I'm guessing that many of these are targeting Americans.
One of the weird side effects of being from a melting pot country only a few hundred years old is a yearning for connection to things that feel permanent and historical. "Owning" some land in Scotland and "having" a title may be appealing to an American who otherwise feels cut off from their Scottish ancestry or other longer-term cultural practices.
It would have an appeal to me, because it's absurd. I'm an American and was raised up with the notion that royalty and monarchies are patently absurd, a feeling that has only grown as I've aged. Having a Lordship would be like owning a three-wheeled car or living in a house that looks like a giant seashell, to my mind. It'd be a funny thing to tell folks about at parties. I might even go about creating knights or whatever if the party was good enough.
It's pretty absurd in the UK, too, and no-one really cares about it.
Where I grew up, Lord NotGoingToDoxxHim, Clan Chief of the MacDonalds, was the local TV repairman and satellite dish installer who drove an admittedly rather nice Volvo and had a house with a garden nearly as big as ours.
I don’t think it’s related to melting pot thing - new world history is just not that rich compared to european/asian ones due to its recency and (for the most part) lack of conflict
Isn't that sort of related? People in the mixing pot want to find some rich historical legacy to connect to so they can feel distinct from the rest of the pot.
Personally, I've always found it a bit silly -- the folks I most admire in my ancestry are the ones who looked around and said "Yeah current events are shaping up to be part of some nation's rich history, time to get the hell out of dodge." Rich history is largely made of poor people being shoved into the meat grinder of 'glorious' national struggles.
There was a tremendous amount of conflict in the new world, just mostly not between countries (the conquest of the Americas had a death toll of 70-100m people).
Sure but those are relatively few events (though large in magnitude) compared to stuff that was going on in europe/asia. And americas are fucking huge compared to europe and coastal east asia. Turns out when lota people are sandwiched in tight geography, competing for resources for thousands of years a lot of stuff happens!
Counterpoint: New World history is/was just as rich and valuable; it was just systematically erased by one of the largest genocides in history spanning from pole to pole.
Yikes, you always twist someone’s words like that in a discourse? All I said the history is not as rich which makes sense given there was like 10x fewer people here on a huge territory. But also North American tribes didnt even have much written down unlike the South American civilizations
Titles are a form of addressing people. Sometimes it is just nice to be addressed by something that isn't Mr/Ms/Mx(/Mrs/Miss). Plenty of people have been motivated towards a PhD or MD for among other reasons the hopes of getting to be addressed as Doctor. For various reasons most of the available Titles to be found in our world are old and baroque (sometimes literally), which both has its appeals (a feeling of "tradition") and detriments (hard to get).
I've many non-binary friends that especially pine that Mx isn't greatly accepted by many and most of the non-gendered titles (including Doctor) are hard to acquire. I keep joking that if I were Governor of Kentucky, I'd make a simple form for any non-binary person to acquire the Colonel title if they wished.
(In Kentucky the Colonel title, the same one used by, for instance, the well known Colonel Sanders, is a title gifted to anyone for general service to the Commonwealth. It's origins are military, but it's been much more a philanthropic thing for much of the past couple centuries, including in the case of Colonel Sanders who was awarded it for his role as a businessman in the Commonwealth. It's a fascinating title.)
I mean, you know, would you rather have a chat with Ben Kingsley or Sir Ben Kingsley? I know I'd rather chat with Lord Banana699 than just plain-ol' Banana699
> In the United Kingdom, “lord” and “lady” are peerage titles, meaning a person can only hold the legal recognition, privileges, and protections associated with those titles if they rightfully inherit them, if they marry into a noble family, or if the queen grants them a peerage.
> Companies that sell souvenir plots with the claim of granting titles often rely on a conflation of the titles “lord” and “lady” with “laird,” which is not a peerage title, but rather solely a courtesy title akin to the English phrase “lord of the manor.” In Scotland, this title is traditionally applied to a member of the landed gentry who owns a large estate that has a long history and who generally has servants and tenants. Because “laird” is merely a courtesy title, it has no legal significance
The title of nobility is "lord". "Laird" is not a title at all, but a conventional designation for a somewhat related concept.
Time was, you could be a Senator in the American South without the land... or the actual job. They'd call you that in the bar or restaurant, just in case your were.
If you make a reservation at the Marriott they have a long list of titles you can claim. You can say you are a "Lord" there. Also an example that "Established Titles" makes is that you can have your credit card say "Lord so-an-so"
For the Marriott, sure. But for credit cards, normally you can't though. It's not part of your name, and it's not a legal title. Most KYC processes will stop you if you try.
There are sufficient people who value items that give them (real or imagined) prestige with other people (especially those of a similar mindset) to sustain these industries.
One of the weird side effects of being from a melting pot country only a few hundred years old is a yearning for connection to things that feel permanent and historical. "Owning" some land in Scotland and "having" a title may be appealing to an American who otherwise feels cut off from their Scottish ancestry or other longer-term cultural practices.