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.
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Yeah, “civilly liable rapist” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it
Civil was the case that they gave me
What’s my motha-fuckin name? “Civil Suit Loserrrrr”
Well, that’s not so bad then… /s
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.
I might find that reassuring in 1923, if the world makes it a full 100 years with only one global scale war. It’s a great run by historic standards.
Not really. Global Scale Wars were a unique thing back then. The Great War, the war to end all wars, was thought (hoped!) to be the only one of its kind. They had a lot of conflicts between major powers, but at least for the west, 17 million deaths excluding the spanish flu epidemic was a massive outlier.
Even the Mexican Revolution, listed on Wikipedia with an upper estimate of 3.5 million, wasn’t a quarter of that, and it wasn’t global. The last thing in the west that came (somewhat) close was the Napoleonic Wars with an upper estimate of 7 million, a hundred years earlier. China has had several massive death counts in various wars and rebellions, but that won’t have been very present to the average western civilian.
WW1 brought with it a slew of new developments in military technology and capability for destruction. For the world to have not just one, but potentially two conflicts considered at least on par with The Great War would be very concerning.
We should start talking about World War IV then
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. ~ Albert Einstein
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. World War V will be fought with crossbows, World War VI will be lasers, and World War VII will be blowguns. I don’t know about World Wars VIII through XI. World War XII will use the same weapons as III, but will be fought entirely within underground tunnels. World War XIV will—Hey, come back! I have a whole list!
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.
Only the richest people have horses. Most just use cars.
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
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.
That Germany is Europes biggest economy. 100 years ago Europe was fresh out of WW1 and Germany was bankrupted as punishment.
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.
Neocolonialism is alive and well though. Today we have more slaves making more products, than ever before !
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.
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.
Yeah, that’s a fair point, they may be more surprised that either example lasted that long.
And yeah, like I said above, the entire concept of World War II would blow their minds, let alone the redrawing of maps worldwide afterwards.
– “You can freely marry a Black person in most of the civilized world.”
– “Why would you?”
Most?
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.
feels a bit like cheating given that the man in the picture is clearly being presented as a server, not a consumer
Fair. I didn’t understand what OP was getting at, so I took them literally. It seemed strange to ignore that white people in the early 20th loved depictions of smiling black people in servant roles.
As for ads targeted at black consumers… now I’m curious. I know there were newspapers targeted at black readers. I wonder if they had ads.
Yeah I think a better answer would’ve been “an ad with a black man smiling at his white wife”
For bonus points, make it clear in the ad that the man is a house husband and the wife is a working professional lol
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
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.
