If I Had A Time Machine

@ecency-star released a new prompt this week, asking us what we would do if we had a time machine - this one should be a lot of fun and I'm sure will have plenty of interesting responses, a few ideas are swirling around my head, but we'll see what the main ideas would be.

Here's A Link To The Contest Post, If You'd Like To Read The Rules And Join In.

Source

Time Travel and the Butterfly Effect
So, before jumping into this post, I wanted to talk about the idea of time travel and the consequences of doing so. A lot of people say that they would do this, or do that, but I think making even a small change in our recent, or distant past could have unforeseen ramifications on the present, and could skew history so much that the present would be unrecognisable.

Imagine going back and saving the library of Alexandria from being burnt down over 2,000 years ago. Well, that would be a great thing to do, in theory, but how much could that affect the present? Perhaps we'd be more advanced than we are now, or maybe we could be more primitive. To think of the first editions of books and text that were lost back then is kind of sickening, but maybe the dominant ideas about life, medicine, and science were the wrong track for us as a species.

There are countless what if scenarios that are interesting to ponder, but actually going ahead with any of them could cause hell for us right now. With this in mind, I won't be talking about any big historical changes I would make, and instead, I'll talk about myself and things relating to myself, as I'm sure giving the me from the past some insider tips wouldn't have any adverse effects on the present... Nah, only joking, of course it would, I'd be Biff from the second Back To The Future film, and you would all bow down before me or find yourselves crucified for my amusement, peasants.

Investing In Bitcoin
Years ago, a friend came around to the house talking about this new thing called Bitcoin, which were digital coins, and he told us they're going up in value because they're like a stock or something. After an unsure explanation, he said they were 8 Euros, and it would be worth getting involved in it.

We were all pretty intrigued by it and decided to throw some money in, he wasn't able to then, but he said to get some money together and he'll get us online to buy some and check it out.

About a week passed and he came back around, and there were a couple of us ready to invest; I had 500 Euros that I wanted to do something with and decided I would put it into this thing that no one seemed to know anything about.

He got on the computer, searched for the place to buy it, and stared at the screen kind of disappointed, the price was up to 14 Euros and we all let out a sigh, shrugged, and said, "Feck it, that's probably the highest it'll go, oh well, would have been nice to get a few before the price flew up."

I want to go back right now and strangle my past self. Even if I'd bought it there, and sold it when it got to 100 Euros, that would have been a nice little profit and at least I may have gotten into the whole crypto thing in the really early days.

Speak about life-changing moments; that's one time I would have gone back to, to potentially change everything. I don't think I would have held onto them until the highest highs, but who knows?

Starting A Gaming/ YouTube Channel In The Early Days
Back in 2007, I got into online gaming on the Xbox 360, and after a while I met a bunch of friends I would game with regularly, some of which I'm still friends with and have met up with.

We had a clan, and the consistent group I hung out with were from England, Wales, and Scotland and I was the Irish one, we'd have a lot of fun and mainly played Halo 3, but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 and 2, and GTA IV were the games of choice too when they released.

There were so many things we used to do on it, and a lot of our time centred around making maps in Halo 3 and playing out our own short stories/ scenarios and ideas for that sort of content.

Back then, nobody was really doing it, the big ones online would have been Red vs Blue who gave us the idea for making stories, and then Machinima - who was a powerhouse collective of tons of individual gamers who created content that was posted onto their site - a notable person on Machinima who went on to find success was Call Me Kevin, who ran a show called How To Annoy People, where he would annoy people in COD and film their meltdowns over the headset.

There was also Sanity Not Included, who was an American and English duo who did funny game clips spliced together with 2D animation of their avatars. Top 10 FTW was another duo that would do top 10 lists of gaming stuff, who I think were on Machinima but I'm not sure now if they were.

These days, it's so accessible and anyone can record content on the Xbox through clips, or they can Twitch stream from their console and cut their VOD after the fact to produce videos, it's really easy now. Back then, however, you needed a capture card, which at the time was about 300 Euros. It was a lot of money, but not completely unachievable to get.

We had the intention of doing this, but it was a lot of money and sadly it never happened, so we were happy to just carry on as we were, and have fun.

I've often wondered about going back and seeing where we could have gotten, the idea was to get cards, or pool in for one card for someone to be the cameraman, but even exchanging and sending money to each other seemed impossible, but now with Revolute, it's a lot easier.

There were a lot of roadblocks that stopped us, but the dream was to make some videos and get a deal from Machinima - who it turned out were seriously ripping off their clients so maybe it wouldn't have been as good as we thought it would be.

Nowadays, the gaming sphere is oversaturated, and I don't think I have ever recaptured the fun of being a young teen back in those days, so I think it wouldn't work on those two levels, but back then it might have been good. If I had a time machine I'd go back and buy my younger self a capture card, just to give it a go and see what happened.

A few years later, around 2013 I got a decent computer and tried to stream on Twitch, and had the intention of making some lets plays, but I wasn't confident enough to speak, or use a camera, so it fizzled out and I stopped after a few videos. But, even then, if I had a few mates to hang out with and work with on PC, or if I was just a little more confident, it could have still been a good time to get in on the scene, as even by then, Twitch was relatively new, and there was space for people to grow if they were consistent and half decent when it came to producing content.

I think the younger generation coming up now, will have things way easier if they wanted to create some gaming content with their mates, and more power to them, maybe when my son is 14 playing games with his friends online they'll be able to do some cool stuff.

Those are the two main things that I would go back and change, but there are many other smaller things, but nothing major.

I'm happy in my life right now, and think if those changes were made I could be a different person and may not have everything I do, so I wouldn't want to change anything I don't think. Apart from maybe getting on Hive a bit sooner, but even at that, now is still the early days, so I'm happy to have found it when I did.