r/Askreddit What's The Craziest Butterfly Effect You've Experienced From A Tiny Decision?

welcome to r ask writer where we answer the question what's the craziest butterfly effect that happened to you because of a small decision you made our first replies from 35 millimeter pirate my wife got an email from our old colleagues the day we returned home from our honeymoon asking if she wanted to star in a short film they were doing for fun she said sharon asked if i could come along as she knew that i had an interest in movies but at the time i worked in life insurance and was miserable it was more than an interest i'd always wanted to make films but i never made the right connections with people and didn't know where to start i made friends with the producer of the short film that my wife was in and 11 years later filmmaking and video production is my career i've shot feature films short films video for tv and web and all over the world because of that one email to my wife it changed our lives oh and that original short film never got finished lol and then beneath that someone asks are any of your short films available i'd like to watch some of them and then another random user says backdoor sluts9 our next replies from nagano fagano he found out after 18 years that his mom's side of the family was spanish not mexican he found this interesting and changed his country to spain on myspace instead of the u.s where he really was meanwhile in australia i was helping my friend find spanish people to add as a friend as she was learning the language i came across my now husband and decided to send him a friend request as well we got along really well and met in person after three years we've been together for 11 years married for seven if he didn't change his country to spain which he only did for a day or so we'd never know that each other existed wow and it's crazy that your husband only changed it to spain for just one day if he had done that one day earlier or one day later you probably would have never even met each other our next reply is from our leash the first day that i ever signed up for internet back in 1999 i installed mirc because it was on the starter disk my isp gave me and joined a random chat room over the course of the next year the regulars in that room became like family to me we would talk about everything all that practice made me a fast typist and a way better communicator than i was before that they would even help me when i had trouble understanding something in my college classes i also met my husband in that room and we've been happily married for 18 years others from our little irc family are married too and we still keep in touch all because i randomly chose that chat room on that day our next reply is from a 911 owner my existence when my dad was about 20 he needed a phone number so he called the operator from a pay phone she gave him the number he hung up and she accidentally refunded the money back to the pay phone she called the payphone back and asked if he could put the money back in which he did and hung up again she accidentally refunded the money again and had to call back again to ask him to put the money back in again he did and hung up again she was so flustered that she refunded the money again and called back again and my father got to chatting with her and got her number they set up a date which she stood him up for then she forgot his name when he called her again then they actually got coffee and four years later they were married this coming august it'll be 50 years for them if my dad didn't need that phone number i wouldn't be here yeah op and if your mom wasn't so insanely incompetent you also wouldn't be here this is a super cute story op but your mom sounds like one of the worst phone operators i've ever heard about though in fairness it's 2020 so it's not like i've heard about a lot of phone operators our next reply is from demon aardvark my desire for pizza set off a chain reaction that destroyed my family one day i got home from school and really wanted pizza my family was poor so spontaneous food trips weren't always in the cards i really worked my potty face to my mom and begged to go to the local pizza place for dinner she said all right while chilling there i saw my uncle walk by and i was like wtf uncle x is that you now you might say well he wanted pizza what's the big deal well he lived several states away so to arbitrarily be in town and not tell anyone was strange it turned out he was having an affair with his sister-in-law my aunt on the other side of the family she was basically a money-grubbing [ __ ] and the family protested one thing led to another and everyone hates each other now and we haven't had contact in like 20 years i just wanted some pizza and then beneath that sid sip replies it was a domino's effect i'm gonna do a quick detour here and tell my own butterfly effect story i think i might have told this story before so i'm sorry if you've heard it before but personally i think it's a pretty good story so i'm a really big video game nerd i've been playing video games my whole life and one of my favorite video game developers is blizzard entertainments i remember playing starcraft on my nintendo 64 with my little brother when we were kids my brother and i were straight up addicted to diablo 2 and after that in high school and college i played tons of world of warcraft so when blizzard announced that they were going to launch overwatch which was a first person shooter video game i was super excited i saw that blizzard was giving early access to the game to streamers youtubers and other content creators i was so jealous that they got to play the game before me so i thought you know what how hard can it be i'll just make like 10 or 20 youtube videos about overwatch they'll send me a key i'll delete my youtube channel and then just play overwatch non-stop so i made an overwatch video then i made another and another and another and another and i made dozens of overwatch videos blizzard sent out a new wave of beta keys and i wasn't one of the people they skipped me so i was like fine whatever i'll just keep making videos and next time they'll send me a beta key so i made more videos and more videos and eventually another set of invites went out and i wasn't invited at this point i was less motivated than i was angry i felt like i deserved a beta key i mean i'd put out literally probably like 50 to 100 videos at this point and i still wasn't invited meanwhile these other people who had put out fewer videos than me had been invited so i was like fine i'm just gonna keep putting out videos because i'm going to earn that freaking beta key and after months and months of grinding overwatch videos i still didn't have a beta key and the game just finally launched normally but by then i'd actually discovered that hey making youtube videos is kind of fun also when the game finally launched my overwatch channel blew up and got super popular and that was the first time i realized hey wait a second youtubers can actually make a decent amount of money off of this so a short while later i got fired from my job coincidentally because i was always watching youtube videos and i became a full-time youtuber that was about five years ago give or take and one day i was clicking around on youtube and i saw this video of someone reading a reddit post and i was like wow this content is awesome i love reddit i read read it all the time i could totally do this so literally my entire profession was changed just because i really really wanted to play a video game and whoever was in charge of giving out beta keys just didn't care about my content and never wanted to give me a beta key because if they had given me a beta key after i'd only made like 10 or 20 videos then i would have definitely stopped making videos and just played that game non-stop our next reply is from kamar too the other day i was driving home from work traffic was light and i was sitting behind a car with a number plate that started kfd so i decided to duck through the kfc drive-through for chippies with extra salt as a little treat to myself they took forever to bring them out and by the time they finally did all about 10 minutes later traffic had slowed to a complete halt i need to get over a bridge that's normally six lanes which has been reduced to one turns out it's due to a massive collision involving several cars when i finally get to the point where i'm driving past the wreck i notice the number plate in one of the cars that same kfd number plate if i hadn't stopped to get fries i'm pretty sure i would have been in a major collision too long didn't read kfc chippies with extra salt saved my life beneath that benny dizzle says kentucky final destination also we have a similar story from skater guy skater just the other day i was driving home from work with the intention of stopping at the mall near my house because i was craving a burger i also remembered that i needed to go to the store to pick up an order from my girlfriend but it was in the complete opposite direction i made the decision to pick up the order for her instead and then head home not even 10 minutes after that decision i get a message from my friend that there's an active shooter at the mall and it was being evacuated and was surrounded by cops if it wasn't for my girlfriend's order i would have been in the mall at the time of the shooting event and then beneath that romney557 says my uncle was late for a meeting in the pentagon on 9 11. he would have been in the wing that got hit our next reply is from andromeda when i was in eighth grade at 13 years old i had a really long bus ride home so i would pass the time by reading one day i faced a very serious situation of having nothing to read with only a minute to grab something in the library and for whatever reason i grabbed a book on astronomy that book was amazing and grabbed me like nothing else ever had before i remember being excited to realize that every astronomer on earth was 13 years old once too and that was a career that you could actually do even if you were just from pittsburgh anyway today i'm a professional astronomer who studies gigantic space explosions for a living there was a lot of work to get from that moment to this one but i'm always grateful that i picked up that library book beneath that zrko replies right on what was your major in college and lin sage replies ursa major but um our next reply is from robot monkey shark i was at a university career fair and i just had a long day talking to companies and i was heading out when i saw a honda booth designing cars would be awesome but there's a huge line it's been a long day and what are the chances but wait they're giving away hats and shirts and model cars so i talked to them a day later i get a call back for an online assessment i fill that out and don't get anything back for a month or so then i get a call one night saying that i was an alternate for someone who canceled last minute so they want to fly me up for an onsite interview i go and end up getting and accepting an offer after graduation i move about a thousand miles away from home for my new job where a few years after i meet my now wife and we have two kids i never would have crossed paths with her otherwise so the entire course of my life was shifted because honda gave away good swag at their career fair booth as a millennial i have to say stories about someone landing a job are better than porn our next replies from wondering drew i was given an option of two different start dates for an entry-level job in a large organization the date that i chose to start led to working in a small but high-profile team so i got lots of exposure with senior management and i became the can-do guy who'd fix a million tiny problems that recognition led to promotions a fantastic career further professional qualifications and working overseas for several years i also met my best friend and my partner if i had chosen the other date i'd have been sent to a data processing pool and been fairly anonymous and beneath that we have a similar story from a legal human i was given two start dates for my new job in march if i had chosen the earlier date i would have come into the office for a week before we all went on work from home due to covid instead i started on the work from home date and had my computer mailed to me my desk was next to a person on my team who turned out to have covid he was young only 31 and just a couple of years younger than me but he's been out of commission and been working part-time because of how tired he's been due to the illness even months out if i had chosen the earlier start date i would have been seated right next to him in a tiny co-working space for a week our next reply is from nematobryken i chose to rearrange the sequence of classes slightly before starting my education by doing this i had to commute to a different branch of the school in a different town than the one that i originally signed up for on my first day there i helped a girl who had managed to break both of her arms in a drunken shopping cart accident i learned later this girl whom i would have absolutely never met if i hadn't changed my classes around is my wife through 14 years our next replies from my eggs are big i had to call my heart surgeon to give them my new insurance numbers i had only just gotten them because the person who had them had the flu and wasn't getting back to me so as soon as i got my numbers i called the surgeon the receptionist said oh hey we just got a cancellation for this friday do you want it of course i wanted to get it over with and not wait another month so i decided to take the open heart surgery cancellation appointment a month before my actual appointment and well my surgeon said thank goodness i did because once he got a look inside of me he realized that i wouldn't have survived to the original appointment date so if the insurance lady didn't have the flu i would have gotten those numbers a lot sooner and never gotten the offer to have the surgery when i did someone else's flu saved my life our next replies from spiritual jaguar i was always super flirty with the girl from hr but we were always seeing other people and don't date at work so when she left the company i was bummed a year or two later a co-worker asked me to search my email archives for something that he needed i ended up stumbling across the farewell to my work friend's email from the hr girl and she sent it from her personal email address i reached out to her we had coffee then a date then many dates then i love views and then i put a ring on it asap 12 years later and i am extremely happily married two goofy kids two evil cats and she puts up with my bs we're huge office fans and somehow we never realized how meta it was to our relationship it warms our heart to get so much love and my wife is thrilled to be compared to holly i'm not sure i'm feeling like a michael but effort i'll take it our next reply is from yellow horse not in afghanistan i wasn't done with my coffee so i passed on a trip from one base to another there was another convoy a few hours later most everyone died who took the first convoy my second cup of coffee wasn't even cold when i found out our next replies from the fifth beagle when i got out of university i was looking for a job and exhausting all the online resources on a whim i looked in the career section in a print newspaper that was lying around the house we never even subscribed to that paper i don't know why it was even there i got a job in a different city met someone who is now one of my best friends who introduced me to their friends who introduced me to their friends and so on until i was eventually introduced to my wife if i'd found a job where i actually planned on working there's absolutely no way i would have crossed paths with any of these people to clarify i met my wife through a friend who i met through another friend who i met through another friend who i met through the first friend i made at that company our next replacement do staff fan my parents dream was to have a famous child when my older sister's figure skating career ended in her early 20s the spotlight shifted to me i was a fine oboist and took private voice lessons with the intent to audition for the local music faculty in any case there was a lot of pressure and while i was successful at school and classical music it was never enough at 17 before my senior year began my sister gifted me a kitten my parents had given her two kittens in her senior year and the implication was that it was my turn when my sister dropped me off my parents locked me out saying that if i wanted my own pet i needed my own place so i found one that night i worked three jobs to support myself through senior year and graduated with entrance scholarships to both of the local universities i couldn't afford a music degree while living on my own even with the entrance scholarships and good thing too entering the workforce showed me how much i love active jobs three years later i enrolled in college and became an industrial mechanic and millwright to my parents great shame after a few years of this i landed a sweet contract where i work on saturdays and sundays but receive a full week's pay although i'm a living beacon of disappointment i comfort myself with my 100 000 a year job a two-day work week and two cats being kicked out over a kitten saved me from wasting years chasing an improbable career just to please my parents first off op oh my god your parents seem like buttholes secondly op oh my god that's an amazing job you make over 100k a year by working two days a week i think most people would kill for that job it's like oh boo hoo you have to work during the weekend but then you have a five day weekends or an extra plasham persifer the older i get the more i'm constantly cognizant of the vast cascade of seemingly insignificant decisions and actions that led me to where i am for example a decision 25 years ago to change a refrigerator light bulb before going out resulted in me being in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting mugged which resulted in my decision to move out of the city that i'd been living in which resulted in my meeting my wife and from there to having all my kids in the whole shebang i would have had a different whole shebang had i not changed that light bulb that afternoon but the path to the present leads through that and a thousand other similarly trivial decisions our next reply is from kardoff el sakpai i watched who wants to be a millionaire and got so annoyed at the contestants not knowing a simple question about katy perry that i applied and got in i got to play won a lot of money and i booked a holiday to a dream destination with that money i met my husband there and we now have a one-year-old son our next reply from disco stud i was going to carpool with my on to a family gathering at the last minute i decided to go by myself so i could leave early if i wanted it was a ways out of town and i didn't want to be stuck there on the way there my aunt drove off the road into a ditch she was okay but the passenger side of the car was totally smashed our next reply from hey what so a few years back i lived in nice france for a while as a musician i would make a bit of extra cash busking and one day i figured i'd go busk at the promenade denglaze by the sea it's usually packed and it's just a generally pleasant place to be i set up played a couple of songs and was doing pretty well and making a decent amount of money then suddenly not one but two of my guitar strings snapped i even remember that i was playing the scientist at the time i was massively gutted and decided to cut my losses early i stormed off home in a bit of a sulk at having to restrain my guitar and cutting short what was essentially one of my most productive days of busking since moving there literally one hour later my phone starts to blow the f up with family and friends freaking out and asking if i was at the promenade it was bastille day 2016. the truck drove into the same crowd that i was playing to killing 86 people including my at the time girlfriend's uncle i had two other friends who were amongst the 458 people injured i moved home the next month because it was too much and i haven't been back since it's hard to explain sometimes i think i was super lucky sometimes i just kind of cry and wonder why i was lucky and others weren't it's surreal and despite what people think it's a truly horrible feeling o.p you should look up a thing called survivor's guilt because it sounds like you're definitely suffering from that also don't beat yourself up you're not the person who's behind the wheel of that truck so you don't have to feel guilty about it that was our slash askreddit and if you like this content then check out my patreon where i published episodes 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Channel: rSlash

Views: 497,967

Keywords: reddit, r/, rslash, r\, sub, subreddit, best of reddit, reddit top posts, top posts, top posts of all times, funniest posts, funny, comedy, funniest reddit posts, funny reddit posts, funny reddit, fails, cringe, askreddit posts, funny askreddit, ask reddit, askreddit, r/askreddit, askreddit top posts, askreddit funny, askreddit question

Id: nHutfynkvTU

Length: 20min 7sec (1207 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020