Why does everyone usually imagine people of the past as being humorless and always serious? Were they?

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This is from the early 18th century.

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Smiling in photos/for paintings was an uncommon practice in days of old, which is why people think everyone was serious back then

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Classic. Love that man.

Love this guy

This was actually serious, but c'mon. How could they NOT think people would make fun of this?

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This is very difficult to say while keeping a straight face. I wonder who can, because indeed it is hard.

" ", you say, while grinning like Voltaire did. " ", it is its name. But then, thinking of " ", you think about all the Emperors who were excommunicated. You think about all those who tried to fuck with the pope. You think about the wars of religion and how many of them ended up as protestant heretics.

But then, the funniest is coming: " ". Yes, now, you cannot contain your laughter. " ", it is called despite the fact that this " " body is standing on Germania, a land so harsh and poor that the Legions of Rome refused to set foot on it. A germanic and barbaric people, yes, but still calling themselves " ".

And now, here is the end of the fun: " ". Now you fell on the ground, laughing so hard that you cannot breathe." " , a body made of dozens of petty duchies and counties, all fighting for themselves, giving strange names to their position, full of Grand-Dukes or Archdukes." "who will stay between Poland and France, while the great powers of Europe will create colonies all around the world.

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ALL THE TIME

fpbp

Lads

>Why does everyone usually imagine people of the past as being humorless and always serious? Were they?
They certainly were rational, intelligent, and far more goal-oriented/occupied.
Human intellect hasn't increased in the last thousands of years, now that we have so many humans, which have little purpose individually, are directionless, and have a lot of free time on their hands, we'll have a lot more idiots and bored people walking around, especially on the internet, which is why we focus on petty things and topics nowadays that would be seen as a waste of time or outright stupid in the past.

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What you said isn't true. Literacy rates have increased dramatically, everybody and their grandma has a college or trade degree, the internet and all the information on it exists and is readily there for people to use. People have gotten dramatically smarter compared to 200 years ago.

He said rational and intelligent, not knowledgable

angry mobs and societal instability were just as if not more common back then.

Well idiots always have been a majority

Much like regular life

I imagine Louis the sun king was a grade A troll irl

There was a big change in the frequency of depiction (once in a lifetime portrait of an important person versus everyone taking selfies every four hours), in the idea of seriousness (to an extent moderns are expected to be goofier than any previous generation), and the general accessibility of tragedy (infant mortality alone illustrates this).

Ae you familiar with the research arguing that we know more things but can do less, or that Victorians were more clever?