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offtopic:blaming_thande

Blaming Thande

Blaming Thande is an AH.com idiosyncrasy which has been elevated to the status of:

  • An international sport
  • A religion (see: Thandislam)

Thande himself is a relatively inoffensive member from Yorkshire (citation needed) and thus this practice of blaming him for all the ills of the world is somewhat counter-intuitive.


Origins

There are two competing theories for the origin of the practice of Blaming Thande, commonly known as the Interesting One and the Real One.


a.) The Interesting One

Originally created by Satyrane and summarised by the following essay:

Thande-blaming has been a national pastime in England for centuries. The earliest recorded incidence of Thande-blaming has been hesitantly dated to the 16th century, in the marginalia of the Macclesfield Psalter (now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge): “Thyffe pleafes me notte. Itt ys Thandys fawlte.” Thande-blaming was certainly a popular sport in Elizabethan England, and figures heavily in popular literature of the time. The 1603 'bad' quarto of Hamlet, for example, records Laertes' dying words thus: ……………………………………..here I lie, Never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd: I can no more: Thande! Thande is to blame. Jacobean Thande-blaming was a drunken and often violent pass-time, on which extensive bets were sometimes made, and it was banned by Cromwell as a 'Papist practice leading to decadence and unholy thought'. (Incidentally, Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost is often read as a closet Thande-blamer.) Underground “blame-easies” quickly sprang up, and the practice survived well into the eighteenth century, when the early Romantics brought it back into the public eye by controversially embracing the 'blame-Thande' ethos. The quantities of blame attached to Thande in this period were frankly excessive, even by modern standards, and were so much decried in polite society that Byron was forced to re-write the early draft of Manfred, in which Thande kills Manfred by stealth. By the nineteenth century, however, the practice had been thoroughly incorporated into polite society. Even Queen Victoria gave it her own spin by simply declaring Thande 'not amusing'. This period was really the zenith of Thande-blaming in Great Britain, and set the standard for future 'blamers (as they came to me known). W.G. Grace was the champion of Victorian 'blamers, and is justly regarded as the father of the modern profession. Thande-blaming today is, sadly, a neglected area of British culture. Woeful underfunding of modern blame societies and the advent of digital e-blaming have taken their toll, and 'blamers are now more active in the US, Canada and Australia than in the UK. Nonetheless a revival is underway, and new pockets of Thande-blaming are springing up all over the country (notably in Oxford, Reading, London and Cheshire). It surely cannot be too much to hope that blaming Thande will one day regain its place as the prince of British hobbies.

The Interesting One has gained increasing favour due to its recognition by influential members such as Doctor What and Thermopylae.


b.) The Real One

The true origin of Blaming Thande originates in a series of typically pointless polls. Thande unwisely and sarcastically suggested a poll question he had read in Private Eye's spoof of the 2001 UK Census form: “How many toilets are there in your house? Ten to twenty, more than thirty, or none?”

DMA then of course actually created this poll, but included the option 'Blame Thande for this poll'; Hermanubis found this option so amusing that he included it in his next poll, Inspiring many other members to include this option in their polls as well.

Where did the 'Blame Thande' meme come from ?


Effects on AH.com culture

As well as being a sitting on the fence option for polls (summarised as: Poll question? Yes; No; or Thande?), Blame Thande is now used as a means of explaining any given disaster, particularly those involving South Korea and/or animal rampages. However, as of 2014, the use of “Blame Thande” has largely been superceded in favour of blaming Obama.

Blame Thande has also spread outside AH.com, notably to the Michigan Militia website.

Thande's own views on all of this are unknown.


In AH.com Fiction

Thande-blaming, which became somewhat passé by late 2007, underwent a renaissance with its incorporation into Banhammer 40K, as the slogan “Blame for the Blame God! Polls for Thande!”

There was also an episode of AH.com The Series titled “BLAME THANDE”.


offtopic/blaming_thande.txt · Last modified: 2019/03/29 15:13 by 127.0.0.1

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