Great 'what ifs' of history
I'm only into counterfactual (aka virtual / alternate) history in a limited way, as in I've read a few books, but am aware there are people very into it. And I'm aware of how self-centric these things become.
Science and tech are big ones, inevitably. One of the reasons I'm not interested in a lot of these counterfactuals is there are lots of massively important scientific breakthroughs and theories, as well as inventions, that happened at basically the same time. These multiple discoveries include oxygen, evolution, the periodic table, telgraphy, the incandescent lightbulb, and the microchip. Famously, patents for the telephone were filed by Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray on the very same day in 1876.
Even if not at the same time, things get re-discovered. Aristarchus knew the Earth orbited the sun and lived about 310-230 BCE. Copernicus figured it out again in 1543. So a lot of it seems inevitable. 'What if James Watt hadn't invented the steam engine?' isn't answered by 'The Industrial Revolution wouldn't have happened.' but by 'Someone else would and probably pretty soon.'
Of course this is part of the fun - turning events upside down and shaking them out. The loose change of circumstance. All the stuff that nearly happened but gets left out of the nice linear story history is retrospectively turned into. History is written by the victors, certainly, so what if they hadn't been the victors?
In the UK the big counterfactuals are our invasions. What if the Romans had stayed out, if the Normans had been defeated, the Nazis hadn't.
It all gets a bit too Great Man theory of history for me.
I'll confess I am curious about a few. What if the Mongols had come through Europe? I had a history professor who spoke so movingly about the wonders of medieval Baghdad. What if Alexander the Great had snuffed out a young Rome? What if the Enlightenment had cured humanity of religion? What if that Eastern doomsday cult of mischievous Christians never got off the ground? Like so many didn't.
Really I care more about a different world. What if our cultural touchstones were different? Could we have cared about different things? Was humanity always going to be so destructive? Would we always have ended up here - destroying the planet so a handful of people can become filthily rich? Could we have valued other things? Because what I'm really asking is, Could we still?