What If History Took A Different Turn? 5 Alternate Realities That Will Break Your Brain

What If Mark Zuckerberg Never Created Facebook?

In 2004, a Harvard sophomore launched a social network that would consume the world. But what if he hadn’t? What if he’d actually taken that McDonald’s franchise instead?

Without Facebook, social media would still exist—but it would look completely different. MySpace or Friendster might have dominated instead. The internet would have evolved as a “creepy place to meet strangers, rather than catch up with friends,” as billionaire Peter Thiel once put it.

Our sense of self-worth wouldn’t be tied to likes and shares. Digital privacy norms would be entirely different. The Cambridge Analytica scandal? Never happened. The 2016 election disinformation campaigns? Far less effective. A world where we didn’t hand over our attention, our data, and our sanity to an algorithm. A world where we still talked to each other.