Sorry to sound hysterical, but as an actual history buff I hate these fucking memes. The only reason you’d prefer “history as a hobby” is if you’re trying to prove some vague point through cherrypicking historical fact.
Maybe I’m jaded because I know way too many people (I was one of them) who claimed to be “into history” but all they ever wanted to talk about was a few random factoids about World War 2 battles.
I mean, history in school (as in not college, middle and high school) was completely shit tho no? Pure propaganda, no material analysis etc. I had it better than most westerners because I’m from a periphery country and had some (lib) lefty teachers. But still, I much preferred studying history “as a hobby” than what we had to study in school.
If I wanted to know the real history of oppressed peoples, their history of struggle, revolution and successes, I had to learn that on my own.
Otherwise all I’d know about history was that some aristocratic people fucked off to some place, genocided the natives and enslaved a whole continent to compensate for the lack of workers. And that is all done and dusted and has no impact on modern life.
Ah and a couple of “interesting” cases of revolts that ended in nothing and were crushed. With a mixed bag of them actually being revolts of oppressors and not oppressed.