what fact about our current world would freak people out if it were a newspaper headline a century ago?
what fact about our current world would freak people out if it were a newspaper headline a century ago?
Some news that would be completely mundane today but scary or shocking in the past.
A convicted rapist (also charged with 91 other felonies) running for president, with as much chance as winning as the other guy.
Thanks for saying this. I bet most americans dont know that a convicted rapist was their president. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-carroll-judge-rape/
I'm not an expert on the nuance of the US legal system, but "convicted" probably applies to the criminal system, right? What would it be in this scenario? A confirmed rapist? Just "a rapist"?
Still, the guy raped some lady and he's actively running for president. That one would be shocking any time before the mid 2010s, honestly.
Yeah they'd be shocked that someone rich enough to run for president could be accused of rape 'why didn't he just have the girl committed to an asylum to keep her quiet?'
So in this scenario you're back in 1923?
I'm pretty sure it'd be anything including the words "World War II".
Bonus points if it also includes a date.
You might be able to streamline the process by saying "fears of World War III" and letting them fill in the gaps themselves.
Yeah, like in that Doctor Who special where they tell the WW1 soldier "Now let's get you back to your first world war" and he goes "FIRST world war?!".
Few people would be surprised by it happening. They hoped it wouldn't be for many decades but it was just known as the way future wars would go.
future telling is kind of a lame answer
"Man fired for criticising homosexuality", or maybe "man imprisoned for refusing to hire black person".
People are thinking about technology, but in 1923 people were very familiar with breathtaking technological change. The complete reversal of some social norms, on the other hand, would be almost existentially disturbing to these dudes who believe in the great benevolent Christian empires, and in some cases thought ending slavery was a mistake.
I have to wonder what the residents of the 1920's third world would think. I'm sure there would be many interesting perspectives.
Those type of headlines upset way too many people today. It's the point of the make America great again slogan.
I don't think you realize how far tech has advanced in 100 years. Commercial flights didn't really exist in their current form of scheduled flights between airports. Computers didn't exist beyond mechanical ones that aren't really comparable. Electricity was only in half of households in 1925. Telephone lines were only local and required manual switching by operators.
Breathtaking technology in the 1920s has nothing on what we can do today.
I mean yeah but the point is that technological advancement was still a common occurance. Like, yeah a sensationalized article about self driving cars would blow some minds but to most i think it wouldn't really make any bigger waves then basic cars already were at the time. How can they be blown away by the concept of self driving when the vehicle itself is so new and interesting you know? AI is so abstract that even today most people don't understand it, 100 years ago it'd just be "another new thing" just like it is today.. We are actually less accustomed to ground shaking new inventions so I'd argue that 100 years ago a lot of our modern tech would be less exciting given the regularity in which things were changing then.
Social upheaval however is ALWAYS a huge deal, especially for the time. Bear in mind that Progressivism is a fairly new ideology in the States. For literally hundreds of years social change came at a snails pace and took serious, concerted effort. Nowadays we are on average much more open to change and accepting of diversity in all it's forms, but there's a reason everyone remembers the name Martin Luther King Jr., versus.... Ruth Bader Ginsburg I guess?
Yeah, but electrification, cars, antibiotics, many forms of sanitation, many forms of canning, radio, telephones of any kind, several forms of weapon and powered aircraft in general were new within living memory in the 20s. "It gets (much) better and more accessible" wouldn't have surprised anyone. If we were going back 200 years you might have a point, and definitely would at 300.
Actually, they didn't understand how radio crystals (which are very rudimentary semiconductor diodes) worked at the time, but pretty much every other principle of physics used in modern technology was understood at that point. They just needed to finish quantum mechanics, and then figure out a few steps of application.
Only the richest people have horses. Most just use cars.
That Germany is Europes biggest economy. 100 years ago Europe was fresh out of WW1 and Germany was bankrupted as punishment.
Mid 1930s that headline would also be quite disturbing
Mid 1940s it would've been a great laugh.
How pervasive surveillance and tracking of people (and their data) is in todays society. We've become accustomed to it but I'd bet people a century ago would be shocked at the idea of stuff like regular people being filmed from multiple angles when just going to the shops, having a device in their pocket constantly recording their location, receiving targeted advertising based on what information they've looked at previously, etc.
It wasn't really that strange, people got tailed all the time during the nuclear weapons program and after, to make sure that they weren't gay. Shit was wild in the early 50s. A senator committed suicide because his son was outed as gay, getting dirt on people was hardcore. People got fired on the flimsiest of claims.
Physical surveillance was pretty bad, even then. Digital surveillance has gotten worse today, but it's much more fragmented and not so...eerily similar to the CCP. Also, fuck McCarthy. The book on this timeframe is a wild read, highly recommend it as it explains the postwar era and cold War paranoia.
https://www.amazon.com/Lavender-Scare-Persecution-Lesbians-Government/dp/0226401901
People were shocked about stuff like that in the eighties!
At risk of being a broken record, a reminder that OG fascism was cool and on the rise at that point. The surprise would be that you can opt out of all that stuff, people will just think you're weird.
Most international experts consider the outbreak of a third world war unlikely in spite of global surges of violence
Not mundane, but the implications would be horrifying to 1923 society still recovering from "The Great War".
And funny enough, still misleading about how soon the next one is. Nukes really changed the game (for better or worse) and they don't have them yet.
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Quite a few people would be probably surprised that colonial empires are no more
as for headlines: British PM Rishi Sunak negotiates Scottish independence with First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf
also anything involving european union
in 1923 that idea was not really that shocking and already talked about.
The only known sentence that is fatal to white british men circa 1900.
Neocolonialism is alive and well though. Today we have more slaves making more products, than ever before !
– “You can freely marry a Black person in most of the civilized world.”
– “Why would you?”
Most?
Climate change, same sex marriage (though, perhaps not as shocking as some might expect, ditto anything trans related), potential mars colonization, coming off the heels of the Spanish flu, COVID news would probably freak em out. Ooh, the USSR being gone, and China being a world super power. The USSR would have been new to them, and it collapsing less than a century later would probably feel quite odd, especially if you could make them understand just how incredibly advanced the USSR got in such a short amount of time. Tons of stuff.
In the 1920s a state fresh off a recent regime change disappearing would have been extremely par for the course. You telling that to someone from the 1960s would probably have more of an effect.
I mean, if you showed them a map it'd look nothing like their current political divide. I'm not sure they'd be more shocked by the state of what then was Soviet Russia than by Czechoslovakia being broken up or the other half a dozen changes in Europe alone.
I’m Czech, and exactly 105 years ago (October 30, 1918) the approximately dozen nationally aware Slovaks met in an inn and wrote a letter to Prague that they agree to be part of Czechoslovakia as the “Czechoslovak nation” because they knew they couldn't form a state on their own, and split off the hated Hungary. The 4 people who signed our “Declaration of Independence” 2 days prior needed someone to represent Slovakia so they went in the streets searching for a Slovak. Vavro Šrobár, a nationally Slovak lawyer who incidentally just arrived to Prague, came forth and signes the document, and became Minister of Slovakia a few weeks later.
The Republic helped Slovakia reach its industrial potential and gave its people democratic values (except for WWII, we don't talk about Slovakia in WWII). Eventually, Slovak politicians wanted power so they broke off after true democracy was restored in 1989. The Velvet Divorce was so uneventful compared to the end of Communism that people did not really care at all.
So I agree that to informed people in 1923, Slovakia being separate a century later would be no surprise. However, the formation of USSR (which I know much less about) was pretty controversial and involved a civil war so they might be actually be surprised it did last 80 years.
On the other hand, the other changes you glossed over are quite significant, especially with Germany and Poland.
Show them a time lapse animation of the countries borders as they changed in real time such that a second equals one month. Two minutes of "what the fuck just happened‽‽"
I don't think Mars colonies would surprise them. If anything they'd expect us to have family resorts or Jupiter
Many countries all around the world possess weapons that could obliterate an entire other country, or their own country if detonated by mistake, and possibly destroy the whole planet.
You can buy groceries from a mechanical grocer, but it’ll accuse you of shoplifting like three times while checking you out.
while checking you out
I'm sick of those suggestive robotic winks, and the vulgar gestures every time I scan a banana
I had one scream loud AF at me because I didn't move my item to the bay in the microsecond it allowed.
You can have a heart transplant.
1923 people expected mechanical heart transplants to be available today
Just an advertisement with a smiling black guy would do.
A photo of Obama in the oval office
Most tram networks and passenger trains have been abolished. Yeah, and you can't walk on the street anymore.
In the USA
Anything price related. Imagine telling anyone from 1920s that you paid 50 dollars for a piece of clothing.
I paid 3.20 for a small loaf of bread. Fight me.
That I have a device that fits in my pocket and can connect to almost anyone else on the face of the planet, as well as tell me any fact I'd like to hear, or any story I'd like to experience. And it does all this about as fast as my thumbs can type out the request.
And yet 99,9% of the time you just use it to get into arguments with people you don't even know.
It's also a universal translator, the device they thought would facilitate diplomacy and peaceful communication.
And the government uses it to spy on you. Businesses use it to spy on you and gather basically all of your personal data. Privacy has been dead for a number of years now. A hundred years ago people would have rioted.
Most people spend more than three hours a day staring at a small mirror in their pocket that makes colorful dancing lights.
I, and the vast majority of the world, wander around with instant access to the sum total of human knowledge, as well as the ability to instantly talk with anyone else in the world that we know. Face to face in many cases these days. These devices also allow many of us to remember that *we have a universal translator in our pockets, so language isn't even much of a barrier to communication and understanding each other.The vast majority of us use these wonderous devices to get into arguments with people we are extremely unlikely to ever meet in person.
The vast majority of us use these wonderous devices to get into arguments with people we are extremely unlikely to ever meet in person
And also about things that we generally either don't really care much about, or can't actually do anything about lol
I can't believe you would say that. I am offended.
Brexit would have confused a lot of people.
"A N***** WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT. AMERICA HAS LOST ITS WAYS TO INSANITY"
"F*****S PARADE AROUND THE CITY AND THEY WERENT SHOT AT FIRST SIGHT"
"PATRIOT ARRESTED FOR BURNING CROSSES"
"PEOPLE CLAIMING STATE AND CHURCH SHOULD BE SEPARATED ARE NOT FIT FOR OFFICE, THEY ARE COMMUNIST TRAITORS"
"PEOPLE CLAIMING STATE AND CHURCH SHOULD BE SEPARATED ARE NOT FIT FOR OFFICE, THEY ARE COMMUNIST TRAITORS"
That's more of a 50-70s thing. In the 1920s communism wasn't a big idea in the US and God wasn't in the pledge nor part of our national motto.
The first Red Scare was in 1919 and communism was a big enough idea in the US that the government was putting communists in prison
I don't know how many headlines would be talking about Communist traitors in 1923.
I'd imagine it's the things that still kinda make it as headlines today, but don't get much coverage anymore because everyone is used to it by now.
"By the way, this weekend's mass shootings led to 10 deaths and 29 injuries total, a little more than last week. Parents, remember to bundle up your kids this fall semester with the latest BulletBlocker Youth Jacket, 10% off if you order today! Now back to the news you actually wanted to hear about: the former U.S. President allegedly commits even more crimes..."
Yeah, but you have to consider that "Italian democracy overthrown by former journalist" and "bank sprayed with tommy gun" was recent news at that point. All that shit would shock people in the 60's, but in the 20's the main revelation would be the affordability of bulletproof clothing.
8 billion people and growing.
1923?
Lenin's body lays in the mausoleum on the Red Square for the last 99 years. Impersonators of him and Stalin walk around in their daily routine, asking money for photoes with them. In a shop not far from them, you can purchaze chinese merchandize with a soviet, russian flags, as well as with a monarchist-sympatising one, even though Romanovs are as dead as they were back then. Some items cost over a thousand of rubles, a sum that was enough to buy a factory - and that's after two recent denomonations. Pretty good that these crowds of international tourists don't count their money being there, these prices can easily drive someone insane.
See, in 1923 "the USSR fails" wouldn't surprise people, but "the USSR is a great power and also fails and also is still locally popular" would be hella disorienting.
Why do I picture confused Trotsky, going WTF in his glasses? Yes, it's going to last 70-so years in spite of your pessimism, no, you aren't a part of it and assasinated in Mexico, yes, this georgian chud is as power-hungry as he looks, no, unions won't become the waifu of proletariat, but yes, after the fall of Stalin you'd be pretty much reabilitated and some canadians would even direct a movie about rebelious youngsters named after you.
You couldn't buy a factory for rubles in 1923...
NEP was a thing though. Very limited and tightly controlled, but possible. Both NEPmen and foreign capitalists had a brief window while economy was healing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEPman
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_concessions_in_the_USSR
I don't think one could be safe throwing them around like that though. Being big probably meant you have a particular relationship with local administration who don't find you too capitalistic.
Nearly anything from the Onion or Florida
Hahaha, I came here to post "anything Florida". Take my upvote.
That nearly everyone is carrying a tracking device with them, designed to disguise itself as a convenient entertainment device.
How would that even register with people from 1923? What is a .... "tracking device"? Or an "entertainment device"?
Its 1923 and the phonograph has been around for 45 years, and local radio has been around for 3 in some areas, so I think they would know what an entertainment device is. A tracking device, like a radio that tells people where you are without your input. These idea would not go over the heads of any citygoer, though you would struggle with any back country folks.
Maybe a communication device? That's how it started at least.
I agree I should have phrased that better. Something like a "secret agent following you wherever you go" maybe?
And yet you still can't ask the device to locate someone.
Given this is the era of rising totalitarianism, maybe the surprise would be that there's no legal penalty for not carrying it; people just choose to to the point life will be difficult if you buck the trend.
There are still no flying cars.
Helicopters exist, and there are some octocopter drones that can lift a person. We also got a working jetpack recently, and we've had water-jetpacks for ages.
Still, no flying cars 🤷.
I'm at the airport, and the robot waiter is standing at the bar, staring at me in a passive / aggressive manner. Taunting me with its non delivery of my food.
Now, I'm no writer, but there's a headline in that somewhere.
"world now has more androids than people"
If you count the phones as well, I'm sure that will be true eventually.
Definitely the fact that we have access to technology that allows us to effectively create and spread misinformation at lightning speed, all without having to leave the comfort of our homes. Misinformation that can be seen by millions of people across the globe in a matter of moments after it is created.
I bet it’s the fact I can play through the Battle of the Somme as many times as I want, and die a hundred deaths each game, for fun
ALL KNOWLEDGE OF SOLONS LOST
Recent Poll: Zero Percent of Americans Thinking About SolonsLigmas have increased in popularity though
In a hundred years, people will be reading this thread and asking their AI to define ligma. That AI will have been trained on all our comments
Human Lifespan Doubled
That's mostly due to decreased infant mortality rates, than actually extending our lifespans, so far. That looks like it may be changing rather soon.
LAST LIVING WW2 VETERAN DIES AT 104
