Would you rather be a cowboy, a pirate or a samurai?
Would you rather be a cowboy, a pirate or a samurai?
Found this question on an Instagram reel as dating advice for girls if they don't know what to talk about and that men have a lot of opinions about this. Let's see if she's right.
Pirate! CGP Grey has a great video on how pirate ships worked. They were a lot more democratic and fair than the merchant marine which worked their crew to the bone and paid them peanuts.
Cowboy, no contest.
Samurai's lives belong to their masters. I couldn't live that way.
Pirates live by killing and stealing. I couldn't live that way.
That leaves cowboys. Certainly not the glorious and romantic life Hollywood makes it out to be, but generally honest work toward specific goals and freedom otherwise, which'd be fine.
Samurai. Literal nobility, regular baths, nice clothes, fitted armor, regular training, and at least during the Edo period, low risk of actually having to go into battle (doesn't apply during the prior periods of course). Good food, good rice wine, poetry and music, good literature, intellectually stimulating conversations.
Contrast a cowboy - saddle sores, dust, caked sweat from weeks without baths, cholera, gangrene, bandits, native raids, long hours, and the blazing desert sun.
And the pirate: nothing to eat but hardtack and freeze-dried cod until you make port or board a merchantman, hunted by the Royal Navy, surrounded by fellow pirates who haven't bathed since the last port call, constantly alternating between seasickness and landsickness, cramped quarters belowdecks, constant risk of drowning, and when you finally go on a raid, you're getting shot at by grapeshot and 16-pounder roundshot at effectively point-blank range.
Samurai, any day. raises cup of green tea
Ninja. They are so good at hiding that you probably don't even see it as one of the options.
Cowboy literally just means rancher. It was not a particularly good job in the wild west and it's only marginally better now.
Samurai were well respected, well paid, and had social status. The downside is that they needed to kill people or die trying when their boss said to, which doesn't sound like fun to me.
Pirates also have the problem of having to do violence on a regular basis, but without the glamour and respect of being Samurai.
All in all, I'd probably choose samurai.
Permanently Deleted
Cowboy - Pros: lowest chance of death, honest work for honest pay. Cons: hard work for low pay
Pirate - Does internet piracy count? I get seasick to easily to be the boat kind. Also the death.
Samurai - Maybe an Edo period samurai, when they were mostly bureaucrats.
Surely a pirate in the Caribbean or the Philippines wouldnt be too awful as you wouldn't be out at sea that much and close to land. For me it's the exploration and discovery that appeals to a life of piracy, but in reality I imagine it would be an absolute dog shit existence, especially compared to that of a samurai (minimal bloodshed unless there's a war) or cowboy (you look after horses on a ranch). However, many pirates just did a stint and then returned back home, so what's 2-3 years of making booty and having PTSD from cannon fire/pillaging.
Cowboy. I don't know enough about samurai, and I know too much about pirates
What year for samurai, and what rank? Samurai in 1590 were very different from samurai in 1850; after the warring states period ended, samurai quickly lost everything except their pride. Merchants - nominally the lowest class (burakumin were outside of the class system) - had far more wealth and real power than the samurai in the years preceding the Meiji restoration. A low-ranking samurai around 1820 would be a life of poverty that was still filled with class and social obligations; not cool.
Overall, probably a ranch hand (cowboy was a derogatory term). Yeah, the pay was shit, and it was hard work, but you got to be outside all the time.
Id be a cowboy. Just a rancher landlord with guns. Its probably the closest of the 3 with a peacefull lifestile since killng is not that necesary. And i could be a modern day cowboy with a truck and an automated farm house and i still would be a cowboy since i work with cows, have guns and wear a hat sometimes.
I want to be a pirate literally cuz I'm in the middle of watching one piece
Pirate and cowboy would both be really hard, dirty and deadly. So I'd go with samurai. They're basically just the ruling aristocracy, for most of their time they've never had to fight. So lots of money comfort and safety beat the more freedom you have for the other two.
It's a toss up between cowboy and samurai.
For Samurai it would depend on when. Samurai became defacto nobility, but they began in the 8th century as just mercenaries hired by local nobles to protect their estates.
But a cowboy is a life in the open air on a ranch. Hard work for sure, but hard work doesn't bother me.
Samurai. its an ez out given the lifestyle they had compared to a commoner. Cowboy is a possible but life was cheap and medicine was bad still so, eh. and a pirate? as romantic as they are, they have historically suffered greatly and their 'reigns' ended shortly.
Cowboy. It would be hard work but all that time outside, sleeping under the stars, working with my hands.
I'd be bored within a week but the idea is fun!
Well, I have rum and a sword from my weeb phase, so cowboy it is. Time to buy a six shooter.
A movie pirate. The kind that gets to sail, have adventures, but never seems to do any killing or pillaging.
All would actually suck if these are the realistic versions, but Cowboy would suck the least, at least as a violence-averse person (if you're not violence-averse I understand why you'd pick Samurai.)
Movie versions, I'd still go Cowboy. I'd get stir crazy on a boat and I don't like answering to people like Samurai need to.
No thanks. I'm a coward. I just want to sit on my ass all day and browse lemmy
pirates supported same-sex marriage, so I’ll go with that 🏳️🌈
¿Porque no los tres?
Samurai, during the heydays of the shogunate.
I want to be a samurai. I wanted to be one since I was a kid, and I want to be one even more after having read Hagakure. I even try to live up to a lot of the same ideals Yamamoto Tsunetomo laid out in the book about what it meant to be samurai. It's almost the same idea as medieval chivalry; but more intense and without the religious overtones.
A cowboy. I was born in the western US and spent some of my young life on a cattle ranch. It's hard work and at the end of the day, there's a sense of accomplishment.
Not interested in being a pirate, stealing isn't my thing. I don't like the idea of slicing and dicing people, so samurai wouldn't work for me either.
Samurai gets paid by the fedual lord. Easy choice.
From what I like the most? Defebatly pirate, cause I could be another pirate Queen and that sounds dope
From whats the least icky one? Samurai after it became a social status and a symbol of nobility with the occasional murdering
All three - pirate against capitalism, cowboy against society, and samurai because their swords are awesome and they bathe.
tough choice. all super cool. all equally tough jobs for their own reason. i guess cowboy because i have not been on a boat long enough and have not practuced swordplay as much
Samurai. Not quite upper-class but a lot better social standing and conditions than the other two.
Pirate!
Cowboy you get to live a normal life in modern times compared to the other two. A modern day pirate is a shitty 3rd world existence and a samurai means being in Japan. I’ll take Cowboy with a loving wife and kids raising cattle and in the evenings getting to stream 4K content with Starlink on my OLED tv eating amazing BBQ anyday.
Yarr!
Samurai. I'd like a higher place on the social hierarchy than pirate and cowboy.
Pirate, no contest
I would 100000% be a samurai because I'm 1000000% a weeb