Timeline 15: Another End of History

Cross-posting a challenge by Xandrel from www.alternatehistory.com:

Basically, Timeline 15 is a timeline in which things are just the way you like them. Your best possible timeline. Things that you like are popular, things that you dislike are unpopular.

Your political candidate of choice is doing well, your crush likes you back, you're healthy and happy. The way you currently dress is fashionable in Timeline 15, movies and tv-shows you enjoy are a critical and financial success while those you dislike are failures over there. Your favorite music is topping the charts, your favorite videogames are the most played, etc.

The catch is that Timeline 15 diverged from our world on the day of your birth and not sooner, so whatever Points of Departure you're introducing cannot happen earlier and the world was exactly like OTL until you were born.

I wanted to give it a shot, and it got a bit deeper than expected, so I made a map out of it.

WARNING: what follows it's going to be very, very preachy by the challenge's very definition. Don't say this caught you off guard.
Also, due to the POD and the underlying Transnationalist tones, this could be considered the luminous reverse of my Novus Ordo Seclorum scenario, but otherwise I consider it an entirely different animal.

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POD is 1987.

The Black Monday was a bit worse and the excesses of Reaganomics were more thoroughly discredited. In the subsequent years, the moderate approach turned away from classical economics and towards an adhocratic and adaptative approach to welfare and, eventually, workplace management. The GOP would become dominated by its most moderate sector, and the Democratic party would end substantially to its left respect to OTL, not only in regards to civil liberties. When the US enacted universal free healthcare, it was seen as a no-brainer by most of the population.

The late 80s saw all Communist regimes on Earth fall in domino effect, including China, North Korea and Cuba. Shock therapy was never put into effect, and most, eventually all of them evolved into healthy democracies. Yugoslavia successfully reformed into a federation of equals, butterflying the civil wars. A Pink Tide still formed in South America in the late 90s, but Chavez's advisors were different and much of the oil revenues were in the beginning used to diversify production to sustain welfare, turning Venezuela into a success story (and prompting an upsurge in Cooperativist ideas between the global left). Different orange revolutions swept parts of the globe in the 2000s, most notably Iran. An Arab Spring of sorts still happened, but with Islamism being discredited and the Middle East being more peaceful, it resulted in secular democracies which, at the very most, elected moderately Islamic parties, or in an improvement of pre-existing democracies, and all of them incorporated their own forms of participatory democracy, especially the ones that had tribal issues. This happened even in Saudi Arabia. By 2015, the whole planet would have been described by most freedom indexes as free or partly free, and the world enjoyed a degree of peace never seen.

During the 90s, in the face of a much more global world where most of humanity lived under liberal democratic and/or participatory regimes, international cooperation turned towards peacekeeping, counter-terrorism and sustainability. The Oslo Accords were a success. Bin Laden was arrested during the mid 90s, any form of Al-Qaeda-like organization was beheaded before it had time to form. The world advanced towards carbon footprint reduction and food security a great deal respect to OTL. Greater cooperation also resulted in greater collective efforts towards space exploration: Humanity landed on Mars in 2014, and there are international bases on the Moon: the eyes are now set on Europa and Titan. The transition of the Siad Barre regime in Somalia was internationally monitored from the beginning, as it was the Eritrean transition and an earlier peace process in Colombia, among others. Rwandan genocide, and eventually the Congo Wars, were averted with strong international peacekeeping effort. By the 2010s the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia are emergent powers at the level of Nigeria. An earlier, equally bloody theater of the Drug War in Mexico with heavy international involvement turned the public opinion against the whole concept of the War on Drugs, and pushed the public consensus towards a Libertarian attitude to "victimless crimes" by the late 90s, eventually turning into law and mining the power of the cartels. Generally speaking, Latin America is more developed and much more integrated ITTL, with its own growing EU equivalent, and crime rates in the region are substantially lower.

Brexit happened in a friendly manner and as early as 1992: the Maastricht treaty was made in a way that allowed no exceptions -it was their way or the highway. The negative effect this had in the free circulation and economic and material interests of the Gibraltar residents, coupled with an international community that was actively prosecuting tax havens, pushed Gibraltarian public opinion towards shared sovereignity between the UK and Spain in 2002 in the spirit of the accords of that same year, as a first step towards full transfer. European cooperation increased, and by the mid 2010's there's a significant transnational executive, a unified outer policy and a European army -but also, the accountability and democratic scrutiny of the European Commission have been greatly expanded, as the legislative initiative of the European Parliament and the own Popular Initiatives have. With much better economical and political prospects and an all-or-nothing approach, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Ukraine, Albania, Turkey and Yugoslavia are in, and Moldavia joined the union via Romania.

The Tangentopoli scandal in Italy gave way to a constitutional reform and a much healthier multipartisan and participatory democracy in Italy, while Berlusconi fell with it. The events in Italy would inspire other Southern European countries, including Spain, where the corruption scandals of the mid 90s ignited a wave of popular demonstrations that brought down the González administration, prompted a wide constitutional and legal reform and gave way to a more equilibrated political scenario that echoed the adhocratic and participatory political wave, with IU, CDS (that made less miscalculations in the late 80s and still counted with a good base of voters, even growing at the expense of disaffection with the PSOE), PP and PSOE having to rely on a broad consensus. The tone of the protests in the Basque Coutry ultimately made ETA to disband in 1995. The Spanish housing bubble never happened (nor the worldwide one: there was an earlier dotcom bubble that made politicians and economists of the time read between the lines, and the economic consensus was different to start with), but we still had an Aznar tenure that cut much of the entrepreneurial red tape, and a Zapatero tenure in the 2000s in which part of the economic growth was spent in investing in R+D and equilibrating the productive sector. Today's Spain is more prosper, robust, transparent, enjoys higher salaries and has a testimonial unemployment rate. In the mid 2000s an inner crisis prompted by a sudden electoral flop brought in a context of growing Postmarxist within the left brought down the PCE and took IU with it, the electoral gap filled by Bases Libertarias: an economically Socialist, socially and politically Libertarian party, that would become a major player in the subsequent years and would influence the push for a new constituent process, a post-wage economy and the regulation of drugs and prostitution, a trend that was increasingly common in most of the Western world anyway. A popular initiative in the late 2000s (made easy by the mid 90s constitutional pack of reforms) after a scandal of fraud and influence peddling involving the royal family, and with the PP as the only party firmly supporting the monarchy by then, brought a referendum about the form of the state that was narrowly won by the republican option. A constitutional convention was set in the early 2010s, which fair-copied the reforms of the last decades and deepened them, including a federal rearrangement of the country, a disposition that effectively revoked the 1977 Amnesty Law, direct and semi-direct democratic elements at the municipal level, and the enshrinement of the rights of Internet users.

Culture:

Ethos in the 90s became Darker and Edgier as IOTL: things were overall going fine, and they still are, but it was a catharsis after a really grim century, and a sense that all achievements were already made or on their way, and there was nothing left to do. But the tone was more futuristic from the beginning.

Pop music is indeed futuristic and has influences of Dance, Trip Hop and World music, favoring single female vocalists -think Madonna's Ray of Light as the Pop standard. Industrial Rock was much more popular, even mainstream. Dance music (its mainstream forms either dark and EBM-influenced, or more influenced by World music and more trippy and psychedelic) was as popular in America as it was in Europe. An effect of this is that Hip Hop was still big, but it never really became as big and mainstream as IOTL, and Southern Hip Hop never caught on. East Coast Hip Hop still retained its former glory, West Coast Hip Hop faded away after the early and mid 90s, and in most of the world Rap had gritty and simple beats imfluenced by Boom Bap, clearly divided between lyrical and message-focused. Industrial Hip Hop ultimately was more of a thing and came earlier. Punk, Hardcore and Pop Punk went more or less as IOTL. No 9/11 had as a side effect the butterflying of Emo music in the mainstream. Trip Hop was and is still big in Europe, and Big Beat has kept some of its popularity. Alternative and "Nü" Metal had a greater influence of electronica and had a more experimental vocation from the beginning, its sound not being so categorized and holding better until today, while Metalcore and more classical forms of Metal still had their niche. By the mid 2000s, the darker aspect of contemporary music would start to fade away, giving way to the most futuristic aspects and more upbeat tones. Both Dubstep and Electro House exist as popular genres. Trap music fucking doesn't, without the emergence of Southern Hip Hop, and a different cultural ethos in the last decades meant no Vaporwave or equivalent styles. Chiptune and its derivatives are bigger ITTL, and there's an emergent genre called Glitchcore (basically what Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero sounds like). Overall, the electric guitar enjoys a better health than IOTL 2016. 2000s Indie Rock as we understand it never existed in the mainstream (I like it, but I'm sacrificing it for the greater good), as it would sound "boring" or "too retro" to most: the Alternative Rock scene still has predominantly Industrial, Post-Grungy and/or Electronic Rock tones. In Latin America, the opening of Cuba made the new Latin generations to be united by Electro-Cuban music, combining Afro-Cuban and Electro rythms -Reggaeton had a much more moderate impact outside Puerto Rico. With an open and democratic China, Chinese Rock is a known and extended genre, and a fusion has occurred between Western Rap and Kuaiban.

The videogame market shows a remarkable divergence: the freemium/lootbox/gacha/microtransaction model was thoroughly regulated in most legal codes due to its potential access to minors and legislation being more up to date with existing conditions, so it's extremely more uncommon and has strong shady undertones: the legal distinction between a game of skill and a game of chance can downright decide whether a videogame sees light. VR and augmented reality are more developed, there were much more remarkable immersive sims, FPS are more often of the classic Run & Gun/intrincate map type than MilSims, indie games are even more present and easier to make, and in strategy there's a craze of sorts regarding city builders, though wargaming and grand strategy remain popular, and RTS never declined. Board games and PnP RPGs are more common than IOTL, and are a prominent aspect of many bars and leisure centers in most populations. It's unusual when a high school or a college doesn't host a wargaming club *and* an RPG club. Diplomacy is the new Risk, and Risk is the new Monopoly.

New sports are taken more seriously: drone racing, slamball (which still appeared and never fell from grace), even parkour, are considered full sports and enjoy their own permanent international leagues. In Spain, basketball is slightly more popular, and a greater openness to Cuban culture has resulted in an upsurge of interest for baseball.

In literature, New Weird was a bigger movement and the dominance of historical and mystery novel is slowly and steadily falling from favor against a new and wider trend of fiction for the sake of fiction. Not just quality fantasy and speculative fiction are becoming bigger, but new literary trends that defy old categories, even the gap between commercial and experimental. A wider and freer use of internet coupled to a laxer interpretation of intellectual property in many countries are prompting the emergence of collective, collaborative works and canons that easily reach the public via the old and new channels. Also lots of cringy fanfic as IOTL, but hey, at least you get a good laugh out of those.

The convergence of the world towards a mostly satisfactory global consensus (adhocratic and bottom-up institutions, liberal/direct/participatory/workplace democracy, universal welfare, social Libertarianism, Critical Rationalism, international cooperation) has eroded the worst excesses of Postmodern discourse, save for its influence in the artistic language. Humanities are dominated by a mix of left-wing Transhumanism, Secular Humanism and Bauman's concept of Liquid Modernity. There's a Culture War ongoing, but there's a robust global economy, Islamism is virtually a non-issue, there have been no migrant crises, Feminism is mostly and firmly Libertarian and pro-sex with its new voices fully distancing themselves from Social Constructionism, and a free discourse is encouraged to a point Europe is starting to repeal its anti-hate speech laws (racism, sexism and homophobia are seen as so irrational and indefensable that insinuating they cannot be defeated by public debate is regarded as a self-defeating stupidity), right-wing Populist discourse has found little to no niche in it, and in practice expressing such views, even "ironically", can leave you socially dead and applicant for a counseling program.

Non-streaming television is mostly dominated by homebrew series, contests, documentaries -much more rigorous and retaining a Utopian Scholastic tone respect to OTL. The History Channel actually deals with History in this world- and talk shows: Reality TV was one of the many experimental fads that people rapidly get tired of, and MTV -again, suspend your disbelief here- deals mostly with music. In Spain, Tele5 ended up under a different management, so it never turned into the non-stop kind of Gossip Thrash TV that it is today, focusing on quality homemade series instead.

Fashion in this world would look reminiscent of the most "New Millenium" aspects of our early 2000s. Baggy clothes, to cite an example, are still in fashion. Red, blue, white, olive green and black are the most common colors. Being overtly retro is a no-no. Beards are only fashionable as long as they're carefully trimmed. Women's fashionable hairstyles include long and straight (often ponytailed), helmet haircut, and whatever Gwen Stefani would do with her hair. For all genders, dyeing your hair in colors like neon pink, electric blue or kiwi green, as well as using body piercings or jazzy streaks, is as common that could well be considered business casual.

Plastic arts (besides street art), especially since the late 2000s, are giving rise to a new set of trends called the Synthetic Modernity. What they have in common is that they assume the Postmodern critique, yet without turning their back on the Modern ideal as much as Postmodern theories generally do. The new century is producing works painted with the techniques of the Baroque masters but which talk about modern topics and anxieties. Or expressionistic modern urban landscapes that play with colors and angles. Or collages of maps that form cities that don't exist. Or images suggested between the simulated digital glitches of a frozen frame. Or mechanical sculptures that are supposed to be activated by the spectator. All of this often fused with interactive elements of the visual arts that conform an everything with them. In the end, what really ties them together is that they reject the absence of a narrative, they embrace art as a technique, they assume what art has of mimetic implies the projection of another world and an aspiration to a better one, and they generally reject performance or concept art as vehicles. Respect of this latter point, their main opponent groups, such as The Key or Are We Cool Yet? follow Autoperformative ideas: they believe in performance, but it's the spectator the one who has to execute the work of art, whether he knows it or not. Their methods have brought them some problems with justice.

The most significant divergent aspect in cinema is the presence of the global Scenifist movement. The film directors who adscribe to this view of cinema state that the main protagonist in a movie is the setting. It's far from new in cinema that the setting can be used to express emotions or ideas within the narrative, nor that it can be the indicator of an intrincate world with its own rules in which the story takes place, but it is the main aspect and, according to the most extreme Scenifist directors, the narrative is completely subservient to the rules and the impact of the setting. The movement is not limited in scope: it has produced from university projects and low-budget indie movies, to very expensive blockbusters such as Peter Jackson's Silmarillion or China Mieville's Bas Lag trilogy.