especially ones that follow, anyone will care about little things like this in 100+ years.
@@csanadhorvath you're fun at parties aren't you
Unfortunately, they will only find this video after finding the truth themselves.
@@csanadhorvath Party pooper. -_-
@@csanadhorvath you underestimate the stupidity of the human race
The fact that Grey was actually able to track all this down is insane.
You can also leave out the words "The fact that was actually able to track all this down" and it's also true, by now.
@@dmpmomof3
1) I'm not saying Seven's writing is wrong
2) I did mean "by now", that was not a goodbye. Or was that comma superfluous? I can't always tell in English.
@@vaclav_fejt Given that one of the books in question is the Scotichronicon, I can totally believe that.
To me, a lot of the fascination stems from being able to convey it all back to an audience cohesively.
I have no problem following rabbit trails all day; thanks, Wikipedia! Realizing I'm on a rabbit trail, orienting myself, document where I am, where I've been, and where I need to go are all incredibly difficult for me.
This was glorious. The animator deserves a bonus for the incredible range of emotions they can express through stick figures. And yes, I'm one of those people who loves seeing behind the scenes so thank you for the hilarious to us (but agonizing for you) details of the journey.
+
3:45 "I opened it, and out fell an old map" A wonderful start to an adventure!
This demonstrates that I don't need to do a big thing to be remembered. I just need to get my writings in an archive and Grey will eventually stumbles upon those in some very specific research
Put something in publication with wrong details. You'll be remembered for centuries
I love how he explicitly mentioned
“STUDENTS DO NOT PAY”
It feels very… Honorable to guide people towards their best interests even if that means not funding more of your work.
Don't worry Grey, something of value DID come out of your journey. We got this fantastic video and a hilarious mini story of two writers feuding.
Very true
Agreed!
The real Tiffany was the friends we made along the way
Let's be honest, if Alex pope watched this video today he'd probably be laughing his ass off at Hearne continuing to fail 300+ years later.
Honestly smh
truly 😭
Personaly i have watched the video 10 times becouse it is super funn to listen to grey spiral into madnes
True
Best comment ever!!!
I busted out laughing 😂😂😂😂
watching the Hearne/Pope thing feels like that feeling when you read a 300 comment argument between 2 strangers that happened 10 years ago on some music video you found by chance
*sheepishly raises hand* Guilty. I literally just did this earlier today. I cut myself off way later than I should have, time-wasted wise, yet still before I saw the final comment in the chain.
Perfect modern comparison.
like that argument under the paper mario sticker star soundtrack?
@@bryanp9878 which track
This video explaining the "side-trails" ended up being just as interesting as the original project. Awesome video. Your hard work is appreciated
One of my favorite things is accidentally finding beef between two academics in the form of writing that is ultra-professional.
When I was trying to find a citation for a single sentence in a paper that I was writing, I found beef between two scientists about phylocode that had been going back for THIRTY YEARS in PEER REVIEWED JOURNALS. I spent a week reading more into it and ended up not even using anything related to my original idea in my final paper.
...who were the scientists?!
@@hindenburg2006 it’s about phylocode. The main ones that I was referencing were Dr. Kevin de Quieroz and the late Dr. Norman Platnick.
@@HelloIAmJo thanks! I now have some nerding to do😊
I feel you :-)
If you want a computer science beef, specifically in the field of random number generators, there's a minor feud between Melissa O'Neill and Sebastiano Vigna where they argue *a bit* about whose random number generator is better, and it even ends up with arguments in GitHub repositories in the form of issues raised with the code, where one of them complains that the other's random number generator is being used in fairly popular open source libraries.
I honestly want you to make more of these "AYO ALL THE PROBLEMS AND SIDE PATHS I ENCOUNTERED WHILE MAKING THE TIFFANY VIDEO" videos. They're so much fun for nerds like us
0:57 The way Grey says "Don't go looking" is filled with such tired agony, you just know how many hours he has lost because he went looking.
Those lost hours give us hope that our own "quests" can be fruitful.
That is called a rabbit hole
The point I broke out laughing is when he got to the Scotichronicon. Which just sounds like a tome used to summon kilted zombies.
OK, now I'm at the point where he finally found a historian he could call and talk about this all over coffee with, only to realize he's been dead for over 125 years. Amazing.
it (Actually) summons kilted elder gods from beyond time and space. :)
@@jmlkinc Maybe Grey should try using the book to summon his zombie.
As an archivist, this delve into old records and libraries has really brightened my day. More of these, please, Grey! :)
Are you an antiquarian?
/Hoarder
As a layman, I bloody love videos like this.
We are enjoying his suffering :D Though I'm sure he gets something out of unearthing this hidden information to the public.
You are a ridiculously tenacious researcher, and I, for one, appreciate all your efforts.
Grey's videos often give me this existential terror of the sheer weight of all human knowledge that no person alive has given a second thought to. How many books and letters and poems have been lost to time. How many names and records and deeds have been lost or are about to be lost to a coffee spill or termites or mold.
Christ, we don't even have a complete history of the big picture stuff if you go back more than 1000 years.
And even less than that if we leave the Euroasian land mass
The feeling gets less scary the older you get. Just learn what you are easily able to, no one can know anything else.
The great leap forward.
Yes
In addition to losing pieces, its pretty fked how some ppl deliberately cut information out of books, or just don’t care about preserving knowledge. Like id be so pissed to be those yr 1300 monks after writing my version of the complete history of the universe for some dude in the 1700s to edit and cut how he saw fit.
man from 1700s: "learning more about this poem is a waste of time"
grey: "better go deeper"
🤭
He is a man of 'Deeper Penetration'
Your efforts were no waste of time, they were _historical scholarship!_ Which is always endless hours resulting in one tiny but *TRUE* thing being added to our collective knowledge.
You have done real work here, and I thank you for it. 🙏
Absolutely. I also learned Alexander Pope was a murderer with words, and Thomas Hearne is rolling around in his grave as we speak.
Still the dedication Grey puts in is astounding
Returned to our knowledge for a brief moment before misquoted or lost into obscurity until at some point in the future another grey could dig it up again
This is honestly one of my favorite videos. As someone who has fallen down more rabbit holes than I care to think about, I really appreciate the effort you put into your work. Thank you for all you do.
In the RPG " Call of Cthulhu" one of the great dangers was going insane researching by reading ancient tomes, and here is a video of it happening. Great video an pretty fascinating, and thank you for the effort put in this.