Swear to tell the truth about history.
During a TED talk in 2011, Eli Pariser coined the phrase “online filter bubble”. Eli was one of the first to coin this phrase which describes the optimization and personalization of our online experience. The “online filter bubble” is really difficult to escape but meeting new people means learning about their online content, music tastes and digital authors in their feed. That was the experience that I had in discovering the digital author James Fell, better known as the “Sweary Historian’’. I’d like to say a big thank you to my classmate Dr. Pamela Morris for suggesting that we analyze James’ work for our Leap 2 assignment. Dr. Morris was instrumental in making this experience fun and she is a steadfast human being with a heart of gold! This short reflection will illustrate our creative process and the experiences we had in studying the “Sweary Historian”.
Speaking of a heart of gold, our digital author James Fell was a person that was outside of my digital information sphere before this project and someone I probably would have overlooked if I somehow came across his two published books on my own. I would have overlooked James’ writings about historical events because of his unorthodox approach to storytelling — he uses a lot of swear words. I take zero issue with this but hey, I’m raising a teen and a pre-teen right now so I kind of need to filter cuss words often in my home! Swearing was something I was not used to when reading and learning about historical events. Plus I realized that I mainly trust and grant authority to historians with PhD’s or publishers from established institutions like the Smithsonian. Heck, I would even defer to legacy television programming on PBS or the History Channel before I scrolled through social media to learn about world history.
Yet despite my skepticism, several breakthrough moments occurred shortly after learning about James. Pamela set up a phone interview with James and I listened in. James helped me to see past my own assumptions about who could generally qualify as a historian. After all, James does hold a master’s degree in military history and guess what — he’s brutally honest about his life story! That to me meant he could be trusted and I gave him the benefit of the doubt after fact checking some of his daily emails titled “on this day in history”.
I realized that James knew himself so well and was able to convey a confidence about his work and life’s purpose to educate people about the awful things that humans have done so that we don’t repeat them. He does so boldly and often swears for emphasis, impact and urgency. He uses it as a technique to draw readers in and can help increase reading comprehension through the shock value in the language. I found myself laughing at many of his swears because he often says what I’m thinking when it comes to a historical or political figure that I just fundamentally disagree with. Let’s just say that James Fell reminds me of a good friend when we talk during happy hour about politicians we don’t like. James Fell stands for what he believes in, serves as an ally for people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. He’s won me over because of his transparency, his courage to denounce hate groups, and his willingness to take harsh criticism.
Pamela and I felt like we did our very best to produce a concise video project but we both wish we could have included more content. James Fell in his own words added even more value! We hope that our digital audience will appreciate listening to our interview with James along with our video reflection. We learned that to create is to be seen and that trying to meet the parameters actually does benefit the entire creative project. (Hobbs, 2017).
Personally, I learned to be open to reading history from a variety of vetted sources, even an author that uses profanity. It’s common for me to tolerate swearing in a comedy standup so why not swear words when reading about world history? I have a newfound appreciation for authentic voices and foul language in my history lessons. My expanded definitions of credibility as applied to digital authors has certainly allowed me to escape my own digital filter bubble.
REFERENCES
Amazon. (n.d.). James Fell Amazon Bio. https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B08W2NYDGJ/about
Fell, J. (2023, February 27). Personal Interview.
Fell, J. (2023) Sweary History with James Fell. Substack about. https://jamesfell.substack.com/about
Fell, J. (2023) James Fell Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/bodyforwife/
Fell, J. (2022) Sweary history with James Fell. https://jamesfell.com/
Fell, J. (2022) swearyhistorian TikTok page. https://www.tiktok.com/@swearyhistorian?lang=en
Fell, J. (2022) @BodyForWife Twitter page. https://twitter.com/BodyForWife
Fell, J. (2022) ADHD and creativity: A superpower with kryptonite. TEDxTirguMures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zb0RcnE5S8
Fell, J. (2022) James Fell’s 2022 Book Launch Party. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkqEQRRWb4o
Fell, J. (n.d.) James Fell. https://bodyforwife.com
Fell, J. (2022) On this day in history: March 5 De-Stalinization.
Hobbs, R. (2017). Create to learn: introduction to digital literacy. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Lefebvre, M. (2019) The holy shit moment and other sudden insights with James Fell.
MacMillian (n.d.) James Fell About the Author. https://us.macmillan.com/author/jamesfell
Short, D. (2022, September 16) Calgary author launches second volume of historical short stories. Calgary Herald. https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/calgary-author-launches-second-volume-of-historical-short-stories
Pariser, E. (2011) Beware of online filter bubbles.
