Most Common TL Topics

I think that the Confederate timelines are far more common than the other ones. As a non-American I find them exceedingly boring.

Most of these could still be interesting as long as they are done in a realistic way, rather than wanks.

I still want a good Alexander survives timeline that doesn't stop fairly soon. Blood and gold was immense but it never seemed to get finished and kept on restarting.
 
I think that the Confederate timelines are far more common than the other ones. As a non-American I find them exceedingly boring.

Most of these could still be interesting as long as they are done in a realistic way, rather than wanks.

I still want a good Alexander survives timeline that doesn't stop fairly soon. Blood and gold was immense but it never seemed to get finished and kept on restarting.
I guess that is a thing that interests american members, due to the fact that they could have won.
 
American Wanks, I dunno why people love to wank a country that is already wanked up in OTL.

Because we're American? I mean, if you have any sense of patriotism at all, you're going to want to better your home country. As an American, I am fascinated with the idea of the US gaining the Maritimes, or Baja California, or Sonora, or Cuba.

I'm sure it goes both ways. If you're a patriotic Irishman, you'll get rid of Northern Ireland and annex it into Ireland proper. If you're British, you'll keep Ireland. If you're Mexican, you'll fend off the Americans.

This isn't 100% of the time, but it's already a good deal.

Also, remember, OTL is seen as dead-even. Yes, America's gotten a lot of luck and success, but OTL is still seen as dead-even.
 
Because we're American? I mean, if you have any sense of patriotism at all, you're going to want to better your home country. As an American, I am fascinated with the idea of the US gaining the Maritimes, or Baja California, or Sonora, or Cuba.

I'm sure it goes both ways. If you're a patriotic Irishman, you'll get rid of Northern Ireland and annex it into Ireland proper. If you're British, you'll keep Ireland. If you're Mexican, you'll fend off the Americans.

This isn't 100% of the time, but it's already a good deal.

Also, remember, OTL is seen as dead-even. Yes, America's gotten a lot of luck and success, but OTL is still seen as dead-even.
Who do you know who thinks America's done dead-even overall? And why should patriotism equal cheering for imperialism, war, conquest, subjugation of foreigners, etc?
 
You mean Northern Mexico as it is now, rather than the rather under-populated Northern Mexico of the 1840s, which turned out to be ripe for colonisation by the USA?
I'd think a Sonora owned by the US would end up more like the Salton Sea area than San Diego.
 
Most people are interested by the history of their country and how it could have evolved otherwise -either to the better according to their personal preferences, or to the worse so that they enjoy to come back from their nightmare to the merry Real World™.

Do 'blockbuster topics' vary with current events, e.g. do the frequency of threads devoted to the ACW increase around Presidential election time in the USA? Is international situation reflected in the popularity of some topics, e.g. 'alternate Islam'?

Many posters are interested with the history of their culture / civilization in addition to that of their precise modern country, hence the popularity of alternate Romes. But I doubt there are many threads devoted to, say, alternate China that are not focused on the butterflies reaching the Western World.

But what makes topics popular is also the fact that people feel they can treat them exhaustively with their current knowledge, without much in the matter of further research. Thus, all in all, we have very, very few threads devoted to divergences without immediate impact on our 'real world' current situation, but requiring a *lot* of work rather than (educated) guesswork (such as Lands of Red and Gold and Lands of Ice and Mice for instance).

Btw, purely personal of course, but I feel that many 'personal' POD considered would not have changed much on the long run. Had Washington been hanged for war crime when prisoner in French hands, butterflied away the AWI and the independence of the Colonies? Would the death of Bonaparte at Lodi erased the fact that the French Revolution had to face the wrath of the coalition of the monarchies, with roughly the same outcome?
 
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