:<3:
My hobby leads to some interesting discussions with uninformed laypeople. I'm an historical re-enactor, I re-create aspects of the European Middle Ages. Quite often, people assume that what they see in movies is a perfectly accurate portrayal of history.
This includes things like:
*I should be wearing a horned helmet because I'm a Norse ('Viking') re-enactor
*It's fundamentally wrong to drink white wine at a medieval feast, because they only had red wine in those days
*Everyone in the old days was stupid and filthy, and the evil church conspired to keep everyone that way for control
*Western Martial Arts didn't exist; European historical combat is all about brute force and flailing a sword around until you hit something
*Old Europe was terrible because everyone thought the world was flat until Columbus (HAH!), and women had no freedom or independence or power
I don't mind people thinking these things. It's completely understandable. But what I do mind is that they keep insisting they're right, even after I explain what it was really like, and point out that I'm involved in two organisations that research and re-create this stuff, and that I've studied it at university and in my own time.