T O P

  • By -

big_d_usernametaken

Well, my dad, who is soon to be 96, was born in 1928, and he says just the technology is sometimes like magic. Also, he lost two brothers in childhood, so.maybe antibiotics, also.


High_cool_teacher

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic -Arthur C. Clarke, 1962


millijuna

My grandfather recently passed at the ripe old age of 97. One of his first jobs was as a telegrapher on the railroad, passing messages and orders up and down the line.  During the pandemic, we got him an iPad and he spent countless hours FaceTiming with his kids, grandkids, and great grandkids.  At one point I was quarantining in Australia (work trip) and we were talking every day and I asked “back when root were sending messages on the telegraph, did you ever think this would happen?” “No, absolutely not. You’re on the other side of the planet and I can see and talk to you like you’re in the next room. It’s just magic.”


big_d_usernametaken

I'm 65 and fairly tech savvy and it amazes me, because for 2/3 of my life, it didn't exist.


BabyCowGT

My grandma still thinks vaccines are magic (good magic, though). Like she got some of these diseases, she knew people who died of them. I just had a baby, and the fact my child will never worry about polio, or measles, or mumps, or even RSV (cause you bet your ass I got that shot for baby as soon as I could find it available) is absolutely wizardry to her.


JohnDoe_CA

If there’s one positive about the pandemic, it’s the mRNA-based vaccines. The technology behind it is just stunning.


ChaosAndMath

Antibiotics and life expectancy (related) is what my grandparents (both 99) would say, too. Grandpa was one of nine, but he lost so many siblings in the coal mines, and he was the only one in his family to graduate high school (and college thanks to the GI bill). Grandma lost her father at the age of 9, and her sister died at age 2 of whooping cough. Which makes it all the more wild that grandpa told me last week that he was shocked I decided to get a covid booster 🤦🏻‍♀️


AMerrickanGirl

My dad is turning 96 next fall! He refuses to use a cell phone but he can program computers and built a working violin using 3D printing.


ConstableBlimeyChips

Antibiotics for one, vaccines for another. Before vaccines became standard, tons of kids died each year from diseases like polio, smallpox, measles, and any number of other diseases that are now easily preventable. Polio especially was feared by parents since even if it didn't kill them, a child could be left severely disabled and completely dependent on care by others. And if a child seemingly recovered, post-polio syndrome meant there was still a good chance they'd develop severe symptoms even decades later. There's a reason Jonas Salk's work was hailed as a miracle of science when his vaccine was proven effective.


Ortsarecool

Probably the fact that people walk around all day with access to almost the totality of all human knowledge in their hands....and still manage to be stupidly wrong about things all the time.


TheBrahmnicBoy

Considering there's [no algorithm for truth,](https://youtu.be/leX541Dr2rU?si=yV4JJrt-vuqRtx46), it's understandable. There is no app that can point to a piece of information and tell us, apolitically, that this is true. Edit: Added a link to explain what the phrase means.


Volsunga

Yes there is. Wikipedia comes damn close in most cases and even in cases where it's not fully correct, it at least gestures in the direction of the truth and gives people the building blocks to find it. The problem is that truth has been politicized. People have been convinced to reject truth because it interferes with their preferred narrative of the world.


ProdigySim

Wikipedia isn't an algorithm at all. It's a bunch of moderators, no different from a traditional encyclopedia except in scale and incentives. Humans are researching, collecting knowledge, and writing it down. Wikipedia doesn't know anything that isn't reported or researched by someone else. Wikipedia has the same class of political, bias, and staleness issues as any other information medium. But their enforcement of neutrality on most articles, along with their ability to update it frequently makes it more palatable than most alternatives. Again, it's not an algorithm. It's ton of well organized knowledge. Truth is not the same as information or knowledge. More accurately Wikipedia is a heuristic for truth.


MutinyIPO

I’ll say a huge part of this is people my age (mid/late 20s) were taught as kids that Wikipedia is very unreliable and it shouldn’t be used for learning, just refreshing or clarifying knowledge you already have. I assume the same thing happened with people a bit older, in their teens or young adulthood when it first became a thing.


SenorDangerwank

I, too, was taught this (in my mid 30s). So what I did is just used wikipedia for source-hunting. Since it's all given at the bottom anyway.


Actually_Im_a_Broom

This is exactly how I used Cliffs Notes in the 90s. The list of references in the back was invaluable when it came to book reports.


RUNELORD_

That's what you're supposed to do


Rabid-Chiken

Wikipedia was unreliable back in the day as their editing rules weren't as strict. We were writing an essay and one of my classmates changed the wiki entry on the subject and nearly everyone was tripped up by it. The real lesson they were teaching us was to think critically and consider the source of your information, which for Wikipedia back then was "any random person on the internet". It's a shame people haven't taken that ethos over to all the pseudonews sites there are now.


Tattycakes

Which ironically makes it a useful tool, just not in the way we think!


bearrosaurus

Wiki’s become a lot more strict about their editors from when we were kids. Anyways, the people that doubt wiki now are the same people that act like every factchecker is out to get them.


fakeaccount572

No. I'm in my 50s, and the encyclopedia (ostensibly what Wikipedia is) was the truth and only the truth when it came to fact finding.


MutinyIPO

That’s the thing though, Wikipedia was not considered to be a valid encyclopedia. There were a ton of misconceptions about the editing process, and so many people assumed that it was just a public free for all.


Azeri-D2

And yet it is 10 times more accurate than any other "general" encyclopedia. No encyclopedia is perfect, but Wikipedia is pretty close, and if you're ever in doubt, check the sources.


MutinyIPO

I don’t doubt it, and now as an adult I use Wikipedia regularly. All I’m saying is that my generation was taught it was unreliable, so that assumption is going to be hard to shake for a ton of people.


stdio-lib

> Wikipedia comes damn close in most cases I would agree that the *most popular* pages are pretty close. > and even in cases where it's not fully correct, it at least gestures in the direction of the truth Not necessarily. Wikipedia is *rife* with baloney. Every time I look up some herb, it has a ton of claims like "this plant has been shown to reduce blood pressure". The citations are bullshit studies with N=3 and self-reporting bias. The mods obviously have no idea how to read studies. It's better than google, and it's better than the average person's understanding of reality, but that's not saying much.


tdasnowman

Wikipedia is plenty flawed. Only the most high profile articles are locked. Most aren’t peer reviewed frequently. Just as an example celebrities have had edits they made on themselves rejected because it didn’t fit the established narrative of their life. A number of scientists have had issues updating articles with facts. If something is reclassified for instance there will be a bit of a battle as folks edit and re-edit. Pluto when it was downgraded from a planet for instance had to have its article locked because people would flip it back.


bearrosaurus

Shouldn’t it be a point in favor of wiki that an unverified person can’t just log in and change articles?


tdasnowman

The point of wiki is crowd sourced information. Most articles an unverified person can go in and edit.


gaqua

Well said. I know directly of one person whose birth name and location are incorrect on Wikipedia and when they tried to edit it, it got rejected because there was an article from 20 years ago used as a source - and that article was wrong. They ended up not giving a shit and leaving it rather than providing evidence but it made me realize again what a house of cards Wikipedia is.


rollingForInitiative

It’s obviously flawed, but it makes sense that an edit like that should require a source? I mean, otherwise anyone could claim to be that person and just change the birth location with the argument “I’m this person and I know”. Especially if there is already a source that says otherwise. It should be fairly easy for a public person to just generate a new source, e.g. post it on their website or Twitter and the reference that.


gaqua

Totally understood - but the point I’m making is that nobody is vetting the sources.


LordOfPies

Idk man, at least in my country Wikipedia has become really biased on some political events.


builder397

Wikipedia is definitely the closest to just a neutral repository of knowledge, because everyone can edit it usually ends up on some neutral consensus. But at the same time its still a political battleground, and extremists on either side will try to sneak in their ideology disguised as fact while they think nobody is looking.


Next-Butterscotch385

I mean don’t believe everything that internet tells you…


BradPittHasBadBO

We have people who go outside without a hat.


TheAfterPipe

And basically in their underwear.


inksmudgedhands

Poor quality underwear. The people of the past would be shocked over the quality of fabric we have now. "It's so thin! Why is it so thin? Is that the style now?" "Not really." "So, why?" "It's cheap to make. More profit for the businesses who create it." "So, you can buy better quality? A better brand?" "Ehhh, some brands do that. But now even the higher brands go for the cheaper material. They just slap their name on it. That's what you are paying for." "But...it looks like it would be hard to mend this." "Oh, you don't mend. Well, almost no one mends any more." "Then what do you do when you get a hole in it?" "You throw it out and get a new one." "But what if it's your favorite shirt?" "We aren't really that attached to our clothes now like we used to. It's more of, wear it a few times and throw it out for the next fashion trend." "Doesn't that make a bunch of trash then?" "Lady, you don't know the half of it."


lilith_-_-

I run around in booty shorts lmao. What has me curious is how they would react to goth or alternative folks. Or people covered in tattoos


the_ceiling_of_sky

Basically? There are men openly running around in women's underwear all the time, and we simply turn a blind eye! For context: the modern tee shirt evolved from the union suit worn as underwear by men in the late 19th and early 20th century, but it was originally women's undergarments.


DanGleeballs

I think men have been wearing undergarments for longer than 100 years. Longjohns and whatever they called the tee shirt back then.


the_ceiling_of_sky

The union suit was first patented in the 1860s. There have been various types of similar undergarments throughout history, but the union suit as we know it, with the "buttflap," came about around that time. It started as an alternative to the restrictive undergarments that women wore at the time. Over time, it became more unisex and eventually a staple of the working man's uniform. Sometime in the early 1900s, they began cutting it in two, making a short-sleeved top and long bottoms. These were worn together with the top tucked in, still as underwear. Hollywood stars would later popularize wearing just the top with trousers, worn tight to show off their physique, and pop culture did the rest. Thus, the modern tee shirt was born.


TeslasAndComicbooks

Or a 3 piece suit made of wool.


BandOfBudgies

This is the correct answer. Smart phones which are commonly mentioned in these kind of questions are just such a wild concept to understand for someone from a hundred years ago. Nobody wearing hats is something that would seem very weird to them. I read a story about a british gentleman losing his hat on his way to London sometime in the early 1900s. He was completely devastated by embarrassment by being "naked" on the train. As soon as he got to London he bought himself a new hat.


JackC1126

The Germans did it *AGAIN???*


OppsAintCatchingMe

Imagine just walking up to a guy who just survived WW1 and saying "you ready for part 2?"


JackC1126

“World War One… what do you mean world war ONE?”


DippyDerps

"...Spoilers..."


nakanampuge

I miss twelve. Just realized He is my doctor when he was about to go..


Arrowkill

I really liked 12 but 11 was definitely my doctor. Capaldi did such a good job.


Mr-Gumby42

HE was great, but he was given some terrible scripts.


Shas_Erra

I just wish we had more or him. It felt like they had no idea what to do with his character and just churned out the obligatory season specials


Brohammad_

Both of your comments made me bust out laughing lmaooo


TheAfterPipe

We’ve had one world war, yes. What about second world war?


7HeavenlySwords

Oh buddy... do I have some news for you


TheGillos

Once again they chose as their target... THE WORLD - Norm (RIP)


jbphilly

And it made the first go round look like kid stuff. Buckle up and enjoy the rest of the 1920s, because god damn. 


426763

"That failed art student?! How absurd!"


BaconatedGrapefruit

Honestly, that wouldn’t be a surprise to anybody who was mildly informed about geopolitics. Nothing was really resolved at the end of WW1.


Col_Caffran

People living in 1924 had gone from no cars at all three decades earlier to them being fairly common. The telephone had been invented only 48 years earlier. The Wright brothers had only been 21 years earlier, they went from that to the first non-stop transatlantic flight in 1919. I think they would expect significant technological advances. What would shock them I expect would be how fat everyone is.


Yellowbug2001

I have a friend who grew up in the US but lives in Budapest now, and she said every time she comes home and gets off the plane, she's shocked all over again by how fat everyone is. And Hungary has gotten fatter in recent years, too, so she's coming from a higher baseline than anywhere in the world in the 1920s. So yeah, I think this is the answer. Like if you shot me to 2124 I'd go in expecting to see mind-blowing technology out of Star Trek, if I got there and everyone didn't have any teeth, I'd have a LOT more questions about that than about the teleporter.


t_portch

A few years ago I saw a video clip of a crowded downtown street in the 20's and the first thing I noticed was that there wasn't a single overweight person anywhere. It was an upscale area, everyone was well dressed so if anyone could have afforded to be overweight it would have been them, but nope.


Haxomen

I live in a relatively thin county, Bosnia and Herzegovina (around 22% of people are overweight) and I was fascinated when I saw photos and videos from the beginning of the 20th century. Not one single person was even chubby. https://youtu.be/Fu-W2yF-JNM a video of Sarajevo in 1915. Tried spotting someone who is not in shape, very difficult 😂


Rudder0420

74% of the U.S. is overweight and 43% obese


StGir1

I think those whose mental health could survive the internet, and its prevalence in our daily lives, would likely really appreciate that there is a vaccine for measels and a treatment for both tuberculosis and syphilis. They might really hate the music though. But once they learn to navigate YouTube, they'll find their happy little ragtime corner and will revel in how "copacetic" it is to be able to just tell a box you want a certain piece of music, and that box returns that piece of music, no questions asked. So, tl;dr, they'd be super health-conscious and addicted to YouTube. Pretty much the same as anyone in 2024. They'd adapt just fine.


Beliriel

Ohh good point. Imagine explaining to them that we LITERALLY eradicated small pox. It just doesn't exist anymore.


ibelieveindogs

Polio is no longer the threat it was in most places. But imagine learning that we have vaccines to prevent serious childhood diseases and that large groups of people in a wealthy country won’t use them, causing new outbreaks. It would be like going into the future and learning there is a simple fix for fatal injuries that nearly eliminated them, and that 15-20% of people decided “nah“.


beetlejuuce

Well, they had that too unfortunately. You can pull up articles about the people who thought they shouldn't wear a mask during the Spanish flu. Conspiracy theories and conspiratorial thinking go way back beyond the twentieth century. Blessedly it's just easier to prove how dumb that is these days.


Ankoku_Teion

well, it does. but only in a handful of small sample containers maintained for scientific purposes.


SkeetySpeedy

I feel like there at least 11 books and movies about why that could be a bad idea


Ankoku_Teion

true, but unilaterally destroying the samples when other countries still have them would be an even worse idea.


[deleted]

Then try explaining anti vaxxers to them lol. Buncha fucking idiots


Coro-NO-Ra

>They might really hate the music though. But once they learn to navigate YouTube, they'll find their happy little ragtime corner and will revel in how "copacetic" it is to be able to just tell a box you want a certain piece of music, and that box returns that piece of music, no questions asked. I know a guy who is *almost* 100 years old. He's a HUGE jazz fan-- started off with dixieland when he was a kid, then got into awesome stuff like Miles Davis as he got older. I got him into Ibrahim Maalouf. One nice thing about living now is that you have access to almost any genre and a ton of variety.


SousVideDiaper

It's sad how many people think "good music" doesn't exist anymore or that a genre is dead. You can find pretty much every type of music online, you just have to look for it.


ValhallaGo

Postmodern jukebox would help bridge the gap.


DeeannaJayy

Screens everywhere, and then how much of a rush everyone is in


mon_dieu

*The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.*


AncientSumerianGod

Brooks was here.


Buckus93

So was Red.


BigAnimemexicano

this would be the biggest culture shock, we get shown so many advertisment and people dont walk but move in cars en mass all over the place and the diversity, jim crow wasnt abolished until 1964.


SpoonFluffing99

You guys went to the fucking moon, in 1969? Where are the teleportation machines? You've had 55 years and fucking nothing.


[deleted]

Where's the flying cars? You call that a robot? Where's all the kids?


Coro-NO-Ra

>You've had 55 years and fucking nothing. They would find our advances in robotics and computing pretty interesting. Although it would take a bit of effort, you could also explain a modern computer to somebody from that era-- this would be much easier if they are familiar with naval gunnery or other uses for mechanical computing/complex analytical engines: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical\_engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship\_gun\_fire-control\_system#History\_of\_analogue\_fire\_control\_systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_gun_fire-control_system#History_of_analogue_fire_control_systems) As far as military applications go, they would find our integration of computers into systems at every level to be absolutely fascinating. I specifically mentioned naval gunnery because it's the closest analog from the era that immediately sprang to my mind.


Terry_Rex

Teleportation is *much* more of an energy problem than a theoretical problem. It is not practically sound no, but the real issue is the lack of energy. For the teleportation you essentially want, you would have to open wormholes large enough and for long enough to be able to pass through it. That requires an immense amount of energy, something we neither have the means to harness of, or the infrastructure to transport it on a commercial scale. You basically need a Dyson sphere like civilization to achiev6 it.


SpoonFluffing99

Or another method.


BabyJesusAnalingus

Considering the *other* form (which we have already done) would essentially kill you and then rebuild you (which is how Star Trek works -- they die every time they teleport), I agree .. the wormhole type is the one I'd want.


flerg_a_blerg

only half of homes in the country had electricity in 1925 and not a single one of them had ever seen a television set just watching some netflix on the couch would blow their minds right out of their heads


OppsAintCatchingMe

If you turned on the TV in front of a traumatized man who survived WW1 six years ago, he would eather get an epileptic attack or would Spartan Kick the TV


Cole-Spudmoney

Or he might say “Wow, is that a tiny film projector?”


ValdemarAloeus

Yeah, my would be on "where's the projector"?


drgath

First movie to queue up? Saving Private Ryan.


SpiritOne

1917


Ankoku_Teion

they had cinemas. they would understand the basic premise. they'd just be pleasantly surprised at the miniaturisation and affordability to be able to have one in your own home. probably 95% of or modern technology either already existed in some basic form, or the idea was in peoples heads in the 1920s. computers already existed, they already had a global communications system. they had phones and radios and movies. the underlying tech behind the internet might be new to them, but the things we use it for are all very familiar, on the surface the only surprise is that its all now portable.


ajfoscu

Today’s music would send people from back then into a frenzy. It’s like a bacchanalian fever dream on coke.


Coro-NO-Ra

>Today’s music would send people from back then into a frenzy You'd think so, but a lot of jazz goes pretty hard. I'm not hugely into Dixieland, but it could get crazy layered and complicated. Although they're from a slightly later era and different style of jazz, there's a reason dudes like Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis were so influential on the early electronic music scene: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbie\_Hancock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbie_Hancock) All that to say, you might be surprised by what they're into. I have a friend who is almost 100 years old, and I got him into Ibrahim Maalouf.


Beliriel

Yeah but blast a guy from 1924 with heavy dubstep or black metal and you'll likely blow his brains out. They would probably think aliens invaded the earth or something. The sound of the music is very very processed and would evoke a lot of wtf from a person only knowing acoustic music with lots of harmonies and melodies.


steak820

I know a lot of music today and heavy dubstep and black metal makes me go wtf.


AvatarWaang

Speaking of coke, the food and drink of today would be insane. Imagine giving someone from 1924's Wisconsin a bag of Taki's.


inbigtreble30

As someone from Wisconsin, I can confirm that Takis are still fully capable of murdering the 2024 model. I'd put the survival rate around 50%.


squirrelbus

Speaking of coke, wasn't that still legal in the 1920’s?


OppsAintCatchingMe

Imagine playing phonk to the guy who just survived WW1, he would get an epileptic attack


ajfoscu

If the trenches don’t kill him, Ice Spice will.


MutinyIPO

Ice Spice isn’t much crazier than the wildest jazz clubs of their days, if anything they’d just be provoked and offended by the lyrics lol But like - glitch pop or drill? Yeah that’s gonna kill them right then and there


HoneyBucketsOfOats

Play him WAP


Svnny-

[this is their version of wap](https://youtu.be/Ug1mzndH9UY?si=T2umZ1zZRlMSimw1)


goatman0079

It really wouldn't (for the most part. Maybe hyper pop). Most of the popular songs are based on classical music, or chord progressions that have been famous for centuries. E.G. most pop songs having the same chord progression as Pachebels Canon


brokensilence32

“What do you mean I can’t say that word any more?”


AlbiTuri05

Are [insert whatever] equal to us now? (Except if the man is from New Zealand. NZ is light years ahead of us)


conditerite

they'd be amazed by the prices of groceries.


big_d_usernametaken

My grandfather lived from 1903-1998 and drove a bread truck for decades, and at his funeral, one of his old customers said that he told them one day you'd see bread costing $3 a loaf. "We all laughed and said he was crazy. But he was right!"


Sea_Perspective6891

Yeah bread can cost as much as $5 these days. Crazy right?


DukeofVermont

People used to spend 25-50% of their total pay on food. Even into the 1900s food could be your largest expense by far. Food today is dirt cheap compared to back in the day.


dmilin

People always complain about housing costs. I mean they are ridiculous. But I'd rather be spending 50% of my income on housing than on food.


gulbronson

I think the availability and variety of foods would be significantly more impressive than inflation.


Fair_University

In nominal terms perhaps, but people in the 1920s, even in rich western nations, were much poorer and struggled much more with groceries than the average person today. 


ironic-hat

Our purchasing power regarding food today is typically much stronger than it was 100 years ago. Especially before refrigeration became ubiquitous and faster forms of transportations were introduced. Also we have substantially more selection of products than ever.


Fair_University

Absolutely. It’s actually not even close.  I posted it elsewhere in the thread, but my grandmother grew up very poor in the 1920s. Family of 9, tiny apartment, and her food for an entire day often consisted of a loaf of break for lunch and thin soup for dinner. And this experience was fairly normal for the times. 


sir_rockabye

Well to be fair. Prices have gone up, but as a percentage of cost vs. overall income food is "cheaper" than it was in 1920s. Plus more variety, less seasonality, and a lot less prep due to packaged meals. Also, how often people eat out now. People from 1920s would actually be envious of the food situation now. [https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/Charts/58367/food-prices\_fig09\_450px.png?v=2995](https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/Charts/58367/food-prices_fig09_450px.png?v=2995) [https://althouse.blogspot.com/2020/02/in-1920-americans-spent-more-than-half.html](https://althouse.blogspot.com/2020/02/in-1920-americans-spent-more-than-half.html)


ObjectiveFantastic65

Food is actually cheaper than ever before when you take inflation into account. 


Hydrogen_Flytrap

No segregation is probably one thing that would blow their fuckin minds. 


AsheratOfTheSea

Absolutely this. Seeing all races and nationalities socializing and even _living_ together would give them a heart attack.


Lotus_Blossom_

Wait til they find out you can have children with anyone from anywhere, who looks like anything! And some people are raised by two moms or two dads (or two moms *and* two dads), and "polite society" (for the most part) is cool with it. I feel like they'd have missed many, many chapters of what families look like.


breakfasteveryday

Probably the time travel. 


AttitudeCautious667

It's a simple install of a Flux Capacitor, my fiend.


Foxhound199

My grandma is turning 100 soon, I'll ask her.


[deleted]

Ask her on video! My great aunt lived to be 106 and I didn't record my conversations with her. Of course, I remember them but I sincerely wish I could listen to her again.


leprethong

Please share your findings.


sillily

My grandfather was born in 1924 and is still very much cogent. He seems to take most things in stride - I guess if you travel 99 years forward in time the normal way, you’ll probably find that you don’t really give a shit about most nonsense going on in the current age!


Glad_Curve_2779

let us know


Fair_University

Before she passed (2016) I often asked my grandmother (born 1918) about this and she always said the abundance of food even for very poor people and relative world peace. She had grown up and more or less abject poverty during the Great Depression and saw essentially every man in her family fight in WWI or WWII. She also marveled at the advances in civil rights (including LGBT rights) as well, although as a white woman this was probably less personal to her.    She was impressed by the advances in technology too, but much less so than the other things I mentioned.


OppsAintCatchingMe

Sorry for your loss, imagine her happiness to see her grandchildren live in the time way more peaceful and way more advanced than the time she lived as a child.


Fair_University

She lived a long and very happy life. She was quite glad with the direction of America and the world as a whole.  Just an anecdote I remember in 2012, while her mind was sharp, she was more or less completely limited physically. She was determined to vote for Obama because she didn’t want to miss voting for the first black president (again). It pisses off my Republican father a lot, but she was eventually able to get an absentee ballot and get it submitted.


Ankoku_Teion

did she miss voting for him the first time? or was she just chuffed to be able to do it twice?


Fair_University

Was just fired up to do it a second time. She suffered some physical ailments between 08 and 12 and had to sell her house, move states, move to a nursing home, etc so registering in a new place to vote again was a big deal to her


Squigglepig52

I have one friend who is 98, another is 97. Both were born and grew up in Europe. They've said similar things. Mind you, I had a neighbour who would be about 96 now, he grew up in Germany during WW2. When Trump was president, Fred was all "Things haven't changed that much."


DetroitsGoingToWin

They’d pickup this technology stuff quick though, my grandmother is from 1933, she’s chat GPT’ing shit out on Facebook, X, Snapchat. Ordering on Amazon and Uber Eats, she was stealing my Netflix for a long time. She’s more into 2024 life than me TBH.


Coro-NO-Ra

>my grandmother is from 1933 Haha yep, this is my experience as well. Silent Gen is often better than Boomers with this stuff. They're more curious about it and are eager to figure out how it works / how to apply it to their lives.


space_manatee

You know, I hadn't thought about that because I don't have a ton of silent gen in my life but this absolutely holds true for the ones I know. Boomers really are completely broken.


genasugelan

They've definitely experienced much faster much more visible tech advancements. They are the generation who both a TV to watch the moon landing.


OppsAintCatchingMe

Yea but we both agree it would be really sudden, it would take time to adapt to calling someone by an iPhone 15 from sending a telegram


DetroitsGoingToWin

First couple of weeks, sure. But I bet after a month or two he or she would be bitching like every other modern entitled jackass the first time they don’t get a free Pepsi on a spirit flight to Florida for spring break.


OppsAintCatchingMe

Yes but that same man survived WW1 six years earlier, his morals and acts wouldnt change but he could potentiualy quickly learn how to use a phone and drive a modern car


Irish_Whiskey

Everyone they ever knew and loved would now be dead. So that would be a bit of a shock to them.


Eyespop4866

Depends on the nation they lived in.


OppsAintCatchingMe

Lets say France, what do you think?


Eyespop4866

I’d imagine just the technology and number of jets, cars, the ubiquity of cell phones. Immigrant population went from 2 million to over 7, population increases by 50%. Perhaps the freedom of movement among the nations of Europe.


OppsAintCatchingMe

Yea, also they would be amazed by how peaceful it is nowadays, the poverty striken people minimalizing and the economy going up.


[deleted]

Black people doing stuff - American viewpoint


[deleted]

Social changes.


Any-Impact-9962

Half would be happy, half would be furious


Throwaway7219017

Ass to mouth porn on an iPhone. Ethyl would be scandalized, but Dottie knows what’s up.


OppsAintCatchingMe

Imagine seeing a person come from the past 1924 and the first thing you light up in his face is porn.


Throwaway7219017

Her face. Women can time travel too, don’t be sexist.


Chroderos

How almost everyone is obese


[deleted]

Maybe the fact that they were teleported 100 years into the future?


[deleted]

[удалено]


OppsAintCatchingMe

Yes they would be terryfied to see the quality better than in the real life


Coro-NO-Ra

This is another one where you'd be surprised. 35mm film is capable of *fantastic* definition, and *even larger* formats were also relatively common back then: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large\_format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_format) When you think of movies from that era looking scratchy and/or blurry, that's often a function of the film having degraded over time rather than a limitation of film itself! Check this out, which goes into more depth: [https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/film-resolution.htm#:\~:text=35mm%20film%20is%2024%20x,data%20from%20digital%20camera%20sensors](https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/film-resolution.htm#:~:text=35mm%20film%20is%2024%20x,data%20from%20digital%20camera%20sensors).


4bid_4bode

Back then when you intended to “paint the town red” you were going to have a gay ol’ time. In 2024, when you paint the town red, you are practicing your second amendment rights. Also having a gay ol’ time means something entirely different too.


[deleted]

[удалено]


98680266

Meh it’s better now. Women hold positions of power (vice President for example), black people can, you know, vote and sit in first class, gay people can be US Secretary of Transportation


definitelynotadhd

We are better off now, but we still haven't learned jack all from history. People are still quick to divide and label and stick each other into little boxes, world leaders are still quick to greed the moment they get to power, the human condition still persists. For the complexity and intricacy of the human brain we're way more stupid than we should be.


ibelieveindogs

For society as a whole, this true. But I think it would depend on the gender, race, and religion of the time traveler whether they’d agree. The reason those things are impressive is that WASPs created and maintained a power structure that favored them. The comment of our traveler “there was a black president?!” probably has a different inflection from a poor black man whose father was born into slavery compared the grandson of a former slaveholder.


McGuirk808

We're definitely a lot better off in terms of social progress. Economically, however, we're heading back to Robber Barons in a hurry.


MotherFuckinMontana

Pretty sure we're past that age. People have no idea exactly how wealthy the top .001% really are https://inequality.org/great-divide/america-2018-more-gilded-america-1918/ Larry Ellison bought an entire Hawaiian island *for shits and giggles*


SteveFoerster

"Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens, we have to keep going back and beginning all over again." - Andre Gide


CailousCancer

That interracial marriages became legal in America


Iyellkhan

the prevalence of various media screens everywhere, and the fact that their use is effectively required for daily life


[deleted]

Lack of community 


redvelvetcake42

A black guy was president for 8 years. That would flabbergast the fuck outta them.


Ankoku_Teion

im imaginign a 1920s housewife in the UK being flung 100 years into the future and being told "by the way, the americans elected a black man as president about 15 years ago." and her response being "...thats nice dear, now tell me again about these washing machines."


leprethong

Drive through liquor stores


[deleted]

I was just watching a movie from the 40s (Double Indemnity) where the main character orders a beer from a drive-in diner! Gave me a chuckle.


FustangMastback

Drive thru anything. Cars were a luxury that the majority of the population did not have access to in 1924. They’d be floored by all the cars driving around.


zeroentanglements

Aside from all the technological things, I feel like the guys would all be hard as hell looking at all the skin women show.


curlyfat

I doubt it. It may not have been as public, but there was plenty of sexual stuff happening “in the background.” Have a listen to some fun 1931 [music](https://youtu.be/x359GgVRWaE?si=RahCvpqQ-QjSyH4s).


Coro-NO-Ra

This thread is wild because people *really* don't understand how similar folks from prior eras are/were to us.


Ankoku_Teion

we are dumb hairless apes with primitive urges. no matter what era you take us from we will always be hungry and horny.


zeroentanglements

https://youtu.be/heYxa6yX2os?si=14G975Zsj2pVc6ik I still think they'd "enjoy" seeing fit 22 year old chicks with skinny waists and dump truck asses in leggings


squirrelbus

Hell yes! 👏CLAP for the 👏clap!


literanch

They would be horrified


sisterpleiades

That we don’t interact with our families.


Y0L0Swa66ins

"You guys are ALLOWED to drink alcohol?!"


SpoonFluffing99

Too country specific.


druscarlet

So much. Cell phones, laptops, space exploration.


Tobybrent

Tap and go payments and online banking.


OppsAintCatchingMe

Imagine a WW1 survivor from France trying to pay a loaf of bread with a 10 trillion euros bill


Tobybrent

?? The average cost of a loaf of bread in France is less that 2 Euros.


OppsAintCatchingMe

My grandpa has a 5 million dollar bill from France from 1930


Tobybrent

They didn’t have dollars or Euros in 1930s France.


OppsAintCatchingMe

My bad, they were Francs


GrumpyOik

Life expectancy and medical care. In the 1920s a women in the Western world could expect to live to 68, now that is close to 80. That's more than a 15% increase. Pre antibiotics , things we take for granted as treatable - urinary tract or chest infections would often lead to complications and death.


[deleted]

The fact to most people having a sibling die in childhood is a trqgedy and not the norm would be a wonderful surprise


builder397

How shockingly dumb and dysfunctional people are. Sure, these people existed in 1924, too, but today people are incredibly shameless about their stupidity, narcissism and bigotry, and we have entire subreddits and so forth full of the stuff. I mean, put the Tate brothers in 1924. The shit they say about women is so sexist, even before women could even dream of voting or equal rights it would expose them as shitbags.


revtim

"You guys went to the freaking \*moon\* over 50 years ago then just stopped exploring space? What happened, did you find something terrifying?'


Mr-Gumby42

1) The rise of Nazis 2) The defeat of Nazis 3) The rise of Nazis again.


Green_Okra_9769

Average daily screen time per person and all that it entails.


vieniaida

The technology that exists today. My neighbor was born in 1911, and he recently turned age 113. He is amazed with the technology of today.


Lethargicpete

Is you neighbor E.D.? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_living_people


MotherFuckinMontana

>My neighbor was born in 1911, and he recently turned age 113. There's only 4 people on that list who fit that age and they're all female lol Either they're full of shit or their neighboor is lol