Okay lets put aside people and relationships for a second. What would be your selfish materialistic priority if you had a time machine that could go back to 1996?
I'm sure most people would say they'd buy apple stock, place sports bets, maybe even invent something first before someone else can. Like facebook or SpaceX, or sabotosh something you don't like in the current now.
Me, I'm gonna go off the beaten path here.
I would bring the best quality DVR I can, and I would save every single episode of the 4:3 broadcast quality faulconer version of Dragonball Z. No cropping. No weird animations. Just pure innocent Dragonball Z the way I grew up with it. It would take me six years to do that. And it would probably take me another 6 years to get the commercials out and release it online. I'd be 44 and it would be worth it.
I mean I could be less dramatic and just tell Akira Toriyama that he should save his shit so he can release a good version on blu ray but I don't speak Japanese.
I'd be 18. I'd possibly tell myself to never ever ever get student loans. But then my life wouldn't turn out the way it has so far. Hrm. Idk I mostly hate the idea of going back in time. Childhood sucked.
I like yours. It doesn't screw with timelines.
It's hours and hours of yelling while powering up, sure, but I only say that because I'm a betch. 😆
(I can't remember if the first special edition came out before 1996, in 1996, or after 1996, so at a minimum, I'd tell him to just not make the prequels.)
But I think for real, I'd probably just do that thing where I just bet on sports.
I guess it breaks the spirit of the thread but I'd use it to hang out with my dad since we'd be the same exact age. He's still alive now, it's not like that -- I just think it would be an interesting experience.
Tell George Lucas not to sell Lucasfilm to Disney and Kathleen Kennedy.
If you started in 1996 with foreknowledge you could probably get enough money up eventually to buy Lucasfilm yourself. From there you could pull a Marvel and get that universe pumping out a lot of movies/shows based directly on the source material.
My dude I hate to break it to you but it's 25 years ago.
Oops!
You’re right!
My daughter is 25 now. 15 years ago she would have been 10 and I’d have known her 7.5 years.
...
I was thinking of the right year; I just subtracted wrong.
I almost never make that kind of mistake unless money is involved!
If this was me just becoming 6 years old, I'm pretty sure my brain wouldn't be able to handle 24 years of knowledge and experience that suddenly rushed into it.
At first I might start making plans to take advantage of stock like Apple, Microsoft and Google, maybe even begin trying to figure out a way to prevent 9/11.
But quickly, I think, I'd become preoccupied with my six year old life, dominating in school academically and socially. Maybe it would all become so boring and unimportant, though, that I would begin checking out of all of that.
Probably play a lot of Gameboy and watch a lot of my favorite tv shows as they came on new and everything. That is to say, nothing major would have changed.
I think eventually what little things I did change would be enough to cause, via butterfly effect, major changes in history over the next 24 years that would render a lot of my memories, experience and knowledge of the future irrelevant by the time I'm old enough to do anything about it. Plus by then whatever memory would just be whisps of smoke at that point. I'd probably begin to think I dreamed up that other life entirely.
But if we're talking time machine situation, I'd do the investments. Maybe I would also say I'm a psychic, predict the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and then ride that to fame until butterfly effect renders it all moot.
1996? I was 4. At that time I was mostly preoccupied with LEGOS.
Funny story, apparently the guy who bombed the airplane in 9/11 took pilot lessons out of the small private airport in Venice, FL, the same city I was living at the time. We drove by that airport several times. IDK where the guy lived, but I spent my childhood in the same city. If I could figure out the guy and convince him not to fly the damn plane...
