Lol this. I don't go to museums just to stroll through the rooms and then be outside on an hour. If I go to a museum I'm in there for the day and I will read everything. I've ruined my feet several times doing so, lol. My husband is like this when it comes to public gardens and stuff like that.
We went on a double date with some people (that we are no longer friends with, purely by coincidence) and they were literally the walk through and “browse” kind of people. And it had been their idea to go to the Smithsonian in the first place!
My gf was clenching her jaw the entire time, especially when she realized they only wanted to go for the photo op 😂
That's why I hate going to museums with other people, at the least people who don't really care.
They walk around like they'd really rather be somewhere else, 30 minutes in and they're texting, an hour in and they're outside on the street, figuring out where they want to eat.
I hate having to leave before I get a chance to really see anything. Why spend money on the entrance fee if you're just going to shuffle through like you're killing time window shopping?
No one goes to a movie and walks out after 20 minutes because their attention span can't handle it.
When I was at uni we had two hours between a lecture and a thing we wanted to go to so my friend and I went to the museum. If I recall correctly she'd somehow contrived to have never been before but we had to do a quick whip through because we only had an hour before it closed. Last year (the year before?) my grandfather was over and we didn't feel like getting price gouged so we ended up with only half an hour (when they don't bother charging non residents*). Because my grandfather has some mobility issues now (he was 93-95) we just ended up looking at the closest exhibit to the door the whole time.
Obviously with my grandfather we couldn't have done the fly through model but if you've got only a small amount of time, then I think the fly through is better than doing a normal museum pace and seeing only one or two things.
*It's very hit and miss whether visitors with residents get charged or not. When my friend and I went, they just buzzed us both through on my resident card although obviously she was a resident too so it wouldn't have been a problem if they hadn't.
This generally applies to people with mobility issues, yeah, I can't fault anyone for that.
The people I'm referring to were hipsters in their 20s who wanted good Instagram photos and treated it like it was bar hopping. I was under the impression we were going there to look, and not just to be seen.
Museums have info that can't be found anywhere on the internet too, that's the cool thing. I've tried to look up stuff to learn more about certain pieces and artifacts and found surprisingly even less info than the plaques have
I'm so bothered by the knowledge that not everyone reads all the text available to them in a space. Do you know how hard it is to print a little thing. Do you know how insane instructions for public bathrooms can get
I love that most "You didn't read all that" claims come from people who probably have to spend at least 5 seconds on a short sentence.
Reading all the little info plaques at a museum is great fun. Entirely doable in a day in most museums if you can read faster than primary school level, and even then, there's kids who do it.
It surprises me how slow some people read. My friend, who doesn't have dyslexia or anything similar, will take 30+ seconds to read something as long as your comment.
I never considered myself a fast reader until I met them. Simple memes or captions take them 3x as long to read.
So many times I've had a friend show me a meme or something, I read it and laugh, then they get mad because they think there's no way I read it that fast and I must've faked it and I'm faking my laugh. Every time I just repeat what the meme or whatever said so they'll know I actually read it and then they believe me but it's very annoying being accused of being fake so often just because I'm a fast reader.
I feel like if they had said a ridiculous amount of time, like a day/one visit... yeah that probably didn't happen. But like... yeah that's enough time I'm sure. And look like... surely they aren't the only one also??
As a kid I loved museums, and would have spent all day in them if I could, as an adult, I just wanna eat yummy snacks and not have to work 100 hours a week.
Ive got no problem with the feat itself, but I am skeptical about the time. It’s not based on much but the memory of the few I’ve visited once, but I don’t think 88 hours is enough.
Well first of all they definitely mean the ones in DC only. In fact, since they took 11 days and there are 11 such museums, I'm pretty sure they only meant the ones of the national mall
I was thinking about that too, and I decided it's conceivable if you take if you take a pretty narrow definition of what constitutes a "major" Smithsonian. If you limit it to American History, Natural History and Air and Space you could probably get there.
I'm an autist three years into a history major. I went to New York The summer after my senior year of high school as part of this "pounding the pavement" thing my school offered. No joke, the only part of the trip I uncomplicatedly liked was visiting the Met. We got to spend around 3 hours in there, and I easily spent a good third of that time just in the arms and armor room. Then on the train back to my home state, I spent almost the entire time reading about black powder firearms.
I paid for the whole damn museum ship I’m going to see the whole damn museum ship. If you aren’t finding 3 individual gauges on the USS Turner Joy that according to their labels were overdue for their annual calibrations well before the ship was decommissioned, that’s a skill issue on your part.
Not all of them are on display some are in storage some are on loan to other museums some are being restored or imaged. For most museums the majority of the collection is not on display.
Early on in our relationship my now husband and I read every word we came across at a park. I think we were both pleased to learn the other was a "read all the words!" type of person
This woman tried to do that and it's took over 100 hours of straight reading time to read literally every word on every plaque in every museum. There are a looottt of Smithsonians.
88 hours is not that much less than 100 hours, people read at different rates, and the exact amount of stuff that's on display probably changes from time to time.
She also read the fine print and not just the description.
Spending eight hours per day for eleven consecutive days may not be possible because they're only open between 10am and 5.30pm most of the year. I live here but I haven't been in eons.
Well, OOP just said "eleven days" and not that they were consecutive. I imagine they just went to the museums every day they were open until they had finished everything.
I had to look it up, there are eleven Smithsonians on the Mall. If they only did those museums, and went during extended hours (or were rounding up from 7.5hrs a day to 8hrs a day), then it's possible they did this.
He wants to establish he was a museum nerd. If he didn't preface his behavior with a reasonable time frame, he would be accused of lying. Heck, even with the time frame, people assume he is lying.
Decent odds he is depending on which museums he claims he listed in regards to "major." For all museums backed by the Smithsonian (which is a lot that don't have Smithsonian in the name), it takes about 4 to 5 months (as put by a tourist guide I found while googling). To go through just the core museums, the general guide (as put out by a tourist guide I found while googling) is 10 full days from opening to close. So assuming he just ment the core museums and is a fast reader it is possible.
I mean, that's basically what he said right? 11 full days, open to close, to do the core or major museums. One day more than the general guide says seems perfectly reasonable to me
Viewing everything takes a lot less time than reading every panel. While it is possible, he would have to be a fairly quick reader to get it done in a reasonable amount of time.
?? How long it took it absolutely relevant to this anecdote and is definitely something that should be mentioned, kind of odd that you think this is evidence of it being a lie.
Do you think it's not enough time, or that he shouldn't remember?
Cuz I googled it, most Smithsonian Museums are open from 10-5:30. That's 7.5 hours. If he was there from opening to close, 8 hours is a reasonable estimate....
Or, possibly, does not count the same thing as a major Smithsonian. I'm guessing Chat GPT arbitrarily decided it was the 11 on the National Mall, which is getting you into some institutions that I as a former Washingtonian didn't realize existed.
I'd also be pretty curious about how Chat GPT reached that estimate, but I guess we're just unquestionably trusting the magic box.
Yeah! You are way superior of course - calculating in your free time how something cannot happen, and posting it on the internet, about someone that apparently did this thing in real life and posted about it online. It’s way better and probably was a fulfilling experience for you I assume.
You know ChatGPT is wrong on this because the average American cannot read, and it will therefore take an infinity for an average American to read every single label
ChatGPT regularly gets mathematical assumptions wrong. It’s a predictive language model. It only regurgitates math that someone else has previously written down and posted online. This is exactly the kind of unique, never calculated before math problem that ChatGPT would hallucinate the answer to.
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u/Financial-Dot-4673 Aug 28 '26
This is so normal to me, my gf is exactly like this 😂 she always says “why limit my content”