There have been a fair few threads in the past here on the best ways to meddle with history - what small change could you make that would have a big effect downstream? These tend to home in on either swinging the outcome of significant battles, or carefully chosen assassination. Other solutions often focus on an individual - e.g. getting Hitler into art college, stopping Lenin from going back to Russia. This is all fine, but it’s a little sanguinary and it lacks the big picture view.
I think we can take a more pacific, yet more sweeping approach. Culture underpins everything a society achieves or fails to achieve, as we all learnt from Civilization. An individual might win a battle, or invent a new kind of pump. But societies are more or less militaristic, more or less innovative, more or less insular. Ethics, economics, equality - they’re all driven by shared cultural heritage. Change the culture, and you change the whole sweep of a nation’s - or a continent’s - history.
So, what changes would you make to the development of culture (e.g. art, music, literature, dance, video games, Saturday morning cartoons - we define the term broadly) to have the biggest effect on historical outcomes today? Which works or artists would you influence to change the way the modern world thinks? You can wield your influence largely how you like, be it changing the mind of the artist/composer/writer before or during composition, slyly editing the work before publication, even getting them drunk and writing/making the whole damn thing yourself. Points will not be awarded (because how would that work) but if they were it would be for magnitude of change, efficiency (i.e. changing just one word vs rewriting the whole damn thing), style, technical difficulty and fun. (Please note, there is no requirement to change the world for the better, you monsters)