What If alternatehistory.com Never Existed?

Ulas_1984

Banned
I didn't know where to post this so I decided to post it here because it's technically "After 1900". Suddenly couple of questions come to my mind while browsing this forum; Why does alternatehistory.com exists in the first place, Is this an offshoot of an another site, Are todays admins are the original creators of this website etc...

...and then the main question came, what if this site never existed in the first place? Would "alternate history" genre remain an obscure forum in an obscure site or a subreddit?

And finally, what would the followers and admins of this site do? Personally, I would be bored even more in my accountant course if this site never existed.
 

Sekhmet_D

Kicked
Ulas_1984 said:
...and then the main question came, what if this site never existed in the first place? Would "alternate history" genre remain an obscure forum in an obscure site or a subreddit?
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This website is not the be all and end all of alternate history speculation. The genre has existed long before the Internet came into being, and will probably continue to exist long after the Internet is gone.
 

Geekhis Khan

Wow, gettin' meta on us, Ulas!

There was the Usenet board soc.history.what-if that predated Reddit and AH.com and was reacting to an already established fiction genre with a long history going back centuries and with an established fandom . It was where a lot of the terminology and jargon and slang we use here comes from (ASB, wank, double-blind) and where a few writers like SM Sterling got their start, IIRC. Butterfly AH.com and something else would show up eventually.

Now, make this a Heavy Meta DBWI loaded with irony and count me in! :winkytongue:
 

306-232

Ulas_1984 said:
I didn't know where to post this so I decided to post it here because it's technically "After 1900". Suddenly couple of questions come to my mind while browsing this forum; Why does alternatehistory.com exists in the first place, Is this an offshoot of an another site, Are todays admins are the original creators of this website etc...

...and then the main question came, what if this site never existed in the first place? Would "alternate history" genre remain an obscure forum in an obscure site or a subreddit?

And finally, what would the followers and admins of this site do? Personally, I would be bored even more in my accountant course if this site never existed.
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Then you wouldn't be asking this question.
 

Lalli

Basically nothing on pop-culture would change. Alternate history genre has been exist long long time before this site. So there just would be some other major alternate history site.
 
Emperor Norton I

Emperor Norton I

The genre exists nonetheless. But that does not pay attention to the impact on the genre itself without this site. Some of that impact can be known, some speculated or inferred, and some uncertain.

We're at a point in history where internet content, discussion and creations really do have an impact on wider culture. They have an impact on the traditional mediums. Yet there is very little in the way of organized history. We all made and are making this as we go along without counting the steps. It's something of an oral history in that way.

For that matter, we do not take it seriously as the "real" thing in that regard. We still have the mind space that a book is real or a TV show or movie is real and we're just chatting. But I'd argue a lot of those things have since been influenced by this site, whether by being part of their research, the influence of narrative consensus that we have made or even a cursory glance. Influence also radiates out and accumulates from any sources that initially picked it up.

So yes, this site is in play as a major player in the alternate history genre, it's media, it's ideas and it's ongoing discussion. It just takes admitting it. The variations in another site taking a possible place (and those other sites did and do exist) would need to be taken into account but they are impossible to know because this is a chaotic brew of personalities, ideas and discussions that came together and are developing and interacting by absolute happenstance.

I'm old in terms of this site. I have seen the arc of all of this play out and expand out to other places that then influenced things further from there. I've seen the consensus narratives develop. I've seen the interesting ideas that you gradually see in other media. We are not only observing. We are also influencing.
 
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Aloha

Aloha

If it wasn't here, it would always just be somewhere else. I imagine that another website like this would exist, probably just called something slightly different. This genre is not that obscure.
 
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Steve Brinson

Steve Brinson

It's a well-known open secret on the site that, during the 2012 presidential race, Newt Gingrich - a noted alternate history author himself - was a lurker here. (His alleged username has been leaked, I believe, but I do not know it.)

Clearly, the reason for his failure in that campaign - for his failure to adequately manage the stresses of his coalition, take the fight to Governor Romney, win Florida, and ultimately achieve the nomination and then, perhaps, the Presidency - was that he didn't really have his head in the game. He wasn't thinking about donor management or attack lines, he was thinking about Dominion of Southern America and A World of Laughter, A World of Tears.

Who knows what he could do with his undivided attention on the White House?

(This is, to be clear, a joke - though the part about Gingrich formerly being a lurker here is an actual open secret/urban legend.)
 

Brady Kj

The forum rules and culture could be different on the dominant alternate history site. It would probably be worse than here. We got a good thing going here.

Emperor Norton I said:
I'm old in terms of this site. I have seen the arc of all of this play out and expand out to other places that then influenced things further from there. I've seen the consensus narratives develop. I've seen the interesting ideas that you gradually see in other media. We are not only observing. We are also influencing.
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That's interesting. What are some examples of consensus narratives you've seen develop?
 
Emperor Norton I

Emperor Norton I

Aloha said:
If it wasn't here, it would always just be somewhere else. I imagine that another website like this would exist, probably just called something slightly different. This genre is not that obscure.
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But there's more to it than that. It's as different as saying "What it Hemingway died in the womb?" and answering with "There would have been other books and other authors". That is true, but they would have had different books and different impacts and different influences that lead to a different culture of literature and beyond even that. The creation, the influence and the tapestry of interconnections, relationships and impacts both in their terms and as consequences that becomes things in themselves with then further impacts would be different.

If I don't have a conversation with you right now because either you or I never joined or you or I never posted, you change the course of things in even this subtle way. That is not even to say the larger impacts of anyone's contributions with, to and alongside each other. This site has an impact on the genre and anyone that gets paid to do it, and then the people that creation comes to. But it is so variable and unwritten that it is hard to explain or know point by point.
 

Bureaucromancer

Short of it just existing on another domain...

My inclination is that the community would be a lot more focused on Reddit and Discord... and a lot more Nazi adjacent. Frankly I have to agree that while this isn't the be all and end all of AH in general it's enough of an elephant in the room that the forum rules here, and moreover the enforcement of them, has done a lot to tamp down the worst inclinations of a lot of the sort of people who get interested in this.
 
Emperor Norton I

Emperor Norton I

Brady Kj said:
That's interesting. What are some examples of consensus narratives you've seen develop?
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That gets into the creative duality of being both the observer of something created and the observed for what is created; it's a back and forth that is forever ongoing. There's a few, but these are never without controversy, no man is an island and these came from ideas from without that were taken in, discussed and expressed back out. Ideas come in and out like waves. I want to note that because it's key to this discussion.

Among the consensuses: Sealion as doomed to failure, Nazi Germany as a doomed state that would collapse under its incompetence and failures while making the world suffer on the way down, WW3 in 1962 as horribly bloody but not apocalypse for all humanity (and the West as bruised, but the Soviet world as dead), the standardized definitions of and taboo against Alien Space Bats (unless purposely ASB), Laos as a likely theater of war as an alternative to Vietnam in the late 50s / early 60s, etc.

And those seem obvious now but that because we debated scores of research citations back and forth. That was all done organically. We are discussing thesis and narratives based on research and opinion about what that research means. Even competing thesises are nonetheless collected consensus after discussion that takes shape from those discussions in an ongoing legacy form, even if one does not win out. These are not totally unique to this site but this site did have its influence on solidifying them. Others take what we express, create something new and then we take it in and discuss it and the cycle continues.

People look at this site and I would argue that it is likely Ronald D. Moore or his people did read some things on here or followed breadcrumbs from here for "For All Mankind". And that other people of influence have done the same for whatever their project was.
 
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Aloha

Aloha

Emperor Norton I said:
But there's more to it than that. It's as different as saying "What it Hemingway died in the womb?" and answering with "There would have been other books and other authors". That is true, but they would have had different books and different impacts and different influences that lead to a different culture of literature and beyond even that. The creation, the influence and the tapestry of interconnections, relationships and impacts both in their terms and as consequences that becomes things in themselves with then further impacts would be different.

If I don't have a conversation with you right now because either you or I never joined or you or I never posted, you change the course of things in even this subtle way. That is not even to say the larger impacts of anyone's contributions with, to and alongside each other. This site has an impact on the genre and anyone that gets paid to do it, and then the people that creation comes to. But it is so variable and unwritten that it is hard to explain or know point by point.
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Fair enough.
 

Post

Emperor Norton I said:
But there's more to it than that. It's as different as saying "What it Hemingway died in the womb?" and answering with "There would have been other books and other authors". That is true, but they would have had different books and different impacts and different influences that lead to a different culture of literature and beyond even that. The creation, the influence and the tapestry of interconnections, relationships and impacts both in their terms and as consequences that becomes things in themselves with then further impacts would be different.

If I don't have a conversation with you right now because either you or I never joined or you or I never posted, you change the course of things in even this subtle way. That is not even to say the larger impacts of anyone's contributions with, to and alongside each other. This site has an impact on the genre and anyone that gets paid to do it, and then the people that creation comes to. But it is so variable and unwritten that it is hard to explain or know point by point.
Click to expand...
A more approriate question wouldn't be "What if Hemingway died in the womb?", but "What if the publisher of Hemingway's books died in the womb?" It's likely Hemingway would have found another publisher. In the same sense this isn't the only forum about alternate history.

I found this forum by searching if there was a forum for discussing alternaty history. This seemed to be the biggest one, so I registred here.
If this never existed, I'd probaly go to one of the others, like:
alternate-timelines.com

Home | alternate-timelines.com

Visit our forum at: alternate-timelines.com
alternate-timelines.com alternate-timelines.com
forums.sufficientvelocity.com

Alternate History

The place for timelines, stories, and discussions that all begin with the question "What if?
forums.sufficientvelocity.com forums.sufficientvelocity.com

Alternate History Discussion

A forum dedicated to discussing alternate history in general. If you have questions about whether or not something would make for a good timeline or such, this is the best forum for that. This is not for actual timelines or alternate histories.
www.the-sietch.com
(these were just the first three hits of the search I just did, I didn't check their amount of traffic)

Now not everyone landed here the way I did, but I would assume most of the people posting here would also find one or more of those forums*. In the end the effect of the non-existence of this particular forum would be quite small. Nevertheless there could be butterflies.

*I didn't check, but it's even likely several users here also have an account on one or more of the forums I found with my search.
 
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