Ask Lemmy

Why the Nazis are back

I'm just going to steal the response I read years ago.

"I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers."

I'm going to go on a different angle on this one and say that we are much tougher on sexual harassment. I feel like a lot of people from the 1950s who have grown up on pulp sci-fi like Flash Gordon could accept a lot of modern technology and the internet as basically just magic. To be fair is how a lot of modern people also accept it. But I don't think they would be able to process the move towards egalitarianism that we have taken.

That is not to say that modern society is egalitarian only that we have made good strides in achieving that aim.

Edit: Turns out Gordon is from the '70s, but other pulp sci-fi exist so my statement stands.

That smoking is bad for them. You'd just be banging your head against their socially-acceptable-at-the-time drug addiction.

"Yes, they are allowed to be on the same bus as us. No, we don't call them that anymore"

Things they considered morally fine (smoking, dropping litter, 40 year olds dating 16 year olds) is morally reprehensible, while things they thought were morally wrong or even outlawed are totally acceptable (homosexually, porn, divorce).

Why the Nazis are back, and in America of all places

Depends a lot on the color of their skin.

We walk around with a little rectangle in our pocket that gives us access to the sum total of human knowledge, but we mostly use it for looking at funny captioned pictures, the same pictures over and over just with different captions.

It's called a phone but no one ever uses it as one.

The price of housing

"You see, the file itself can be copied by anyone, but this one little piece of metadata can never be duplicated. That means you own the file."

#3 Why we still haven't got colonies on the moon

#2 Climate change

#1 That fascism is back

The Internet, social media and how we can access absolutely everything from this tiny device

Most difficult imho would be to explain why we haven't advanced any further. If the person is 50 in 1950 he started with horse carriages and saw development to intercontinental bombers, rockets etc. The landing on moon would astonish him, advances in medical sciences and computing too but he probably would ask: "And what are you using that neat little gadgets for?"

You have to goto the store to buy milk instead of having it delivered fresh

How easily we can know anything, yet how diligently we fail to learn anything.

That we’ve been to the moon - in there 60s - but haven’t been back or been out further. I think it would just be against all their expectations.

A lack of 'whites only' signs.

School shooter drills

That shitty actor from Bedtime for Bonzo becomes president.

We still work 8 hours/day!

nature and resources are not infinite. you are responsible for your actions no matter how terribly hard your childhood was. you cant buy a house for a years loan. we are all fucked.

A significant chunk of Americans support Russia over their own country and are actually opposed to the US providing aid to a country being attacked by Russia. I mean, I guess they had the Red Scare, but this is more Americans opposed to Left-leaning politics who support Russia's authoritarianism.

Ronald Reagan was President for 8 years.

Statistically? Ok, you have to learn Mandarin and there are these things called time zones but you only get one but shouldhave at least 3.

Like 1 out of 4 people at the time were from China.

The return of the Nazis

How after World War 2 we didn't truly learn and still fight wars over racism, nationalism and other reasons that keep us from uniting.

How we managed to ruin the earth to a severe degree in just 50 years or so.

And video games.

And The Flintstones.

How nothing got better and people like killing children in the school system as sport. Oh, and ask this person what pronouns they want for their identity.