WWBP: Time Machine · 11:11am Nov 15th, 2017
So yesterday I had a really strange thought: If I had a time machine and could talk to myself in 2012, just five years ago, how would that conversation go? Just how much has changed in five years?
Well, I invented timetravel, and recorded the resulting conversation for your benefit.
“Hey, Ross. It’s me, MrNumbers. I’m you, five years from now. I mean, I’m also Ross, and you’re also MrNumbers, but-”
“MrNumbers is always how I think of my more professional version of myself, right?”
“Yeah. It helps keep this simple in our heads.”
“So... what did you want to tell me? What’s the future like?”
“It’s weird!”
“Is it good, or-”
“It’s so weird dude! It’s only been five years and basically everything is different in the weirdest way.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Like, you haven’t watched TV in two, maybe three years by this point. And that’s fine and normal. That’s just a thing.”
“Aren’t there any good shows?”
“Tons. TV’s better than ever! It’s just... you know. All online. Netflix and stuff.”
“What’s Netflix?”
“Right, Netflix didn’t start making shows yet, so you haven't heard of it... It’s like Foxtel but Youtube. It’s okay, you get way better internet, so you can actually use it.”
“Sweet.”
“Probably for the best because Blockbuster just... stops existing. We officially have more Taco Bells than Blockbusters.”
“We have Taco Bells now?”
“We officially have one, yes.”
“Oh. Wow. Netflix ate Blockbuster then? That quick?”
“They basically become super legitimate off a show called House of Cards, with Kevin Spacey at the helm, but then it turns out he was a gay pedophile all along, but now they can’t fire him because there was no morality clause in his contract, so it’s now a show about a powerful politician covering up his secret homosexuality with manipulation and power games and legal loopholes and coercion, played by an actor covering up his secret homosexuality with manipulation and power games and legal loopholes and coercion.”
“That’s fucking metal.”
"Speaking of; Hey you know the guy who wrote "Daring DONE!""
"Yeah? Aragon, right?"
"Yeah he's kind of your future husband now."
"Wait, we’re not straight anymore?"
"I mean you're pretty close but he's not masculine enough that it's really an issue"
“... huh.”
"Also he might be about to get blown up because he's Spanish and it's a civil war now."
“What?”
“Oh, yeah, you also get really good at comedy, write one of the more famous stories on the site, burn out hard on it when Chuck Finley blows you out of the goddamn water -- oh, you’re going to love him, you’ve been invited into a pile with him and his fiance, Scarlet, she’s fantastic -- anyway, Chuck blows you out of the water with your own story, Aragon’s running laps around you with comedy, so you give up and you try to show them all and- you’ll see. You’ll know it when it happens. But you get real good!”
“So what do I write now?”
“The angsty teenage drama you really want to write now, but are too self-conscious and in-the-moment to write.”
“... huh.”
“Yeah you basically go full Mountain Goats.”
“Who?”
“Holy shit.”
“What?”
“Okay, so... one sec, pull up Youtube -- and backup that school laptop while you got it, shit happens to it, don’t ask -- and listen to Cry For Judas for a bit, then get back to me.”
“Cry For Judas?”
“Yeah just... fuck me, man. Just load that up, and we’ll keep talking. Basically more or less one of the big reasons we make it this long.”
“I find medication that works for me, though, right?”
“Sort of. I actually don’t use it anymore.”
“Is it because we get better, or because we’re now one of those chucklefucks who-”
“Oh yeah I used to really like that word huh? Sorry, go on.”
“I’m one of those people who thinks it makes them feel groggy and zombified?”
“Yeah, no, we still hate those guys. Little brother’s one of them, actually. He’s actually a dangerous schizophrenic now, just tried to blow up Channel 9 I think?”
“WHAT?!”
“Last year was a police station, year before was a hospital. Thinks he’s trying to save the world from the cat people.”
“Is that... is that like the Lizard People or something?”
“Yeah. But, like, cats. Or cats are controlling normal people’s brains with mind control and that makes them cat people. I don’t know, I’m not really clear on it.”
“You make this sound like it’s an annual tradition at this point.”
“Most of the year he’s fine. He’s actually a primary school teacher now.”
"...Primary school teachers can blow up TV channels in the future?"
"Not really."
"Oh."
"Which is why he tried, right?"
"Right. But he didn't do it."
"Now you're getting it."
"Is that safe anyway? Being a primary school teacher?"
“I mean, safe enough for government work apparently. Turns out a lot of our shit was genetic, not just head trauma.”
“Oh. That... actually kind of makes me feel better.”
“Yeah! Turns out we really were just fucked from birth. Rigged game from the start. Anyway, no, you’ve literally been on every kind of psychiatric medication they’ve made. Like, ever. The shit you’re on right now was originally designed to be used on bulls in the 70’s, and even then you only use it like once every two or three months or you’ll get resistant to it.
“Holy shit.”
“But you’re alive! You don’t get better you just get a lot, lot better at dealing with it. Also you stop randomly passing out.”
“Do I still sleep 16 hours a day?”
“You’re down to 12, 14 at the high end.”
“Fuck yes.”
“Right?”
“So what’s the world like? Who’s prime minister?”
“Do you actually care?”
“It just seems like the sort of thing you’re supposed to ask.”
“Yeah, even I don’t care. I actually couldn’t tell you. I think it’s Malcolm Turnbull but I honestly couldn’t tell you because the honest answer is “At least it’s not Tony Abbott”. No, no, ask me who’s US president.”
“It’s not Romney is it? He seemed like kind of a goober, but like, it’s not George W Bush.”
“Oh, God, we miss Bush. No, it’s Donald Trump. He actually got memed into office.”
“Ha! Time travel jokes? Because Back to the Future 2, right?”
“No. Nooo. It’s actually Donald Trump. He really did win the presidency with the power of memes.”
“... what, really?”
“At one point he even said “I could shoot anyone in the middle of New York right now and wouldn’t lose a single vote”. Then everyone cheered.”
“Bullshit.”
“Yeah this is why we’re doing a journalism degree now. Oh, which reminds me: You know how you're getting a film degree?"
"Yes?"
"Well now you're doing a journalism degree on top of that."
"...Why?"
"Because of everything I told you, really. Also, you wrote an Apple commercial out of spite, that was cool--"
“Fuck Apple! You fucking sold out?”
“We wrote a parody of it that was so good they bought it sincerely. Got paid a whole bunch to make fun of them. Highlight of 2015 for you. Anyway, turns out neo-Nazis are taking to the streets in huge numbers, we tried to deport people to concentration camps based on random searches in Melbourne,”
“Holy shit!”
“Yeah we stopped it with protests but, like, that’s still a thing they tried to do. Anyway, all this starts happening and it turns out journalism starts making way more sense to you, because the Australian film industry is really, really awful. Some guy tells you you’re too autistic to work a coffee machine. The Americans call us ‘White Mexicans’ which is the most profoundly layered racism I’ve ever heard. You’ll... you’ll find out, don’t worry, finish the film degree, you won’t regret it.”
“It sounds like I regret it a little bit.”
“To be honest, I think if I just tell you to start with the journalism degree? You’ll end up regretting everything, and in five years I’d be telling me to come back and do the film degree. I’m only five years in your future, we still make terrible career decisions.”
“How did everything get so weird in five years.”
“At least you have a media degree now!”
“I just don’t use it?”
“It’s still really good to have! And you like it, and it gives you time to figure out what you actually want to do, and it gives you tons of opportunities to write professionally. You just, you know...”
“Hate the film industry?”
“Yeah.”
“Donald Trump is still president though?”
“Oh! Yeah! So he’s basically just running on a fascist platform.”
“Oh, fuck, we’re one of those annoying SJWs that throws the word around like-”
“No, no, turns out we kind of mostly agree with them now. It’s like how you’re reading Michael Moore?”
“I really like his ideas, I just wish he wasn’t such an asshole associating himself with them?”
“It’s basically that. Also, atheism stopped being a big deal a few years ago to you, so you can shut up about it. Like, just stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Religion is less annoying to everyone else than you are about it right now. For real.”
“Yeah but-”
“No, I know what you’re going to say because I am you. For real, right now? Shut up.”
“Geeze. Okay.”
“Seriously.”
“Dude!”
“Don’t you dude me I know you were thinking about doing it because I just got soft or something. You don’t even have a good taste in music yet.”
“... I like my music.”
“Rammstein sucks and you know it, you just haven’t admitted it to yourself yet. They had like, three good songs that you like and you just sunk-costed yourself on the rest of it. That’s why I- You got Cry For Judas up yeah? That’s step one. Anyway.”
“We really like the Mountain Goats, huh?”
“The biggest source of disappointment from all of this is that, because you haven’t heard them yet, I won’t actually get to experience talking to someone else who loves them as much as I do. Because you’re not that person yet.”
“Donald Trump, though?”
“Right! Donald Trump ends up president by threatening to dissolve NAFTA and NATO, seal the borders, pull the US out of everywhere... he’s way too incompetent to be actual Hitler, like he’s just a flaming piece of human garbage, but his heart is absolutely in the wrong place. Neo-Nazis drive a car into a crowd of counter-protestors--”
“Holy shit?!”
“What? Oh, yeah, no that just... that just happens now. Everywhere. I remember a time when Charlie Hebdo was shocking, French satire magazine... middle of Paris, some Islamic extremists show up, shoot the guards, line up the editorial staff, execute them all. Like, a dozen people dead.”
“Holy shit?!”
“Yeah that was 2015. If that happened in 2017 we’d basically not bat an eye. But after the Pulse in Florida, the Lindt hostage situation in Sydney, the Vegas shooting... fuck, the Vegas shooting, the Barcelona and Berlin and Brussels bombs and drivers, the London guys with trucks and knives... driving trucks into crowds is just kind of vogue now. Year after the whole Hebdo thing, a guy drives a truck through a crowd in France, kills nearly a hundred people, injuries to another 500.”
“Holy shit?!”
“Yeah you know Al Quaeda? We basically got ISIS, and it made everything worse. It’s like... it’s ISIS. You’ll see. Except for the Pulse shooting, that was just a homophobe.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah at this point you see shit like this on the news and say to yourself “Thank God, only fifty people died this time. Like, once a month”
“Christ.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh! So you know North Korea, right?”
“Yeah?”
“They have nukes aimed at Brisbane right now.”
“I mean yeah, but they’re like... they’re like a man with a gun in a bulletproof gas chamber. They have weapons, sure, but if they actually shoot anything, it’s not going to get stopped, and a man outside the chamber pushes the button and they get wiped out for trying, right? There’s missile defenses and guns aimed right back at them.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re still with Kim Jon Il aren’t you?”
“He just died actually.”
“Right! Okay, so, his son’s... worse? Trump calls him ‘Little Rocket Man’. Anyway. A bit worse. The gun’s armour piercing now. We might not be able to shoot missiles down. They’ve been firing missiles over Japan actually.”
“Aaaaaaa-”
“Also, the person with his finger on the gas button is Donald Trump going; “I’mmmmm gunna push it. I’m reallllly gunna push it. Just joking, I’m not going to push it. I’m going to push it though.””
“aaaaaaaAAAAAAAA-”
“Basically the only thing protecting us right now is China. Also, China are kind of the good guys now. Or the lesser evil. They’re doing more to meet environmental emissions standards than the US, mass producing solar panels, they finally figured out how to make ballpoint pens... Turns out they’re not going to invade, they’re just buying the parts of the countries they want and being pretty chill landlords. Tomorrow When the War Began? Totally inefficient.”
“Wait, we like China now?”
“Wouldn’t go that far. But China is trying to give a shit about the environment at the same time the official EPA stance in the US is; “The air is probably too clean”. I can go and grab a newspaper headline if you think I’m paraphrasing that one too much.”
“That has to be, like, a mispeak or a bad translation or something right? What’s he actually mean?”
“Ha! Oh, I miss that faith in people. Yeah. 2012 was so great. In 2012, everything for you is awful, but the world is just... it’s mostly fine. It’s pretty okay right now. In 2017? I just took a first aid course because we’re basically planning on riots happening. Like, just being a thing in the near future. Probably won’t, but that’s no longer just a crazy paranoid thing to think after Charlottesville.”
“What happened in Charlottesville?”
“Well the good news is only one person died this time.”
“This time?”
“So you know how I said neo-Nazis are doing stuff and things? One of them drove into counter protestors on a closed off street. Actually kind of a miracle it didn’t go worse. Anyway, it turns out, like, after Return of Kings tried to pull it off a few years ago--”
“Return of Kings?”
“Yeah so apparently feudalism is the new democracy, who knew? What’s old is new. Anyway, with neo-feudalists being a whole thing... Basically, England, Australia, France and the US are seeing really weird hard-right movements, and Germany is becoming a socialist paradise and ruling the world with an economic victory. Their biggest problem in global politics is everyone is mad at them for making too much money.”
“Did somebody turn the 1930’s inside out?”
“Your guess is as good as mine man, I don’t know, I’m just living there.”
“Is there anything worth living for. Fallout 4?”
“They made that! It sucks.”
“Oh.”
“It sucks so much.”
“Aw.”
“Dude you are going to be so upset by how bad they fucked it up.”
“How do you fuck up a Fallout game? How do you make Fallout bad?”
“That’s what I said!”
“Do we still like My Little Pony? What’s the go there?”
“Huge brony in 2017 still. Even after the show stopped being good and three quarters of everyone buggered off. By the time you get good at writing there’s hardly anyone around to read it anymore, compared to where you’re at now. There's also a movie but I haven't bothered with it yet.”
“Why is the future so terrible?.”
“I mean it’s... it’s home, right? No place like home and all that. I haven’t even gotten to the weird stuff yet.”
“That wasn’t the weird stuff? This wasn’t the- What the fuck is the weird stuff?”
“Okay, so, there are two guys who made PayPal. One of them goes off and becomes Tony Stark saviour of the human race, makes a company called SpaceX, is taking us to Mars, revolutionizes solar technology and electric cars and batteries and -- he’s doing Tesla right now, isn’t he? Yeah, that guy, Elon Musk. He also made a tunnel drilling company because he was bored. He calls it the Boring Company. It's great.”
“Why is it- Oh! Oh, I get it. That's clever. What about the other guy?”
“Peter Thiele? Oh he conspiracy-theoried the hell out of Britain pulling out of the European Union, and he hires young men to share an IV with him to swap their blood out, because the blood of the youth reverses the aging process. He has professional blood boys. All the rage in Silicon Valley right now. Basically literally an evil vampire.”
“Blood boy.”
“Yes.”
“Is a career in five years.”
“Weird, right?”
"Okay so... what about the financial crisis. What happens with that?”
“Oh, that’s amazing. One guy gets arrested because he turns himself in. Everyone else gets huge bonuses and government jobs investigating themselves. Reforms are half-hearted at best. Turns out that the banks reported on interest rates for derivatives, but were also the major movers of the market. Super interesting.”
“Why doesn’t anyone do anything about it?”
“Everyone who has control of the system is too busy making money off it. Turns out even the Queen’s got money in offshore tax havens.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Really? It’s really hard to remember what my frame of reference was five years ago. It’s been so turbulent.”
“I mean it probably would have been if you’d opened with that. But now apparently I have a husband.”
“Future husband.”
“Right.”
“You fucking love him.”
“Apparently.”
“Also, Mountain Goats.”
“So you keep saying.”
“I don’t think I recognize you as a person without those things. I can’t believe I even existed before then.”
“I’m still basically you.”
“God, yeah, you are, aren’t you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You are going to make so many mistakes.”
“Uh-”
“And you’ll learn from like, half of them, tops.”
“Ah?”
“Which, I mean, points on that half you get. But God. Man, fuck you.”
“You’re just jealous because my time period doesn’t suck yet.”
“I know, and it is wasted on you!”
“Why is the future so terrible?!”
“Probably because you deserve it.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fight me.”
“Go home.”
“Fine. I will. Jerk.”
“Asshole.”
Chaos theory. Time travel. This is the effect. Who were the cause? Ferret, Cavemonkynick, Horizon, DJthomp, Ariamaki, Hoopy McGee, Serifina, Monarch Dodora, Darkszero, Sarge1995 and whoever I missed.
>time travel ramble
>not one question about the future pony war.
you'd never survive on gallifrey numbers.
i will just punch my past self in the face and tell him to get his shit together
Hey I just had my future self visit. Said President Milo is awesome. I'm worried.
Well, what a nice.... pre-perspective? to start the day on.
Fuck, we live in a weird time.
"professional blood boy" is a thing I knew I needed in my life before now (real big in to vampire stuff of any type) but never expected it would actually be a thing. Isn't technology amazing?
Gezz, I can't even remember what my life was like last year let alone five... what were we talking about again?
And buy some Bitcoins.
Man, if used this Australian time travel to talk to my past self... That's a horrible idea.
Wow, has it only been 5 years since Lil Kim's dad died? Jesus...
I need to ping you more.
Hmm. If I had that tech available I'd probably tell myself to get out of pediatric Oncology and go straight to the adults. Should've been outta there anyway. Would potentially save me a year and a half of chemo and a major surgery if it all went right... If it didn't I'd just hop back again and say deal with it.
That, and tell myself not to bother with COD: Ghosts. Just a waste of 60 bucks.
I know exactly how a conversation with 2012 me would go:
This taught me a lot about you. Surprised you didn’t mention the mail survey results, since that happened yesterday.
Have you blogged about Apple buying an ad concept from you?
Is Ms. Numbers not in the picture any more?
4726209
And Uber stock (not that I, as a Lyft driver, support Uber, but it’d be a good investment)
Oh man. That was a trip! (Life is so weird.) I'd be tempted to write up something like this myself, except that I don't know what I'd say. Other than Trump, which, well... sigh. It didn't shock me as much as it shocked a lot of people, I come from a super conservative background, and so the voting patterns that resulted in him weren't that startling to me at all. It was a small shocker when he won the Republican nomination, but after that? Totally what I expected. Not what I hoped for, but... sigh. Anyhow, other than Trump there's really only one thing I could tell my past self that would be a surprise.
And again Numbers with his cozying up to China. And forgetting me. Me, who am most important. It's probably because I'm American.
Agh! Damn it, there was a brilliant comedy short where a person -
FOUND IT!
Man Who Slept Through 2016 Finds Out Everything He Missed
4726468
I didn't forget you, I snubbed you, because I know mild indignation is the closest thing you have to happiness.
At least you didn't spoil Undertale for him.
I wanna hear about this Apple ad.
Sure, China is technically ahead on solar, but they're pulling it off using massive furnaces that produce more CO2 than the panels they make displace. Also dumping silicon tetrachloride and hydrofluoric acid all over the gaff, but thats just in China so whatever.
Oh hey, someone else who's seen Tomorrow When The War Began.
From one Australian to another: “Yeah, even I don’t care. I actually couldn’t tell you. I think it’s Malcolm Turnbull but I honestly couldn’t tell you because the honest answer is “At least it’s not Tony Abbott”. No, no, ask me who’s US president.”
That is both fucking hilarious and true... help us..
At least music is way better now than it was 5 years ago.
Also fuck China. Seriously there's nothing good coming from there except stupid cheap microelectronics. You also forgot to mention that Margaret Thatcher died but then became Prime Minister in the UK, who pulled out of the EU after Scotland had a referendum to leave the UK which was voted down PRECISELY BECAUSE they knew they wouldn't be able to GET INTO the EU as a newly independent nation. Meanwhile international politics are such a clusterfuck that Russia can commit an act of war against the US by trying to rig the Presidential Election, the American President can deny it, the civil wars in Africa are an afterthought to the one in Syria, which started in 2012 and WHICH IS STILL GOING ON, and nobody gives a shit about the LITERAL ETHNIC CLEANSING in Burma. Oh yeah, people still say 'literally' to mean 'figuratively' but I mean 'literal' in this case.
Hmm, what else... OH! Sports! The Cubs won the World Series finally, followed the year later by the Astros. Oh, and in 2014, Brazil's gonna lose 7-1 to Germany in the semifinal of the World Cup that they hosted. Yeah. They weren't happy.
Oh and we also had a minor nuclear standoff with Russia a little while back but nobody really noticed so it just kinda went away on its own. That's how most actual crises get dealt with these days.
4726670 Yeah, the notion that China is more environmentally-friendly than the US is propaganda. I've been to China. The air in the cities is filthy and the buildings quickly turn black from the smog, the vehicles have no emission reduction and smell noxious, you wouldn't dare drink the groundwater anywhere, the lakes I was near were a weird bright green color and not safe to swim in.
The town my brother lived in had open sewage trenches where urine and feces flowed down alongside, and sometimes into, the streets, and people soaked the timbers for their houses in the urine and feces before building in order to make them insect-proof. There were massive piles of garbage everywhere--I mean gigantic heaps of garbage, 30 feet high. Garbage was gotten rid of mostly by burning, so the air usually smelled of burning plastic.
I am reminded of Men in Black 3.
Geez video person learn to cut when you're meant to cut