About

Showing Things to a Victorian Child refers to a series of jokes based on a thought experiment in which one shows a certain modern item or phenomenon to a child living in the Victorian era and imagines their reaction, with the premise of the joke often being that their reaction would be severe sensory overload resulting in psychological trauma or instant death. Originating from a viral 2020 tweet, the joke was popularized on social media in the following years, with a dedicated gimmick account created in January 2022.

Origin

On July 17th, 2020, Twitter^[1] user @cal_gif made a tweet describing a thought experiment of killing a Victorian-era (a time period in the United Kingdom between 1837 and 1901) child simply by showing them a certain modern-day thing. The tweet imagined that giving the child a single sip of Four Loco beverage would kill them. The post gained over 31,300 retweets and 355,800 likes in two years (shown below, left), with other users posting suggestions in the comments.

Spread

The thread inspired other Twitter users to post jokes based on the premise in the following months. For example, on August 25th, 2020, Twitter^[2] user @tropicanapussy joked that any song by Lil Wayne would put a Victorian-era child in a coma, with the tweet gaining over 11,300 retweets and 100,600 likes in two years (shown below, left). On September 17th, 2020, Twitter^[3] user @pupburglar made a post that received over 3,400 retweets and 14,300 likes in the same period (shown below, right).

More humorous posts based on the premise were made in 2021. For example, on April 13th, 2021, Twitter^[4] user @aidenarata posted a joke that gained over 2,100 retweets and 38,100 likes in one year (shown below, left).

Gimmick Account

On January 6th, 2022, gimmick Twitter^[5] account Posts To Show To A Small Victorian Child (@VICTORIANCHILD) was launched, posting screenshots of social media posts that could potentially traumatize a Victorian-era child. Starting in late January 2022, multiple posts made by the account went viral on Twitter^[6][7] (examples shown below), with the account gaining over 71,000 followers in one month.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References