Do you people know how horrific pirates actually were?

Everyone likes to look at stuff like this and say things like, "Oh, I bet his name is Bamboo Beard or something! Adorable! Yar, Matey!" without thinking about what they're really endorsing. Piracy is a brutal, horrible crime. We're not talking about stealing some Taylor Swift singles, man.

Even if you go back to the "romantic" period of pirates, when it seemed like half the population was wearing jaunty hats and sailing around the Caribbean on a galleon looking for trouble, it was pretty much plotting, torture, and murder 24/7. George Lowther would put lit fuses between the fingers of his victims until they'd talk. If you fell for the ol' "our flags say we're just a lowly Dutch trading galley oops now that you came close enough we took them down and we're f---ing pirates" trick, you faced the sort of thing Basil Ringrose wrote about: "for not one man there was found but was either killed, desperately wounded, or horribly burnt with powder, insomuch that their black skins were turned white in several places, the powder having torn it from their flesh and bones…. Their blood ran down the decks in whole streams, scarce one place in the ship was found that was free from the blood.” That's if you were lucky. If not, you were probably enslaved until your life, probably brutally shortened due to horrific treatment and abuse, ended.

And that's the "good old days." Pirates are still around today, only instead of a bunch of Errol Flynn types branding cutlasses to swashbuckle, you get a speedboat full of angry dudes holding RPGs pulling next to your boat. But sure, man, celebrate pirates if that's your thing.

Wear this shirt: In support of piracy. Or panda bears.

Don't wear this shirt: If you are actually taken by pirates. They are gonna LAUGH at you.

This shirt tells the world: "Everything's cute if you wait long enough."

We call this color: Black Flag

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