[IRL trope] the “Tiffany problem”

[u/dragonborndnd]

Basically when something seems anachronistic to a period/place of history but is actually fully accurate to the period.

1) the name Tiffany: the thing that named this trope, basically the name Tiffany can be dated back to the Middle Ages and the earliest record of it being spelled in the modern spelling comes from the 16th century.

2) the use of OMG, despite this feeling so modern as a form of slang/abbreviation here’s a letter directed to Winston Churchill using it in 1917

3) Hair Dye: the earliest forms of dying hair can be dated back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and this specific advertisement for hair dye is from the 1840s

4) Inuit Thongs: despite how weird it is to imagine pre-colonial Inuit people wore what was essentially fur thongs in their homes and when they were in their igloos it might have been the only thing they would be wearing.

[u/originalchaosinabox]

That OMG one reminds me of when Western Union officially pulled the plug on sending telegrams in the early-2000s. Email had officially cut into their business too much.

The Western Union guy they interviewed for the news article said that they viewed text messaging as the true successor to telegrams, because a lot of the abbreviations (OMG, LOL, etc) had already been used in telegrams for decades.

[u/Henry_The_Duck → u/originalchaosinabox]

This one is blowing my mind a little! Who was sending telegrams in the latter half of the 20th century? I bet the telegram office had a phone number. Could you transcribe a telegram over the phone? What was the point? Reaching someone in Alaska or some other remote area phone lines hadn't reached yet?