Gregory's Server
@ewen i dunno, given the hypothetical, i'd assume that our world was so bad BECAUSE it was being manipulated and exploited out of sight to, but for the exclusive benefit of, the worlds technically advanced enough to get here. multiversal colonialism
so there’d probably *lots* of people that would want to visit, buy cheap exploitation-produced stuff and cool urban “shitworld” art, mess up a couple locals because we're all subhuman scum to them and then pop off back to their utopias. laughing about how it's our own fault for being so savage and primitive that we banned slap bracelets instead of realising that with a few modifications you can travel to parallel worlds with them because our brains are too shitworld and now with them in control we'll never figure it out
@leon @ewen H. Beam Piper, 1950s and 60s SciFi author, wrote 1 book and a series of short stories in his "Paratime" series all with this exact plot. The first civilization to discover alternate probability time travel monopolizes the technology and colonizes all the time lines where humans never developed or went extinct, and manipulate more primitive cultures to exploit specific resources. Endless worlds sliced finely like pages in a book, with similar groupings around major global events.