Which historical figures would you like to see on social media?

In My Humble Opinion
1

You manage to send a self-powering, locked-down smartphone back in time and into the hands of some famous person who died in the 20th century or earlier. You get them registered with a social media account of your choice (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or whatever) and they duly start sending posts into the future, via a one-way time-warp Internet link. (They can only send posts, but not read or reply to anyone else’s!) Which historical figures would you most like to get set up this way?

My picks:

  • Leonid Brezhnev. Man, a Twitter or Mastodon account would be comedy gold. I’m imagining something like @RikerGoogling crossed with @realDonaldTrump.
  • Samuel Pepys. Already famous in modern times for his long-running and long-winded diary; would be interesting to get a real-time condensed version in 280-character chunks à la 2017-era Twitter.
  • Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. A pioneer in colour photography, he travelled thousands of kilometres to document the peoples of the multiethnic Russian empire. I would love to see his Instagram channel.
2

Maybe Hitler, circa 1935, if an automated “LOL!” reply could be sent to each of his posts. When he started throwing Führer Fits™ it could be a hoot, and with luck he’d remove himself from history.

3

I would pick some literary giant, Shakespeare, Cervantes or Goethe, to see if their wit also worked in a social media context.

ETA: my favorite literary genius, Franz Kafka, wouldn’t want to have anything of it, I’m sure.

4

Philip K. Dick. He would certainly bring something unique to the social media scene.

5

I could imagine Mark Twain coming up with some good posts. Or Ambrose Bierce–his Devil’s Dictionary entries would make good tweets.

6

Abraham Lincoln

7

Edward Abbey

8

Benjamin Franklin.

9

FWIW, John Quincy Adams kept a journal of tweet-sized entries and for the last dozen or more years someone has been tweeting them under his name 200 years to the day of each entry.

10

Oscar Wilde.

11

Nice one!

12

Captain James Cook. He wasn’t particularly verbose in his journals, but maybe he’d loosen up in an attempt to gain followers.

Frederick Law Olmstead. He’s best known for his landscaping career, but in the 1850s he traveled the Slave states as a somewhat undercover journalist for the New York Daily Times. He subsequently wrote three books about his experiences.

Davy Crockett

13

Rasputin would likely have some interesting posts. Leonardo da Vinci. Darwin on the Beagle. Teenage Marco Polo. Benjamin Franklin. Akhenaten.

14

Great choices!

15

Robert Walpole
UK’s First Lord of the Treasury 1721-1742
Considered to be the first Prime Minister and he defined, indeed still defines, many elements of the role for 300 years.

16
17

Ben Franklin is the first one that comes to mind.
Thomas Payne, Mozart, Twain, William Jennings Bryan, Marcel DuChamp, Dali, Lord Byron, Nellie Bly, all those wonderfully witty suffragettes. The Italian Renaissance in general.

18

Nostradamus. Bullshit in, bullshit out, perfect for social media. Can’t leave conspiracies to QAnon alone!

19

Another vote for Twain and Ben Franklin, two of my favorite historical wits.

It’d also be cool if James Madison had live-tweeted the constitutional convention!

20

Dorothy Parker