What If There Had Been Social Media in the 1960s?

From the Vietnam to Black Power to hippie counterculture —which movements would’ve been ensconced in cyberspace?

More than a year ago, I was given an idea by a friend of mine who’d co-founded a writer’s group I eventually joined. She suggested I write a series exploring alternate timelines in which technology had evolved earlier and influenced American history in groundbreaking ways. This series of essays ponders how these variant timelines could have played out and shifted our civilization’s development.

Previously, I’ve crafted alternate timelines that speculate on how social media might have changed the American landscape, respectively, if introduced during the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, or 1950s.

Next up: the 1960s. My previous inflection points have been the 1918 Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, World War II, and the rise of McCarthyism.

Rather than using the 1918 Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, World War II, or McCarthyism and the Cold War as springboards for mass mobilization, I’ll look at what relationship might have existed between the Vietnam War and a hypothetical social media trend of an alternate 1960s.

If we’d had Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Zoom, Pinterest, and TikTok back then…in what ways would these venues have illuminated the conflicting life philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ho Chi Minh?

Good Feelings Become Bad Omens

Moving up the past timelines, this chain of events would have seen vinyl records, TV, radar, and motion pictures blossoming during the 1890s (assuming that radios and telephones went mainstream during “the Era of Good Feelings”).

As America prepared to usher in the Twentieth Century, sound and moving pictures would have brought the rest of the world alive within U.S. borders. From their living rooms, Americans could have seen New Zealander women celebrate attaining the right to vote. We’d have been horrified by the carnage of the Greenwich Observatory terrorist attacks and the inhumanity shown to one’s fellow man during the Leper Wars on Kaua’i and Molokai.

The “Gay Nineties” (closing out the Gilded Age) may have taken on a completely different connotation. The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair could have featured technology that ignited attendees’ desire for change and progress even more fiercely than it did in our reality.

During that alternate decade of technological innovation, you’d have the likes of William Jennings Bryan, John Calderwood, and Jacob Coxey taking to the airwaves to champion those stuck in poverty as well as the working class. Their messages would have been competing with entrepreneurs of that era consumed with maximizing profit and consumption: Andrew Carnegie, George Pullman, Joseph Pulitzer, Hiram Stevens Maxim, Elizabeth Fleischman, and Nikolas Tesla amongst their giants.

You’d have celebrities leveraging their social capital by transforming it into political capital. Baseball outfielder Jim O’Rourke (“Orator Jim”), outlaw Crawford Goldsby (“Cherokee Bill”), and gold prospector Kate Carmack may have relished the spotlight. Their actions would have magnified public tensions over American imperialism, such as Indigenous genocide and the Spanish-American War. The latter conflict should have been an onramp for power players such as William Randolph Hearst, Henry Teller, and Frederick Russell Burnham to wield influence.

Another consequence of essential media coming to prominence during the Gilded Age could have been a greater merging of activism with literature and philosophy. H.G. Wells, Stephen Crane, William James, and E.E. Smith would have been the top booksellers of this era. In short order, early feminists may have also used the literary world as an avenue to share their views. Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, and Alice Stone Blackwell might have written immaculate pieces for mass audiences that accelerated the women’s suffrage movement.

Of course, competing narratives would have arisen. A league of Christian feminists would have inevitably broken off to infuse the goal of temperance (against alcohol) into the broader objective of women’s equality. We would have seen Mary Hunt, Frances Willard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Emily Lee Sherwood Ragan taking steps to persuade Americans that Prohibition needed to happen. Pro-Black solutions shepherded by racial justice forefathers Pap Singleton, Henry McNeal Turner, and Edward Wilmot Blyden would have included promoting the voluntary repatriation of Black people to hospitable parts of the African continent.

Still, progress would slink along at a snail’s pace until the tutelage of the home computer during the 1950s. Assuming the Eisenhower era saw American households acquire PCs or Macs with similar ferocity as we saw during the Clinton and Bush eras of our time, McCarthyism would have gone out of style a lot faster due to the individual citizens’ self-empowerment by being able to cross-check facts against Joseph McCarthy’s disinformation campaign.

A Multi-Front Political War

Crisper TV technology should have theoretically boosted John F. Kennedy’s popularity even more. But the drawback could have been an increased risk of his clandestine activities (such as Kennedy’s affair with Marilyn Monroe) getting exposed in real-time. How forgiving would the American public have been of him? That may have depended on what skeletons of Richard Nixon’s or Barry Goldwater’s the tabloids exposed.

If Kennedy’s assassination had still occurred, the national mourning would have been even more intense as the World Wide Web arose to magnify America’s collective grief. As the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson still would have assumed a heroic mantle for pushing through civil rights reforms and anti-poverty programs.

On the GOP side, Barry Goldwater — perhaps the original Twentieth Century incarnation of the junkyard dog model that would be emulated by Donald Trump, half-a-century later — would have undoubtedly steamrolled over rivals Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., and Richard Nixon in the Republican primaries. Much like Trump, Goldwater’s emergent technique of openly berating his opponents, copiously and shamelessly, could have attracted a MAGA-esque following when aided by electronic media.

This would have led to the ultimate showdown between Johnson and Goldwater. As the 1964 General Election approached, social media messages surely would have painted Johnson as a tyrannical Good Ole Boy — with Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act being the final straw for white supremacists (and their sympathizers).

Yet, I still tend to believe Johnson would have come out on top, that year. Goldwater wouldn’t have been able to overcome his reputation as a crass warmonger. Electorally, Goldwater’s ambivalence over nuclear holocaust and erasing the safety net of Social Security may have cost him the race — although with Johnson achieving much less of a landslide than he did in our reality.

In his first full term, Johnson might have suffered an even greater downfall when it came to him botching up U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Millions of angry hippies and progressives would have been bombarding President Johnson, daily, via Facebook and TikTok. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey would have been stuck between a rock and a hard place: either defending his boss with mealy-mouthed indifference, or taking a stand against Johnson but pissing off the Yellow Dog Democrats in the process.

Such an existential crisis for Humphrey might have enabled Eugene McCarthy to run a stronger and more robust 1968 primary campaign. Even if Robert F. Kennedy was still the favorite, McCarthy could have been in a position to greatly overshadow Humphrey in the aftermath of RFK’s assassination.

The reemergence of Richard Nixon, damaged by Goldwater’s rhetoric from four years earlier, might have been avoided altogether. The 1968 General Election would have been either Eugene McCarthy vs. Richard Nixon (which McCarthy would have won if he’d marketed himself well, such as branding himself as “The Sane McCarthy” in contrast to Joseph McCarthy) or Eugene McCarthy vs. Nelson Rockefeller (a more evenly-matched showdown).

But a still-living RFK would have defeated them all!

Either way, Watergate may never have happened, in this timeline. The Goldwater-to-McCarthy voters of this parallel universe could have mirrored the Obama-to-Trump voters of 2016 in our reality.

Our Nation’s Tie-Dyed Soul

Along with antiwar passion, platforms such as Twitter and Zoom would have amplified the collective grief over Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, I believe there would have been more synergy between Black and White folks in an America where Dr. King’s death played out in front of cameras — and got replayed on an endless loop.

The real question would have been: Which voices could have risen to the top the fastest, and won over the most hearts and minds?

In a cyberspace-boosted era following the RFK and MLK assassinations, countless uncompromising voices may have attempted to elbow their way to the front of the crowd. Could their harmful rhetoric have emboldened reactionary conservatives to double down on misogynistic, white supremacist, and heteronormative narratives?

Ultimately, the long-term success of these counterculture movements throughout the 1960s would have hinged on how well key activists could have united and threaded together the interests of Black, White, Latine, Asian, Indigenous, heterosexual, queer, female, male, impoverished, middle-class, and religiously-diverse citizens.

President Johnson would have been a common target for American ire. But so would Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon.

Ultimately, blogging and video-posting and organized in-person events would have needed to be delivered by relatable and reasonable public figures.

With the highest-quality combination of voices, we could have seen a powerful and enormous confluence between the Black Power, Women’s Liberation, and LGBT+ movements.

Some central movers-and-shakers amongst this united front may have included activists such as…

Black Power advocates, including Donald Cox, Elaine Brown, Kathleen Cleaver, Hakim Jamal, and Ericka Huggins.

Women’s Liberation feminists, including Audre Lorde, Bella Abzug, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Midge Costanza, and Shirley Chisholm.

Queer freedom fighters, including Jim Foster, Marsha P. Johnson, Barbara Gittings, Craig Rodwell, and Kay Lahusen.

Popular musicians, including Stevie Wonder, Arlo Guthrie, Janis Joplin, Bob Seger, Joan Baez, Archie Shepp, Celia Cruz, Sun Ra, Yoko Ono, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Multifaceted writers, including Allen Ginsberg, bell hooks, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Alex Haley, Jerry Rubin, Truman Capote, Robert Heinlein, and Maya Angelou.

Since most of these people were Golden-Builders, Traditionalists, Silent Nesters, and “Leapers” (the latter cohort being the oldest Baby Boomers), their collective persuasive power could have bridged the electoral map between young and old. Giving context to everything from the John Sinclair freedom rallies to the “Chicago Seven” trial, this new coalition would have used electronics and pyrotechnics to thrust America into a transformative new era — rather than the corruption and consumerism that dominated the Nixon years of our reality.

Imagine the impact they would’ve had, if hippies and their admirers harnessed this indignation into actual voting power.

I could see a path that culminates in Constance Baker Motley eventually becoming America’s first Black female president. Had she continued as a New York state senator — rather than accepting President Johnson’s judicial appointment, as she did in our reality — she could have run against Malcolm Wilson for Governor of New York (or challenged Jacob Javits for his U.S. Senate seat) in 1974. Her White House run could have manifested in the late-80s or early-90s.

Why do I envision a President Motley to have been a viable prospect? Although many black nationalists of the 1960s viewed her as too moderate, she was still a fierce force to be reckoned with against segregationists. Aided by potential advisors such as Bayard Rustin and Gloria Steinem at her side, Motley’s superior intellect and persuasive oratory skills would have resonated beautifully across multimedia platforms along a timeline where social media debuted one-half of a century earlier than it did for us.

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