What butterfly effect have you personally witnessed?

I was born and things spiraled out of control.

In 1998 my friend asked me to set up an IRC server for him. He needed it for his job and knew I had done it before so asked for a favor. An afternoon’s work. His boss was impressed, and offered me a job. My first IT job.

Hung around on that server to keep an eye on things until the customer could take over, then made friends so just made it my home server. Ended up meeting my wife on there a few months later. A year after that, I immigrated to the US. Used the experience gained from that job to get a career here. Still here 23 years later.

Afternoon’s work changed my whole life.

My addiction to World of Warcraft and obsession over getting a certain mount may have lead to the death of an elderly man.

Way back in the ancient times, I was super addicted to WoW and really wanted this super rare mount. I would stay up super late trying to farm for it with no luck and eventually started setting an alarm for when it was supposed to spawn and waking up every hour or something all night to log in and try and get it. After a few days of this, I was fried and couldn't function at all.

At the time I worked at a soft serve ice cream place and had to be there early to open the store which was inside a mall food court. My main opening job was to clean out the soft serve machines and get them ready for the day. Well, these machines are under a fair bit of pressure and your supposed to drain off all the left over soft serve and depressurize the machine before you open it up to clean it.

I didn't depressurize it.

In my sleep deprived, deep-fried state, I walked through the mall food court filled with the early morning elderly mall walkers making their rounds. Got to work and immediately started unscrewing the face plate of the soft serve machine to start cleaning it. It sounded like a bomb went off. I was covered head to toe, literally every square inch of the front of my body was covered in ice cream mix and when I scraped the ice cream out of my eyes and looked around to survey the damage, I was horrified. There was chocolate ice cream splattered from one corner of the food court to the other, floor to ceiling. Everyone in the food court had at least a little ice cream on them, most more than a little. But then, A man who had to be in his upper 80s collapsed, grasping at his chest. The sound of the explosion and the shock of freezing ice cream sprayed all over him gave him a heart attack.

The paramedics were loading him up on a stretcher when my boss told me to go home and change. To my surprise, I wasn't fired but when I came back later that morning, no one could give me an update on the man. I never found out if he made it or not, but my gut tells me he probably didn't. He was a regular mall walker and I would see him quite often before that day, but never did after that.

I never did end up getting that mount. I can't even remember what it was anymore which makes the whole story even worse imo. I quit WoW shortly after that incident and never really played another MMO after. I think about that man anytime I get the urge to stay up late and grind another game or finish another episode or whatever it is.

I'm sorry mall walker man.

I couldn’t find my headphones that resulted in me barely missing my train that arrived shortly before a person started shooting at people at the train station I was planning to go to.

I'm delivering papers, wee hours in the morning, middle of winter. Just had a storm recently, so roads were rather icy. Go to cross the street when my dog starts acting all weird, won't let me cross. Just as I'm getting frustrated, suddenly a pickup truck comes barreling around the corner. Driver immediately loses control on the ice, truck goes into a sideways slide at a pretty high speed.

That truck missed me by maybe a foot at most.

I decided to come home during summer break during my senior year of college. I wasn't going to but I decided I should do something besides sitting around playing video games. I got in the car, drove for 4 hours, and got a call from my best friend that he was having some people over that night. I almost didn't go because I was tired from the drive. I decided to go. I knew everyone there, including a girl I had been friends with for years but hadn't seen in awhile. We were all hanging out, me and this girl ended up hooking up that night. We've been together over 12 years, married for 6. If I had decided to stay at my apartment and play Skyrim instead of driving home, we very likely wouldn't be together. I think about it more than I should lol.

I was in line to buy tickets to a concert. The tickets didn’t cost much, but I was poor, so as I was in line I was wavering back and forth between the cheapest tickets and the second cheapest. When I got to the front I was on the side of the cheapest.

Another person who bought the cheapest was an incredibly cute girl who I met there and ended up dating for several months, and that relationship, after it ended, gave me the confidence to make a move on another girl who I had long been attracted to, and our relationship made me choose the particular job that I chose because it let me move near where she lived.

So if I had been a couple of spaces further back in line, I probably wouldn’t have lived in that state for two years. True story.

Sex and several new humans appearing.

I was golfing alone in 2017. I decided to post a picture on instagram of me golfing which I wouldn’t have posted if I had gone alone. I’m not really into social media so I’m not even sure why I did it. At the end of the round I look and see a like from a girl I hadn’t seen in years. I didn’t even know she followed me. I message her, then from there the snowball rolls into us getting married.

If I didn’t go golfing, if I wasn’t sent out on the course alone, I’d I didn’t post the picture, if she didn’t like it, none of it ever would have happened.

A hot dry windy day in summer, this guy rings my friend to complain about my friend parking near his house. My friend goes over to talk it over and notices a transformer is sparking onto dry grass, alerts fire people, saves town.

Permanently Deleted

Was a college dropout, working at a factory. A really grimey sweat-shop type place. I had just come to accept that this was my life. Then they needed an IT person for the afternoon shift. Someone told HR that I "knew computers". I almost didn't apply, but the HR manager approached me and asked me to. That was about.... almost 20 years ago.

5 jobs later and I'm now a professor and finishing up my MSc. Computer Science. That one person who said I knew computers changed my whole life. I'm still not even completely sure who it was.

I'll just say as a guy that does construction and remodeling, there is no better place to witness the butterfly effect than in a house with lazy framers. Any one of the contractors being lazy can often times be cause effects down the road .

The classic small business trying to save some pennies by cheaping out on the important stuff like backups, despite several attempts at reasoning them, by ultimately ending up crumbling after a system failure.

Recently whenever I decide not to do something and make an excuse to myself or to others, something bad happens to me. Example, kids wanted to stay out I wanted to go home, just before my house which is in the middle of nowhere there was a traffic cop who busted me for speeding.

Back in high school times, my mother made me go to a religious summer camp. I got more religious after that and it came time for me to get a job (I got a job while still in high school at a fast food place). I said I couldn't work Sundays because of church. The first place said then you can't work here. I said okay and went to a different fast food place and got a job with Sundays off.

Fast forward to my senior year, I wasn't really religious anymore and I started training some new girl. We hung out and started dating. Ended up getting married. We went through some troubles where we were living and moved closer to her family.

After we moved, I decided to join the military to help support us. Instead of just being all about drugs. Got some job/career experience out of it and now I'm out of the military but the job skills translated over to my current job.

The thing is I don't think I ever would have joined to military if I didn't feel I needed to for my wife. I never would I have met her without working at that fast food place. I never would have worked there unless they gave my Sundays off. I never would have cared to ask for Sundays off, if my mom didn't force me to go to a religious summer camp. Yeah so probably that.