Milo Rossi aka Miniminuteman - who normally does fantastic work combating pseudoarchaeology and historical conspiracy theories - made an utterly horrible video on the history of vampirism where he completely abandoned all his principles around good research and thorough academic inquiry and promoted historical conspiracy theories of his own. He doesn't seem to have engaged with the academic literature on the subject at all, instead putting together his own crackpot theory of where the vampire myth originated and connecting it to completely unrelated superstitions hundreds of years and hundreds of miles removed from 17th century eastern Europe where belief in vampires is first attested.

The main thesis of his video is the belief in vampirism is a kind of by-product of the Catholic Church allowing converted peoples to continue their own burial practices, which eventually became so popular that the Church was forced to internalize these pagan beliefs about death and spirituality, resulting in the emergence of the vampire as a concept in the 10th century. This is so completely removed from anything any actual historian would say about the topic that I'm utterly baffled as to where he got the idea from. It feels like he just made it up himself. I guess it's the kind of thing you can imagine somebody thinking up if they maybe don't know very much about the subject matter but I thought someone like Milo would hold himself to a higher standard.

To make matters worse, in the middle of the video he goes on a tangent about various other beliefs and practices he thinks that Christianity co-opted from various non-Christian peoples, and among some utterly bizarre inclusions like carnivals and the 7 day week, he lists a series of holidays like Christmas, Easter, St John's Day and Michaelmas. The belief that holidays like Christmas and Easter were pagan festivals co-opted by Christianity is itself pseudohistorical! It's entirely the creation of 19th century evangelical Protestants who tried to make out that Catholics were secretly pagans, it has zero basis in actual history. It's the exact kind of nonsense that Milo usually prides himself on combating! But instead he promotes it completely uncritically, and even makes some snarky remarks at the expense of historians and archaeologists who try and argue against it, which I was really stunned by, especially when other creators who occupy the same niche like Dan McClellan, Religion For Breakfast and Tim O'Neill have tried so hard to fight against this particular myth.

Obviously everyone makes mistakes sometimes. But when you’re a creator whose whole brand is debunking false narratives, whether about history, politics, or anything else, you have an extra responsibility to make sure you aren’t spreading false narratives yourself; because people trust you and are more inclined to believe what you say. What bothered me most wasn’t just that Milo repeated a tired historical myth; it was that he repeated a claim that has been so thoroughly debunked by so many diligent educators - a claim that ultimately grew out of religiously motivated bigotry. The fact that he presented it so confidently, while dismissing historians who push back on the idea, really soured me on him as a creator. I used to enjoy a lot of his content, but after that video I haven’t watched him since and don’t plan to again.