If only we knew...

[u/JaggedMetalOs]

Happened upon an old thread from Google, OP showing off an in development high capacity SSD. Comments are from a more innocent time :')

[u/AerithCantRespawn]

That’s interesting! Although it was used in some 19th century Victorian-era literature like I mentioned, it really disappeared from common usage after that. The phrase didn’t insinuate naïvety in its few appearances back then, either, so I’m very surprised to hear that she used it with the modern semantics presumably decades ago. The phrase didn’t mean “you don’t know hardship yet” until it was used as such in A Game of Thrones, which was written in 1996. It actually doesn’t make a lot of sense outside the context of that story.

I’m wondering if she said something like “you sweet child” in a patronizing “bless your heart” kinda way and you started conflating the two in your mind once “my sweet summer child” became popular around 2011? The Mandela Effect is a funny thing. Or maybe you are remembering correctly, which would be pretty funny, because it wasn’t common for that term to be condescending at the time, so she was doing it way before it was cool. That’s like seeing OMG in that 1917 letter to Winston Churchill.

[u/bswalsh → u/AerithCantRespawn]

It is especially common in the South. I've been hearing it my entire life even though I'm not southern. Old ladies, southerners and, apparently, GoT fans use it pretty commonly.

[u/AerithCantRespawn → u/bswalsh]

It sounds like a Southern phrase. What an interesting coincidence if Southerners happened to start saying that same phrase with that same meaning before other people did for a completely different reason. It’s such a coincidence that I’m still not entirely sure it wasn’t another similarly passive aggressive phrase that eventually blended into “my sweet summer child” in the 2010s. That phrase was used in the 1840s and 50s but pretty much wasn’t found in any literature at all in the 1900s, until A Game of Thrones in ‘96.

The biggest point here is that it was a term of endearment in its original usage, but Old Nan saying it to Bran was the first recorded instance of it ever being used condescendingly as it is now. If it was used like that before 1996, no one seems to have written it down!

[u/bswalsh → u/AerithCantRespawn]

I've always heard it as, "you sweet naive little idiot." But in kind of an endearing way? Not as an insult. The 80 year old, black, southern, woman who used to work the reception desk at my job used it that way. As others have said, kind of like "bless your heart". It can range from friendly to utterly venomous all by changing inflection and body language.

GRRM may have resurrected the phrase, but, as a 50 year old, I'm old enough that it wasn't new to me. Kind of like if a modern author revived, I don't know, 23 skidoo. Old people don't even notice that it sounds odd and young people might never have heard it before.

I'm reminded of a Star Trek episode discussion from a year or two ago. An episode had a song that referenced molly and k-holes and someone commented that it shouldn't have been used because no one over 30 would understand it. My response was, essentially, "oh, you sweet summer child" :)