Soc.history.what-if
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Virtual history, and its less academic companions, are speculative fiction. In an academic context historians often ask, "If a factor varied, what would have resulted?" This is used for rhetorical or argumentative purposes, and also to assert what factors were significant in causing events to occur as they did. For instance, the question, "What if Napoleon had been successful at Waterloo?" could be answered "He would have been defeated by a European alliance of armies slightly later in 1815 at a different location in the Low Countries." This would assert that Waterloo itself was not significant in the downfall of Napoleon in 1815. The habit of beginning virtual histories with the question "What if...?" led directly to the name of the newsgroup.
A community
soc.history.what-if has been functioning for over ten years, and has a remarkably stable small population and a remarkably high signal to noise ratio when compared to other newsgroups. Based on these two factors a functioning community has grown in the newsgroup. Regular contributors to soc.history.what-if post from the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Italy, Russia, Japan, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Australia and New Zealand.
A large amount of community focus is dedicated to the history of the American Civil War (usually fascinated with Southern victory) and World War II. Due to the work of Alison Brooks, who died of cancer in 2002, in debunking the fascination of a possible success of "Operation Sealion" (the planned German invasion of England in 1940), SHWI is often cited as an argument against the plausibility of "Operation Sealion". Other topics demonstrate a similar fascination with speculative modern European and American military history or diplomatic history. Newer posters to SHWI often rely on historiographies based on the Great Man theory of history. More seasoned community members contribute speculations regarding the history of early modern, medieval, late antiquity, Africa or Asia. These more varied contributions are considered to be of great interest. Contributors are also esteemed for posts dealing with the minutiae of US history.
The community of SHWI highly values a concept called "plausibility", which is taken to mean that the events described would have happened following on from the reasonable single change initially depicted (called a "point of divergence" or "POD"). Contributions which are well written, about topics which are not commonly described, or are highly plausible are often well received and earn their author a great deal of respect.
Writing style in soc.history.what-if
One early style of writing was based around single speculative posts. One person suggested a situation, and the group would debate.
The current standard is long multi-part posts, adequately footnoted to indicate evidence for particular views. Authoring long multi-post footnoted contributions has become a "status" symbol on SHWI. The earliest known multi-part time lines was Doug Hoff's [German Military Regime: from the Thirties onward] which began on 26 December 1997. Following Hoff's post more and more posters began expanding their speculations in episodic segments.
In 2005, in a deliberate attempt to overcome a troll problem by weight of numbers, many posters have been posting one line speculations. This is a partial return to the style commonly used before May 2000.
Another important element of shared writing style is the constant use of irony.
Irony as a community watchword
The primary aspect of community life involves the systemic use of irony to achieve effect. This irony is often multifaceted, as the core community members of soc.history.what-if are dedicated to providing academically rigorous histories of things which never occurred. This irony takes additional forms. Many U.S. posters use terse and cryptic references which are immediately picked up by other U.S. posters to refer to events in history or U.S. culture; this style is often parodied by Australian and Finnish contributors in their own contributions about Australian or Finnish history.
Poor writing is often criticized for its lack of plausibility. These attacks are usually phrased in terms of the need for "Alien Space Bats" or ASBs as the motive force behind the change. For example, "Well, Alien Space Bats could land the German army in Wales." The use of the term Alien Space Bats has been expanded to include handwaving difficulties in order to get to an interesting discussion.
An additional layer of irony is developed in the institution of the "double blind what-if" or DBWI. These contributions are usually a description of how real history is unbelievable, described by a narrator who comes from a time where things happened differently. An example: "As we all know, the First World War ended with the Second French Revolution in 1917, but what if the French army had managed to control the mutinies in the trenches?" Often double blind contributions are particularly subtle, and are usually marked as DBWI contributions to avoid causing offence or confusion.
Finally, the community has developed a conscientious ironic denial of certain things. For instance, speculation about the role of fascism in inter-war Britain resulted in the formulation of a term "unFascism" to describe a society which mimicked every aspect of continental European fascism, but staunchly denied any relationship between the speculated British system and European fascism. This ironic denial of the patently obvious extends to real world meetings of community members.
Social gatherings in the real world
meetings between members of soc.history.what-if are advertised by a contributor who insists that the proposed event will not occur at a specific time and place. This references the system of plausible deniability used regularly by states since the 1950s to hide occurrences from the public. These meetings are described as Cabals, a reference both to the Cabal Ministry, and community members take great pleasure in announcing that "There is No Cabal" or "TINC" when reporting on their meetings, playing on an old Usenet joke.
Social taboos
Social taboos include holocaust denial, arguing that "Operation Sealion" was possible, arguing about contemporary politics (this is considered to be in breach of a community standard known as the "Ban on Politics" (BoP), a norm originally created on alt.folklore.urban), and religious activism (which is considered in breach of an analogous "Ban on Religion" (BoR)). The existence of the Ban on Politics supports a strong dislike of recent points of divergence, as these often skirt close to contemporary political debate.
Trolls on SHWI
Beginning in 1998, a variety of trolls began to inhabit SHWI, most of them having highly unpopular political opinions. The greatest crisis that faced the community was in late 2001 and early 2002 when someone sent thousands of nonsense messages to the group nearly every day, making reading the group nearly impossible.Esteemed contributions
Some of SHWI's most highly regarded contributions, or "timelines," are:
- (pseudonym) Chester A. Arthur. [For all Time.] A dystopia based on a speculation about US Vice President Henry Wallace becoming President in 1941.
- Alison Brooks. Leg Theory and Flashman Option. (Alison was also the originator of the Alien Space Bats)
- Jonathan Edelstein [Spinoza in Turkey.]
- (pseudonym) Gemellus. [Quiet Flows the Don]
- (pseudonym) Gnome [What if Gordon Banks had Played?] A dystopic Britain in the 1970's and 80's
- Doug Hoff. [How The West Was Weird,] [Empty America,] and [German Military Regime in the 1930s] (1997, earliest known multi-part timeline).
- Arkadiusz Danilecki. Furrorum Hussitorum, a dramatic description of the spread of the Hussite Wars and of their impact on the 15th century Poland; the writing style follows the model of a theatrical screenplay.
- Jussi Jalonen. [Swedish Victory at Poltava], an observation on a somewhat different Great Northern War, and also [Stella Polaris], the story of an alternate Grand-Duchy of Finland created already in the Treaty of Åbo in 1743.
- Anthony Mayer. Sugar and Spice and "Poisoned Chalice," the latter an examination of a later use of chemical weapons in World War I
- Douglas Muir. Buddha on Ice, [WI FDR killed in 1933?].
- (pseudonym) Johnny Pez. [Maximum Massachusetts] and [The Drowned Baby Timeline].
- (pseudonym) Tzintzuntzan. Missile for Mobutu, an original African timeline where the beloved dictator of Zaire experiences a sudden death in a missile strike during his return from the Tanzanian summit of 1994.
- Mike Stone. [Mr Hughes Goes to War]
- (pseudonym) Sydney Webb. [Thaxted] a timeline where Margaret Thatcher has a different political ideology.
- (pseudonym) Kaiser Wilhelm III´s Decades of Darkness.
- Carlos Yu. [Angel of History], an eerie description of the internal politics in the victorious Confederate States of America, originally presented on the newsgroup under the working title [CSA Liberals and Lefties]; from the same author, see also East Meets West, an inquiry into the possibility of coinciding medieval/early-modern industrial revolution in Europe and China.
- For All Nails moderated by Noel Maurer, a continuation of Robert N. Sobel's novel For Want of a Nail.
- Submission moderated by Anthony Mayer, describing a world where Islam was a minor religion, and a similar religion, Submission, arose among the Scandinavians in the 8th century.
- Bronze Age New World moderated by Douglas Muir, describing a world where the pre-Columbian Indians of Mesoamerica discover metallurgy.
- UnFascist Britain describing an interwar Great Britain which succumbs to fascism.
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