Newton’s third law.
The collision with Theia
Why do you hate the moon?
No public toilets
We can propagate effects through time? Perfect. I’m going send a snap forward into the future. From now on, anyone that attempts to gather up the infinity stones gets instantly dusted.
I feel like it’s one snap per attempt.
Like, thanos couldn’t permanently limit population, his one snap was big but finite.
Might as well Snap away the stones. They’re a thing. Much easier, very finite, just make sure you Snap away the stones deep into the past.
It’d have to be something fairly pivotal, but nothing so important or so far back that it prevents myself from existing amidst the swirl of history. I think I’d take the risk and say Reagan never became president. That would domino Reaganomics out of history, and remove the precedent of celebrities becoming president.
I’d have gone for Nixon, personally.
Like I said, if you go too far back, you might remove yourself from history. Reagan is close enough to my birth that I’ll risk it, but Nixon would definitely unmake me.
The Big Bang was a mistake.
Snap
“In the beginning was the Creation of the Universe. This has made a lot of people angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
I think the birth of Hitler is an easy choice. But I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that eliminating some earlier event could both right another wrong and negate Hitler’s existence.
Aside from that there’s the existence of the internet, which I’m not sure has been an overall benefit to humankind. I think about this often.
Mao is probably a lot more impactful than Hitler - I’m just uncertain if it’d successfully abort the damage.
Mosquitos. I’m so fed up with those things.
I work in pest control and controlling mosquitos is a big part of what we do. What I’ve noticed over the years is some people, like myself, never get bitten while others, like my wife, are constantly attacked. I’ve never looked into why that is but I find it interesting. I haven’t had a mosquito bite in probably 3 or 4 years. Granted, I treat my home for them but I’m always working places that have them bad but I’m never bitten. Couples I work for often relay the same things to me about one being bit but not the other.
I have had mosquitos land on my arm and then fly away without stinging me, all before I could wave them away.
One interesting thing I’ve noticed about mosquitoes is that this phenomenon seems to depend on location. The local mosquitoes favor my husband. In other states or countries the situation is often reversed. When we visited Cuba the government was doing aggressive mosquito control due to Zika. I still got disproportionately attacked.
That is very interesting. I’ve heard people claim it’s to do with blood type but my wife and I share the same type. I like the idea that locale has something to do with it. Mosquitos be like, “oh let’s check out this new Asian joint that just popped up!”
Save the snap. Use it as leverage to shape the future by threatening tyrants into standing down, for I have no idea what might happen absent of a historical event happening.
Now. Who to start with? Bibi? Putin? MBS? Closer to home?
You do realize they’re going to ask you for a demonstration of your power before they’ll ever kowtow
They don’t have to know you can only do it once.
Right. If it’s not a proven power (as though aliens or a god gave you this power in view of everyone), then you can simply come to these dictators and warn them not to test your power. Similar to Pascal’s Wager, they would be wise to consider. Though you may be bluffing, of course. Then you use it. Then since nobody else knows you can’t repeat it, one public demonstration would be enough to convince future tyrants.
I think you would rapidly be defenestrated.
Myself
Honestly, this was my first thought too. I wouldn’t mind getting off the wheel with absolutely no consequences.
If I Thanos snapped myself, wouldn’t that just delete half of me? Left or right? Top or bottom half?
Reagan probably. If my understanding of history is correct, its the only thing that doesn’t delete me but helps the most.
How would removing Reagan help?
If it’s about the Berlin Wall, it’s not as if it wasn’t inevitable no matter who was president.
He broke basically every single pro middle class policy in the US. Unions, pensions, social security, taxes on the rich, exploded the deficit, congressional partisanship, brutal " better dead than red" foreign policy, on and on. He constantly broke every political “taboo” that protected these middle class bulwarks, and it worked. Our country has been brutalized for 40 years and counting, and most of the ugliness can be traced back to his administration.
He single handedly did more destruction to our nation than any other president so far, and yes that includes Trump.
Not to mention the completely failed War on Drugs which is still ongoing wasting trillions of taxpayer dollars providing jobs to the police to arrest minorities with laws aggressively passed to target them, and actively trying to to prevent more advanced research into “controversial” topics like HIV/AIDS and stem cells instead of actually trying to find treatments.
He may not have started some of these, or kept them going, but he expanded them and created a cult following for their continued implementation.
Hate.
If it has to be something tangible, then idk, pickles maybe.
What about hate for pickles?
If hate for pickles was snapped away, then I suppose I wouldn’t be minding so much when errant pickle juice gets on my food.
It’s not a disagreeable compromise.
I choose this poster, for wanting to take away my beloved pickles.
Greed or dishonesty are other abstract ones to consider. Worried that removing dishonesty could cause some harms, but I guess anything in the thread probably could.
We would just replace hate with something else.
“I love you so much that I’m stabbing you with this sword so that you are spiritually preserved at your current status for all of eternity”, something like that.
That’s basically the “plot” to the song Miss Murder.
I say this as an American, from the bottom of my heart I wish Christopher Columbus never existed.
Well there goes me but at least my native ancestors would have had a chance to thrive.
I’m a white dude that’s obsessed with Mesoamerican history. Holy fuck I would prefer the civilization your ancestors would come up with than what my idiot dirt farmer progenitors from Europe ended up creating.
There was a French explorer who “discovered” America four years before Columbus. So Columbus’ erasure wouldn’t even affect the one purpose he had.
The acts of Christophorus Columbus directly perpetrated by him range from holocaustic to apocalyptic in scale.
Christophorus
You missed the opportunity to call him Mr. Christoffelees.
It’s his non-anglicized name.
Oh… I thought it was a pun on phosphorus used as a jab.
The Thanos Snap has sooo many problems associated with it. It’s developed by an evil multinational that doesn’t listen to it’s users and keeps trying to force itself on the universe.
People should use the Thanos Flatpak instead…
Henry Kissinger. Easy. Godfather of horrific war crimes and if we all die of nuclear annihilation one day he will be the person I would put the most blame on. It irritates the shit out of me that he died peacefully. A man who made sure napalm gets poured on civilian children? Gets to die like that? Fuck that goof and I hope he was afraid when he died and I hope it hurt.
This guy! This guy right here!! Holy fuck he lived for so fucking long too.
I listened to the Behind the Bastards series on him and it was a lot to unpack.
