If the Internet and ATS existed in history: What would you post?

This thread is based on a fantasy that the Internet was around in ancient or historical times.
All options are open, as long as posters give an idea of the period and the subject matter.

For example:
Period: Ancient Rome
Subject: The unfair conquest and enslavement of untouched tribal forest people across Germania and Gaul.
Forum: Roman/Europe conflict - The Central Europe Conflict.

Dear Caesar
As a loyal subject and a born Roman, I would like to express my disgust at the treatment of the remaining pristine tribes within our Empire.

Although the divinity of Julius Caesar is not in question, his conquest of the Helveti and other Gemanic tribes is highly regrettable, and even the Triumviate in Rome was not sure whether to charge him for human rights abuses in what is now France.

The Gauls lived free and in harmony with their environment.
Then we sent our armies to conquer them, simply for the gold in their rivers.
Our weapons were vastly superior, and eventually we starved them out of their fortresses, and wantonly slaughtered thousands of them.
Then we kept their chieftains in a prison for five years, and chopped off the hands of their imprisoned warriors, sending them home handicapped to their ruined villages.

Can we not leave bygones at that?
Can we not let the slaves from these lands go free?
Is it not enough that we wear their trinkets and jewelery, and copy their hairstyles when bleaching our hair with goat's milk?
If we release them now they might return to what remains of their forests, and resume their unique lifestyles without any harm to any of us.

History will remember our genocide against these tribes.
Might is not always right.
Let the Germanic and Helveti slaves free!
What wrong is there in a Germanic hunter in a dark forest, just because he enjoys living in a filthy hut with his women, and enjoys the taste of boars and deer?
Let them drink their mead and inhale their hemp.
Rome is already far more degenerate in such matters.

The Helveti are no longer a threat to us.
The Angles are no threat to us - and one day somebody will call their enslaved children on our markets "angels" instead of "Angles".

Regards,
A loyal Citizen.

reply to post by halfoldman


You do know you did not need internet to send letters in antiquity? Caesar would probably not read post on a random conspiracy site anyway.

reply to post by TsukiLunar

The powers that be probably still don't care, and its not about who read what, but rather about what could have prompted people to send it.

Of course it's more an exploration of our own post-modernist paradigm, and how we can find out more about our current values by applying them to history.

reply to post by halfoldman


You would be called a radical extremist, you know. And besides, growing up in that time you probably would call those views extremism too.

You're writing everything in hindsight.

reply to post by TsukiLunar

Excellent point.

But is history just hindsight?
Or can history be current propaganda?
Who writes history?

reply to post by halfoldman


A lot of people write the history. I hear the phrase "The winner writes it" but its as if people that use that phrase forget that there are others recording stuff besides this "winner".

Generally, something isn't truly known as history unless it is confirmed by multiple sources. I certainly like to think we have a fairly accurate view of history.

I was in the library the other day, looking for a quick read whilst waiting for a bus. In their very small History section I found a book about the English resistance to William the Conqueror and the Normans just after the battle of 1066.

I can imagine that if the internet had existed back then Hereward the Wake and men like him could have better planned and co-ordinated their battle strategies and, with any luck, kicked out William and his barons.

Fast forward a few years and I might post a link to this wonderful site featuring the Bayeux Tapestry:

www.bayeuxtapestry.org.uk...

(I've taken a bit of a liberty here because this is the Victorian copy of the original, but you get my drift. I hope )

Period: The Caribbean 1492
Subject: Christopher Columbus must pay for his visit!
Forum: Rant

Dear Queen Isabella
A few weeks back one of your subjects came to our beach on San Salvador (the Bahamas).
He brought with him a whole crew of smelly men that enjoyed our hospitality, but did not pay the bill.
I think we deserve at least another two bags of glass beads and mirrors, after they shat all across my mom's manioc garden by our drinking water.

Then they brought these giant creatures, which they rode like dolphins, and the one ate all the dried leaves form my dad's tool-shed.

At first we thought it was our cannibalistic Carib neighbors coming to steal a person with a huge canoe, and when we saw it was just ugly men from another country we were so relieved, we called them "people from heaven".

We gave them our food and water, and also some of our cigars.
That made them go green and cough, but now we seem to be coughing non-stop.

On the second night we all danced, and they shared their wine, until they lay naked and unwashed in our hammocks for almost a whole moon.
We could tolerate the fact that they smelled like rotten turtle eggs, and were hairy like monkeys, but the fact that they wouldn't wear a stitch of body paint over their naked chests made it indecent to our children.

While our island is green, and our sea is rich with fish, we still work hard for every morsel of food and fresh water.

Therefore I think it is only fair that we be given something substantial in return for the stay of all these men.
All we really got was a cross on our beach.
Columbus said he would bring us a bigger one, but we don't really need it.
When he comes to pick up the last one (which we haven't touched) could you please ask him to bring my mom and dad something nice for all their effort?

Mr. Columbus promised us that he would be back, and he had such a powerful glint in his eyes that I knew he meant it, and I'm sure he will return just to settle the bill.

Kind regards,
Guanahini (Taino Princess of San Salvador).

Period: The Bronze Age (Old Testament)
Subject: I slept with you husband, deal with it.

Dear Sarai
I know I slept with your husband, and you want to kill me right now.

Please understand, he came to my tent with a satchel of wine and whispered sweet nothings about some prophesy.

Please consider that there was a lot wrong with YOU that he moaned about too.
He said you'd let yourself go since you turned 84, and you never wore perfume anymore, and your breath was like a pig's bum.

Although I'm young, I've been around some Babylonian blocks, and I could help you two with those issues.
Jobs are hard to come by these days, and when your anger subsides I promise never to touch your hubby again. In fact, I will frighten him away with a stick or a donkey's jaw bone.

Please forgive me.

I remain your loyal slave,
Hagar.

Just posted on twitter "Genghis Khan just ordered the invasion of the Jin Dynasty"
Just Posted on facebook "cap stone of third pyramid in giza in place yeaaaaaa!!!!!!"

Period: 1912
Subject: Unsinkable ship sinks
Forum: Rant

White Star Line
Sirs, I am most unhappy with the fact that you guaranteed me captaincy of a ship that was supposedly unsinkable.

Currently I am hardly standing in a horizontal position, and this ship is most definitely sinking.

I hope everyone takes note of your shockingly bad service and fake promises, and that nobody ever uses White Star Line products ever again.

And no, it was not a torpedo by the Jerries, but a mere brush against an iceberg!

Last regards,
Captain Edward John Smith.

Period: Prehistory, perhaps 20 000 years ago.
Subject: End Neanderthal segregation.
Forum: Other current events/Fragile Earth

The Tribal Council of Cro-Magnons
Cave-ladies and cave-gentlemen:
We have lived in this land now for countless generations, and we have had various relationships with our native Neanderthal brothers, from hunting them down, to letting the odd one live amongst us as the village idiot.
We've come a long way from fearing them in the darkness of the forest, or kidnapping their children as beasts of burden and pets.

Anyone who knows a Neanderthal can understand that they are sentient beings, even when they can only count to three, whereas we can count to twenty.
So what if they are not always perfectly cave-trained, and have little accidents on the cave-bear rug, or they suddenly start gnawing at your legs?
We have known their women, and they have known our women, and many of us are hairier and more robust because our grandmothers had a taste for their men, just like our men have a taste for mountain-goats.

Once we took their best caves and hill-tops, but we very much ignored each other since then.
Now my Neanderthal brothers are weak and scarce.
The more they disappear, the more our experience of living in this land disappears.
I hear of some villages that still feed scraps to the poor wretches.
Let us stop this at once.
We should not habituate them, but encourage them to go back to the wild.
They were born free, and should live as free as the cattle.

OK, perhaps we killed most of the wooly rhinoceros and mammoths, but further south they can still find the odd deer and fish.
They're just regular people, and we shouldn't stereotype them in our cave art.
Those who live amongst us deserve respect, since none of our women can carry so much wood, or drag so much water up a steep hill.

So I say stop this specism right now, and kiss a Neanderthal today!

Regards,
Fred Flintbone.

Period: AD 25
Topic:

New Messiah in Judea! Is this one any better than the last?
Most Romans will know by now that the Judeans make up one of every four people in our Empire, and that they are by far the most numerous and strangest minority we have conquered.

The new Judean Messiah claims to encourage giving unto the Caesar, and unlike other trouble-makers in the region, he seems unconcerned with worldly things.

Rather oddly, he seems to attract good pagan people to his Judean sect, and rumors have it that even some of our courageous soldiers and colonial wives are attracted to his wiles.

But mostly the Judeans seem unconcerned, and go about their business as usual.
Interviews before the Temple Mount in their holy city have been met with blank stares and confusion by our team. The team also reports that while it is true that Judea is terribly hot by day, the nights are cool, and far from being a colonial back-water, it is very cosmopolitan, and the benefits of Rome are as popular as anywhere else in the known world.

Period: Tennessee, 1925
Forum: Creationism and Darwin's meanderings/Rant.
Subject: Do not fine Scopes: Flog him!

Dear Judge John T. Raulsten
Sir, many of the good men at our Gentleman's Club believe that the circus caused by this Snopes fellow is nothing more than a willful publicity stunt to popularize that Darwin imbecile and his ridiculous theories.
However, I for one still believe that some common sense ingrained by our God-fearing, honest Anglo-Saxon ancestors still prevails in your fair land, and that this mind-boggling notion of "free speech" for moral anarchists will not stand.

If that is the case, we suggest that Mr. Snopes should be given a sound flogging instead of a "nolle prosequi" fine.
This would convince the civilized world that this trial - concerning the flagrant abuse of your own Butler Act - is not just for show.
It will furthermore reinforce some sense of discipline and consequences to our wayward youth, who seem obsessed with French art and decadence.

According to the defense, civilized men come from the same stock as the beasts, or even the lower races!
This is an outrage!
So we share our ancestry with 35 000 other mammals?
I suppose having a Texan steak then reduces us to being cannibals.
God made all the races of men and beasts, and ordered their classes and estates.
Nothing could be more obvious, as any hunter with good trophy heads of a Rhinoceros or bushman can understand.
And then these disruptive buffoons add that we came from the Old World monkeys, when Africa has produced nothing worth seeing since the pyramids, Timbuktu, the Kingdom of the Kongo, Great Zimbabwe, and the Zulus and Boers who slaughtered our troops.

Imagine the USA were told that one day you might have a President who appears simian and cannot string together a sentence, or one of your future leaders is a descendant of a Luo tribesman!
That is just as preposterous as suggesting that an actor could one day lead your nation.
Let us not play dice with civilization.
Why not work harder at making Prohibition universally legal and enforceable?
That is a great and workable idea that will improve the lives of millions.

Best Regards,
The Secretary:
The Gentleman's Drinking and Smoking Club,
Happy Valley,
Kenya.

Period: 1650.
Forum: Chit-chat.
Subject: Ugly birds ruin the romantic coastline of Mauritius.

Dear fellow artists and explorers
As our literature has also discussed recently, much of our newly discovered lands and islands are a stark mixture of romantic beauty, and common vulgarity.

Perhaps nature can be red in tooth and claw, but nature can be tamed and improved, just like the savage child can learn the harpsichord, or a plot of weeds and useless forest can be turned into a delightful garden.

It is such a disappointment for the eye to see the coastline of Mauritius, and it's fragrant lushness, and then when one steps ashore one is confronted with the most revolting bird in the world!

Words can not suffice to describe this hideous pigeon.
It swaggers about with it's lewd posterior like a crippled turkey.
It cannot fly, nor does it pick the soil with it's over-sized beak.
It has completely outlived its natural purpose.

As exploring men we understand that we face not only savages, bears and tigers.
These creatures are purely Cartesian, and when they cry or squawk it is just the air coming out.

However, we also face the ugliness of nature.
All the kings and queens have beautiful gardens - and we know that this is how natural beauty should look.
Our marvelous and tasteful royalty wanted all manners of exotic beasts for their collections; but none will want this atrocity of a bird.

Artists should refuse to draw or paint this creature.
What is worse is that it cannot be cooked to any degree of satisfaction, and we need to begin an effort to remove it, since even the common sailor refuses to chew on it's breasts.

Nevertheless, most of the countrysides from the Cape to Batavia could be made into something useful and pleasing to the senses.

For the moment we can set the example as illustrators.
Just look at the great southern continent, for example.
With a bit of imagination their big bouncing beasts could be made to look like a graceful deer!
Or their amusing trees could almost seem like tea-trees!

Whatever the case, I refuse to return to the company or any court with a drawing of an unsightly and indecent bird.

Regards:
A loyal artist and explorer (to whatever king or queen rules when I get back).

Period: 1900
Forum: Puns and Jokes!
Subject: The Women's Vote in Britain or America? Just a bad joke for our brave lads.

Voting Women: A Joke, or the demise of civilization?
As a lady, and a member of the weaker sex, I find the behavior of some suffragettes unacceptable.
These are clearly pampered upper class girls who need to be married at once, and should rather spend their days spring-cleaning, becoming mothers, and hosting social events.

These misguided young radicals would rather starve themselves, and lose all their child-bearing curves, instead of enduring wholesome functions.
Some of these girls need our help and an icy bath at once.
What normal woman wants to be as thin as a rake?
Force-feeding them like geese is just a waste of time and oat porridge.
What these young women need is cod-liver oil and prayer, and they will stop their shenanigans within a week or two.

My personal suspicion is that we are merely being cuckolded by the cheeky humor of some our young ladies.
Of course they do not mean that women should actually get the vote, or study at Universities.
How outrageously silly - a degree in embroidery and knitting?
It's just a bit of fun, just like some lads get into a dress occasionally to entertain their fellow troops.

However, there are some hysterical women who do mean what they write to our press, but most of our girls remain uncorrupted and do not ever want the vote: that would be unnatural.
Men have the vote for what is their business; just like I have the vote on the annual Sewing Circle, and The Summer Garden of the Year Committee.
I already have my suffrage, and I thank our sporting gentlemen for that.

Ms. Green,
Secretary of the Summer Garden of the Year Committee,
Eel Pie Island.

Period: 1820
Forum: Fragile Earth
Subject: The Great Auk

One day they will joke: "Penguins only live on the South Pole!"
Hunters and sea-men from Massachusetts to Sicily have been complaining that the Great Auk is sighted less frequently.

Perhaps we have overused this bird, and we should give it some time to recuperate?

I know many villages along the Atlantic depend on it, from Greenland to Europe, and the New World.

Knowing the habits of these birds, they bond for life, and the female only produces one egg per season.
I know God gave this earth and its creations to man, but to see men walking over these eggs for fun is just wrong.
It must surely also be wrong to kill so many birds that one can float their bodies behind a ship.

I know men laugh at me, for I know this penguin since my youth.
All the noble courts of Europe should put restrictions on their capture, and sensible numbers on their hunting.

Regards,
Inmate 616,
The House for Fools and the Insane.