Are you a Gaul unhappy with Roman armies invading your land? A woebegotten Persian who just got whooped by 300 svelte Spartans? Need somewhere to complain?
If so — and assuming you have a time machine — then there’s a subreddit for that.
Ancient World Problems, whose title is a play on the popular meme and subreddit “first world problems,” is a place for redditors to post imagined issues in the daily lives of historical figures, big or small.
“Help!” read one recent post by redditor Kills Zombies. “Wife looked behind her and turned into pillar of salt. Marriage has taken a turn for the worse.”
“Found a huge wooden horse outside the city gate,” read another, this one by hottrojan11. “Gods, this is gonna look so good on the city square ^_^”
The subforum, only a month old, has expanded rapidly, gathering more than 2,500 subscribers since it was created.
The idea for the forum came from Byran Cochrane, or somabc on Reddit. He’s a big fan of the first world problems forum and had an “a ha!” moment one night before going to bed. The next morning, the subreddit was born.
It began getting traffic immediately, with more than 20 threads by the end of its first day.
“I’m very surprised by the growth,” Cochrane, who lives in London, wrote in a message to the Daily Dot. “I never expected it to takeoff other than as a place my friends and I can make some (bad?) jokes.”
As for Cochrane’s favorite post?
That’s this reference to the movie Star Wars: “Some asshole claiming to be my dad just cut off my hand with a fucking laser. WTF?” (If you don’t get it, just remember: the film is based not just in a land far, far away, but also a long time ago.)
But another moderator, brass__monkey, is partial to a different Ancient World Problem, a post by redditor AnthonyRZA:
That problem? “I am a woman.”
That, Cochrane, observes is not just funny. It’s also “educational and a timeless reminder of the importance of feminism.”
And it’s also a perfect example of the level of depth redditors can create in some of the most unexpected corners of the site.