#I just have been contaminated with enough STEM education that I take this shit personally lol

[obstinatecondolement]

Being kinda bitchy about the "math sucks" trope cw

I was watching a video the other day where the YouTuber who made it was recreating and using various skincare products from a 19th century book aimed at people who ran salons and it was all very "For science!" in a pretty shallow way that didn't betray much understanding of the scientific method, which, yeah, sure. I don't have a problem with that in and of itself, I guess. Pretty standard as these things go.

But then at one point she was talking about how she was thirding the recipe, because she didn't want to end up with vast amounts of one of the products, and she tried to work out what a third of a half was in her head (with animated equations overlaid around her puzzled face in post) and eventually she looked it up on her phone. And like... girl. It's a 1/6th. This is primary school stuff. And even if you don't know that you multiply the numerator by the numerator and the denominator by the denominator... have you ever cut a pizza?

If you are going to invoke Science™ and put on period safety goggles and a lab coat for the aesthetic, then maybe don't meme about how Math Is Hard? Because that makes you look ridiculous?

I'm not trying to shame anyone who finds basic mathematics hard! It's something a lot of people struggle with and it's not a moral failing to be bad at something.

But... it's just... it's so fucking tedious to me how "math is hard" is such a common Funnie Joak in internet circles that is supposed to be universally relatable. We all make a lot of hay out of the people who bitch and moan that "maybe the curtains were just blue!" and call them out for celebrating their pride in their own willful ignorance, but at the same time it's apparently completely acceptable to assume that the kind of arithmetic that children under 12 are expected to master is so obviously beyond even the keenest of intellects and just generally not worth knowing.

And this paired with the science drag is like... Idk, it seems very tacky to me? It's so fucking disrespectful to in the same breath that you say "Yay science!" say "Boo math!" Why are people so obsessed with the shallow aesthetics of Hollywood science while being so openly disdainful of like... even the most simple of tools that scientists use?

And this is leaving aside the... very dubiously scientific approach taken in this video. Which, I don't know, I guess that's fine. I'm not expecting a YouTuber to do a double blind peer reviewed study about the efficacy of Victorian skincare. The fact that she consulted modern chemists to make sure she wasn't doing anything dangerous and cautioned her audience not to try to recreate the things she'd made without taking the same precautions is like... something. I guess. But... ugh.

Is this what humanities people feel about Dark Academia aesthetic moodboards?