If someone from the 1950s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain

[Thaluikhain]

Explaining why nobody has slapped the ever-loving shit out of Honey Boo-boo and all of her family yet would be pretty hard.

I don't think this one is accurate. I actually think a person from the 1950s would be downright amazed by the fact a "normal person" has their own TV show. I reckon they'd love it.

Likewise, is it not basically a modern form of slum tourism? Look at those funny poor people...yeah, been round for ages.

This was the one I was going to use. A black man leading the United States would have been fucking crazy in the 1950s.

Yeah, that is a good one, though, really, it only stopped being so the day the results got in.

Locally, that'd we'd have an unmarried atheist women with no kids as PM, but that's a variant of the same basic idea.

 

[Varrdy]

I often say that it would be interesting to show someone from the 50's / 60's an iPhone (for example) and see what they say when I tell them it has a 1 Ghz processor, 16GB of storage (my 3GS is getting on a bit!) and so-on - they'd go ga-ga!

Sadly I would also have to explain that the mobile phone has also lead to the rise of what Viz calls "Kewl Chix"

 

[SillyBear]

Likewise, is it not basically a modern form of slum tourism? Look at those funny poor people...yeah, been round for ages.

Yeah exactly and people from the '50s weren't anywhere near as pretentious as people today. They wouldn't be turning their noses up about questioning the morality of child beauty pageants. They would have loved it and would have found it intriguing.

Yeah, that is a good one, though, really, it only stopped being so the day the results got in.

Not really. People were calling for a black president for around twenty years before Obama got in. By the time the early 2000's rolled around I think the overwhelming majority of Americans had no problem with the idea.

Locally, that'd we'd have an unmarried atheist women with no kids as PM, but that's a variant of the same basic idea.

Yeah definitely. You know what though? I think Australian men from the 1950s would be more shocked that a black man is in charge of the USA than American men would have been. Just some food for thought. Australia was a racist shithole until the 70s and social idealism and equality was far less represented than it was in the states. Remember, socially speaking 1950s USA had a lot more going for it than 1950s Australia. The roles have kind of changed now though.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Not really. People were calling for a black president for around twenty years before Obama got in. By the time the early 2000's rolled around I think the overwhelming majority of Americans had no problem with the idea.

Not sure about that. Maybe they'd say they had no problem with it, and angrily deny it if someone claimed it of them, though.

Yeah definitely. You know what though? I think Australian men from the 1950s would be more shocked that a black man is in charge of the USA than American men would have been. Just some food for thought. Australia was a racist shithole until the 70s and social idealism and equality was far less represented than it was in the states. Remember, socially speaking 1950s USA had a lot more going for it than 1950s Australia. The roles have kind of changed now though.

Not sure about that, Australia changed a lot after WW2, a lot of immigration happened suddenly at that time.

OTOH, hardly an expert, you could well be right.

 

[themilo504]

1 The cold war Is over.

2 world war 2 video games.

3 rule 34.

4 the popularity of Japanese culture In the west.

5 maybe the fact that Luxemburg or Norway are really rich, I don?t know or that was already the case in the 1950.

 

[spartan231490]

Honestly? Probably integration. Everything else is impressive yes, but it's conceptually consistent with what they knew. Internet? Combo of giant library and instant mail. Jets? Mechanical birds. National shifts? Well look at what happened to US in the 40s. From 19th to the biggest military superpower. It's all conceptually understandable, but with how the average man looked at whites and blacks in the 50s, to see full integration is conceptually beyond their scope.

 

[VodkaKnight]

Anything to do with Computers.
Or the internet, for that matter.
Tumblr is a weird place.

 

[Tony2077]

i think the world in general considering how different things are now and how messed up some stuff is

 

[songnar]

How that person got here would be pretty tough to explain, I expect.

 

[Pseudoboss]

The current state of technology.
"Did you get to mars yet?" "Umm, no."
"Do you have a moon base?" "No."
"What about flying cars?" "Nope"
"sattelites?" "Amazingly, yes. We have lots of those."
"What about space stations?" Kinda. . . But they're really really expensive and we don't have that many of them. You can't just take a trip up there whenever you want."
"Okay, what do you have?" "Well, we kinda have near-instantaneous communication to people throughout the world, the ability to make calls from anywhere in a device that fits in my pocket and is millions of times faster and billions of times more efficient both in terms of space and energy, than what's in your time, not to mention actually understandable. We can communicate with things at a distance, like, for example, I can control my lights from over here using this computer that I have in my pocket. Our TVs are actually in color, not giant bricks and operate by creating and destroying crystals extremely rapidly."
"Wow, you guys must have all your problems solved, you don't have to work anymore, have solved world hunger and have your every whim catered to by amazingly humanlike robots." "Well. . . Umm, no. We're pretty much in a shinier state than you guys were."

 

[Zak757]

How exactly a picture of somebodies face with two lines of thick white text above and below it is considered "humor" in our society.

 

[emeraldrafael]

That I have a phone, that i can use to call people around the world, search a thing that they may not even know existed or if they did was only really for the government, watch television shows in colour, and listen to music that i can buy from said thing that they can't really see or touch, and that the majority of what its used for is to call someone a fag and send people pcitures of themselves including their privates.