“In a thread on the internet there lived a netizen. Not a nasty, dirty, spammed thread, filled with swear words and a sarcastic smell, nor yet a viral, vulgar, smutty thread with nothing in it to check out or to comment: it was a hobbit-thread and that means comfort.”

This is how, or something like this, John R.R. Tolkien could probably start his tale if he was alive today. But seriously, we’ve started to forget the immortal classics with all our Reddit AITA stories, so here’s another tale beautifully stylized in the classic AITA style.

The ‘author of the post’ told how he once visited a deep cave with a ‘group of tourists’

Image credits: S Migaj (not the actual image)

While exploring the cave the guy accidentally knocked a skeleton down the well

Image credits: u/1KarlMarx1

Image credits: Tima Mirpshnichenko (not the actual image)

Image credits: u/1KarlMarx1

The old ‘tour guide’ lashed out at the hapless tourist, urging him to go and kill himself next time

Image credits: Rock Staar (not the actual image)

Image credits: u/1KarlMarx1

Image credits: Wander Fleur (not the actual image)

Does this story ring a bell for you? And if we said that the guide’s name was Gandalf?

So, the Original Poster – a guy 28 years old – during a tour of deep caves, inadvertently touched an old skeleton lying on the edge of a deep well and knocked it down. There was an incredible uproar, but what upset the OP the most was that his elderly travel guide didn’t just get angry, but called him a fool.

Moreover, the enraged old gentleman also advised the OP to kill himself next time, which simply upset our hero incredibly. True, a little later the impression of the guide’s outburst of anger was blurred by the fact that a whole company of local dwellers broke into the cave, threatening the life of the entire tourist group – probably because they “disturbed their peace.” Anyway, the original poster asks if he was a jerk for knocking that useless skeleton down.

Classic AITA story, isn’t it? And at the same time, you must admit, it’s reminiscent of something so very familiar… Yes, bingo! This is almost a detailed description of one of the iconic scenes from the Lord of the Rings – in the caves of Moria, where the clumsy young hobbit Peregrin Took knocked the skeleton of a long-dead dwarf into the well and received a well-deserved thrashing from the angry wizard Gandalf! Professor Tolkien, by the way, really appreciated a good literary pastiche – so he would probably approve of this story from the r/lotrmemes community!

Image credits: TM & © Warner Bros

Image credits: TM & © Warner Bros

By the way, despite the fact that Tolkien himself worked in a pure classical manner, this story fits perfectly into the postmodern narrative of our time, ironically rewriting the great classical plots, placing epic heroes in non-standard frames. For example, it suffices to recall the famous play by Tom Stoppard “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” or Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet”, where Shakespeare’s legendary lovers are placed in the scenery of America in the ’90s…

“To transgress the rules, to go beyond the limits of the single structure, to modify the uses of categories of discourse, particularly with regard to time, voice and perspective, is where the postmodernist novel is able to seek alternatives and continue its development regarding the possibilities for the defamiliarization of ways of representing reality,” Brian Crews, professor at the University of Seville, writes in his study “Postmodernist Narrative: In Search of an Alternative.” However, another main task of any literary hoax is to be, firstly, recognizable, and secondly, witty.

With these two clauses our story today has no problems at all, and numerous commenters to the original post also excel in wit in the LotR style. For example, calling the original poster a direct quote from Gandalf: “YNTA, you are just fool of a Took!” And the OP attracted the praise of some folks in the comments as well – in fact, his act led the tour guide (spoiler alert!) to level up off-screen!

Okay, we will not continue to give various comments, because for you this may really be a spoiler if for some reason you have not had time to get acquainted with the true magic world of Middle-earth. If so, just grab a book or watch Peter Jackson’s equally great trilogy – but not before liking this post, of course. No other way. Otherwise, as the same Gandalf once said, “You shall not pass!”

People in the comments enjoyed this literary hoax so much, they started exceling in wit in a LotR style too

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