Went to Pompeii and noticed something weird about the graffiti

I drove a load down to Naples last month and spent a day at Pompeii, and what stuck with me wasn't the villas or the plaster casts, it was the actual graffiti scratched into walls, like someone wrote a love note in 79 AD and it's still there. Has anyone else seen the political slogans painted on the election walls, and did you wonder if they ever got angry about fake news back then too?

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val1722mo ago

Did they argue about politics the same way we do now?

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wyatt_shah852mo ago

Honestly, I see it pretty different. The "same way" part throws me off because the whole game has changed. Back then, you argued with your neighbor or your cousin over dinner, and the fight ended when someone got tired or the food ran out. Now it's this endless online thing where everyone is performing for an audience, and the algorithm feeds you worse and worse takes to keep you angry. There was no doomscrolling in the 70s, no way to find the one guy in Ohio who agrees with your weirdest opinion and then just feed off each other. The core feelings might be the same, but the how and the why feels totally alien to me. Your mileage may vary, but I think we're fighting ghosts now, not people.

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