What's the point? It reads weird as a question and it also reads weird as a response.
Agreed. It's just awkward as f. "I am a member of Benjamin Disraeli's cabinet during his second term as Prime Minister. What are my views of HRM Victoria and the monarchy as an institution? And how do I take my tea on Wednesdays?" My first reaction is just: "no you're not." Then I think, "who would actually know this shit". The questions just tend to get weirdly specific, even by this sub's standards. Extra cringe points when flared users reply in the second person.
I hate them with a passion. I'm always tempted to answer "if you are a Roman General in 100 AD in Rome, then god damn you know what kind of food you eat and pastimes you have yourself, don't ask us!"
You might be interested in this Rules Roundtable thread from a few months ago. In it "I am a..." questions are discussed at length. I think in general that flaired users don't prefer them, but we recognize that they're here to stay.
I think there's a significant number of people here working on historical fiction who want to take a shortcut. As someone who writes historical fiction, I maintain these questions are a dumb way to go because writing convincing historical fiction requires you to have a broad general knowledge of the time period, and that's hard to acquire in a short post.
It's a kind of controversial issue. I try not to do it (it does seem silly), but when I do it it's usually because the question is in some way "personal" or relates to everyday life and/or from a standpoint of history, a minor detail. I'll admit, it's kinda fun to word it that way - and I am most definitely silly, if we're being generous. Other times it, I guess, can save space on describing the historical actor you're interested in, but mostly it's just a flourish thing and I agree that it can get annoying. Also, it's possibly a way to sneak in a hint of a hypothetical question without going "What if...". Here's three examples of mine and I indeed am aware that they could have been worded better (awesome answers, though, most important):
I have never answered such a question because there hasn't been one that has fallen into my field AND hasn't been answered in a superior way to what I would say (thanks all you Holocaust scholars!)
However, I believe that most of these questions come about when someone desires to know about those outside of what might be traditionally known. These questions are often about the "ordinary" person. It is a way of getting at agency for the little known person. You don't see (many?) "I am Hitler...", but you might see a "I am a Jew in the Warsaw Ghetto..." As such, the questions are often more personal.
The problem, in my opinion, is that such questions are very difficult to write well. Most often the questions simply seem contrived or are impossible to answer. When done well, however, I think they can be very interesting.
tl;dr the sub both widely dislikes this 1st person perspective and often highly upvotes this sort of question.
I think the main reason it exists and is common is that it already exists and is common. This is also helped by the IAMA framing being a part of reddit's internal language. People are repeating a question framing which often produces highly upvoted askhistorians questions and high quality answers. Essentially the Sub is encouraging this in its actions
When I first dropped by askhistorians I saw this sort of question framing and rolled with it. I ended up asking some questions in that framing assuming (wrongly) that it was generally popular. I've pretty much dropped this after people's strong negative reactions to it were revealed in a few old META posts like this one.
So based on my theory if the Sub decided for a couple of weeks/a month that it wouldn't accept any "I am A" questions and then allowed them afterwards I bet that would severely curtail future uses of the I am A framing. This would occur as people wouldn't see front page questions with tons of responses and upvotes with similar language.
Now that hypothetical posits a stupid and counter productive (in terms of public engagement) policy but I do think it captures the forces that keep I AMA posts at askhistorians in large numbers
Shhh, don't tell them, it makes for a very easy way to filter those overly specific questions through a RES filter!
I find these to be often the most interesting questions. I study history to imagine new ways to be human - I want to know what the past felt like, and how people different from myself experienced and reacted to the world around them. I especially want to know how people tackled the challenges of life: everyday struggles that we take for granted thanks to new technologies, or timeless problems that we haven't solved ourselves. Learning that people in the past had their own answers to these challenges is, I think, one of the most exciting parts of history.
Events and processes history is dull to me; histories of daily life and experience are so much more vibrant and human.
Methodologically, these questions can be a real bear to answer - that's also exciting. When someone finds a way to open a window into the lived experience of a peasant who wrote nothing down, and backs up that answer with thoughtful or creative evidence? That's the kind of imaginative scholarship I find most enjoyable.
So I like these questions, especially when they're answered well.
Good question. It looks stupid to me too, but I guess that's the only way some people are able to articulate their question. Or maybe they think it's a cool and edgy way. No idea. It's not a big deal anyway, I think. But I do prefer normal questions worded in normal way.
I actually like these questions (although there aren't that many that I'm equipped to answer), because they show what a lot of people are looking for in their history: lived human experience. To use an example that's already come up in this thread, a question like:
I'm a court jester in the 14th century in Europe. What does my role actually entail beyond being silly? Do I have any courtly functions beyond light entertainment?
centres the question, and the desired answer, about the lived human experiences of court jesters in that period. Whereas
What roles did court jesters have in 14th century Europe beyond being silly and providing light entertainment?
is a little more abstracted/removed from that human experience - the first is asking for an exemplar human connection to subsume themselves in, the second is asking a more measured question about societal roles.
As historians, though, the first question is a little problematic: for the most part, we don't have the kinds of records that would allow a full interior look at the inner life of a court jester in the 14th century. And due to things like the postmodernist critique and historiographical issues, we're uncomfortable with giving authoritative answers about how people in the past truly experienced the world, because our conceptual frameworks limit our understanding of the lived experience of the human past. The second, on the other hand, because it is slightly more removed, lets us answer it with out current understanding of these issues; implicitly, we're conceding that our perspectives on these issues is contingent on our own experiences and cultures, which, even if we do not engage with those issues in our answer, conceptually helps us answer as historians. Essentially, question one is asking for "the past as it was", whereas question two is asking us for "the past as it is".
This, I think, is why people react to these questions as if they are attempts at research for historical fiction, because historical fiction takes a similar track: instead of dealing with historiographical issues, historical fiction goes straight for empathy as a device by centreing the human story in historical events. Is this the correct approach? Maybe not, but I do think it's one that it's necessary to have. History, in my view, is an inherently empathetic discipline, and questions in the first person reflect this. They're a sign that 'laypeople' (who may know very little about these issues of historiographical contingency or the postmodernist critique of the discipline) want to know more about the human past in terms of the people who lived there, and the fact that it's difficult for us to answer that as historians is, to my mind, a significant but not insurmountable failing.
So I like them, even though they do pose a challenge to answer given the disconnect between past and present. They're a reminder that curiosity about history is often drawn from a place of empathy, which is something I think historians sometimes need.
EDIT: I also consider it a missed opportunity that the thread is not titled "I am a flaired user on r/askhistorians. Do I prefer questions to the sub to be in first-person, or framed in a more detached manner? Why?"
I always imagined that these questioners were trying to write historical fiction & frame the question that way because they're trying to get into the heads of their characters. Even if that's not the case, I guess it's a way of relating to history as you'd do with literature--by personally identifying with a "viewpoint" character. That doesn't strike me as so strange.
(Try it with your own question: "I am posing a question to /r/AskHistorians: why do I do it in the first person?")
Some can be good if you want to get a more personal take on some historical period or issue, but for the most part yeah they're kinda dumb.
I always imagined it was aspiring writers seeking to better get into the minds of their characters or settings.