In addition to a number of extremely harmful world leaders, CEOs, billionaires, rightwing “thought leaders”, and politicians… I definitely would be tempted to go scorched earth.
I probably would settle to just make the leaders of certain movements shame themselves publicly and so thoroughly before their death that those movements end from sheer embarrassment.
I’ve got the hubris to think I’d be cool about it. Starts with billionaires and Republican leadership. Ends with “people who park in bike lanes”.
I learned from hardcore history that everyone gets corrupted by power. I truly believe that i would ice people that would only benefit the rest of the world. But i assume i eventually will also reach the point of: “dit that motherfucker just cut me off?!”
And thats where you write yourself and uncle ben tour way onto a better future
I absolutely could not be trusted with such a book. That being said, I should absolutely have it,
hhmm… sounds trustworthy!
This reminds me of Galadriel’s speech when Frodo offered her the ring.
ITT: Megalomaniacs
I think a lot of people ignore the main issue with Death Note. I don’t view it as depicting how anyone would be corrupted by power.
Light Yagami started out with an overinflated ego and impaired self control by virtue of being a teenager with good grades. He likely was also already a psychopath (though you can’t give that diagnosis to a minor). He’s effectively the male Japanese version of Elizabeth Holmes. That’s what led to him becoming a megalomaniac.
Not everyone starts off with that set of circumstances, and conversely not everyone would go down the same route. But that’s not the story the author wanted to write nor the story the audience wanted to consume. A good person using the Death Note to fix the world would get old really fast because there’s little tension and intrigue. But someone being correpted by power down a path of evil? That’s a story that can be interesting
There are two extra stories that show what could happen. One is of a good person trying to do ‘good’, they killed themselves as soon as they were challenged.
If the story started with Light killing government figures and business moguls world wide, it would have to answer a lot of questions. It was a tighter story keeping it local.
Light Yagami started out with an overinflated ego and impaired self control by virtue of being a teenager with good grades. He likely was also already a psychopath (though you can’t give that diagnosis to a minor). He’s effectively the male Japanese version of Elizabeth Holmes. That’s what led to him becoming a megalomaniac.
Should be noted how Misa Amane isn’t really corrupted, just gulled into Light’s cult of celebrity and used up by his machinations.
I think a few more characters with a hand on the Death Note would have made the story better, to play out it’s influence on the user.
I mean, killing those that want others dead for the crime of existing seems pretty water tight on morals and corruption. Don’t stray from that rule and you should be fine.
yeah, light literally monologes about becoming god of the world like…5m after confirming the book is real. dude clearly had issues
yah, was gonna say. as long as you don’t start a cult and start drinking your own coolaid, you’ll probubly be fine. but then we wouldn’t have as much of a story would we.
What about people who make fun of my farts
They already ded, they just still walking.
Looks like you just made the list.
That doesn’t solve the issue of you not having perfect information, which the post alludes to.
List of KKK members, done. List of proud boy members, done. They don’t exactly make it difficult to deduce.
Do we really need perfect information for the likes of Trump, Putin, et al?
Ah so you’d kill all of the members of Hamas then. That’s what you obviously meant, because you everyone agrees on which people you mean when you say “those that want others dead for the crime of existing.” Completely water tight! Definitely not at all dependent on the arbitrariness of which information you’ve been exposed to.
I dunno. You sound kinda like hamas over there.
I’m just on a list because I was raving about our local hummus guy and apparently I smoked too much and had a lisp.
So you want others who want others dead for the crime of existing, dead for the crime of existing?
Edit: clearly I should have used /s for the obvious joking wordplay on a meme community
No dumbass, you literally just listed their crime, its not “existing”. If they were just existing they wouldn’t be targeted, they wouldn’t be guilty of genocide.
It isn’t a difficult concept. x wants nightlily dead for being German. y wants x dead for wanting Germans to be dead.
It isn’t recursive.
Exactly. You get it ! You have to be intolerant of the intolerant.
our university had a book that actually killed a person via falling on their head. it was encased in this bulky jacket with metal edges. and for whatever reason it was relatively high up the bookshelf and the bookshelf was quite old and falling apart. So one day some dude decided to pull out a book from this bookshelf and it buckled and that bulky jacket book cracked his head open.
If you gave me the Death Note no one would ever see it again. Not even me.
god that’s dangerous and cosy
∗falls to death∗
Honestly in the right hands that book could do a lot of good very quickly
Seriously. Also, I can’t imagine what good people I would write down after being corrupted by power that would outweigh the first three names I would choose immediately after getting the book.
Same as the death penalty IRL. You can’t know that person x is guilty and that person x not existing will make things better.
Counterpoint - you can know if leader of country x is guilty of killing others if they say they’ve done it quite openly and want to do more of it.
Perhaps, but then you kill that person and the power vacuum that is now created is likely to attract someone so much worse. There is no guarantee the next person will be better than the current one, and if the next one is worse, it would be your doing.
Then just get rid of the next monster. Eventually the hierarchy will learn and reform, if by no other means than by the individuals corrupting the structure being eliminated
Also there’s the potential you could do a purge of random but known issues within the structure outside of the leader themselves. Wipe out a Lavrenty Beria or Reinhardt Heidrich on occasion to show that it’s not just the leadership position itself being cursed.
So? You have a death note. You can give every new entrant a 1 month trail run. Eventually people will figure out a pattern. Humans aren’t that dumb.
Killing a leader doesn’t get rid of the position of power that enabled their misdeeds.
No, the position is occupied by the next monster. And so on. And so on. Dang, that’s such a nifty way of getting rid of sociopaths!
The entire theme of Death Note is that power turns people into sociopaths and that no matter how many “bad people” you kill you will never actually succeed in cleansing the world of evil, but I guess no matter how ham-fisted you make it people will still miss the point. It’s funny that a lot of people complain that Light has an unrealistically naive view of morality and yet this comment section seems to be teeming with people who are equally immature.
The entire theme of Death Note is that power turns people into sociopaths
First off, sociopathy isn’t a thing. It’s a made up term a fake psychologist made up to put people on death row in Texas for personal gain. Go listen to the Behind the Bastards episode on it. The actual diagnosis is “psychopathy”
Second, Light Yagami was already a psychopath at the start. Notice how in the show that there were 2 others that held the Death Note and they didn’t go mad with power over it.
yet this comment section seems to be teeming with people who are equally immature.
Look at all of the growing injustice and inequality in the world, spurred on by CEOs, dictators, and billionaires. Just look at health insurance, where hundreds of thousands die each year from denial of care. Look at Elon Musk and DOGE defunding USAID, which resulted in over 100,000 children dying across the world. Look at the destruction and death that Russia has brought to Ukraine to try and conquer them.
Look at everyone in this thread who looks at all of that pain and misery and would want to do something about it. You’re calling them immature? No, you’re the one who’s immature, with all of your bullshit pearl-clutching.
Here’s a bit of a tangent: when the US invaded Vietnam, there were a lot of incidents where troops were ordered to just wipe out villages of people who had nothing to do with the war, including women and children. There was also a high rate of soldiers “snapping” and shooting their officers in retaliation. Those soldiers didn’t “snap”, they were the sane ones.
First off, sociopathy isn’t a thing. It’s a made up term a fake psychologist made up to put people on death row in Texas for personal gain. Go listen to the Behind the Bastards episode on it. The actual diagnosis is “psychopathy”
I was only mirroring the language used by the person I was replying to. Great podcast though, I’m already a regular listener.
Look at all of the growing injustice and inequality in the world, spurred on by CEOs, dictators, and billionaires. Just look at health insurance, where hundreds of thousands die each year from denial of care. Look at Elon Musk and DOGE defunding USAID, which resulted in over 100,000 children dying across the world. Look at the destruction and death that Russia has brought to Ukraine to try and conquer them.
Look at everyone in this thread who looks at all of that pain and misery and would want to do something about it. You’re calling them immature? No, you’re the one who’s immature, with all of your bullshit pearl-clutching.
I agree that something must be done, and I understand where the desire to kill those responsible comes from. I feel the same frustration myself, but I also know that engaging in adventurism won’t solve jack shit. At best it can bring temporary relief, and at worst it can trigger an escalation of the violence/repression it was intended to address. The individuals who are most visibly responsible for the injustice in the world today are merely appendages of a much larger group of powerful institutions which are themselves motivated by incentives that are systemic. What I am doing here is not pearl-clutching; my objection is a strategic one, not a moral one. I won’t shed any tears for dead health insurance CEOs, oligarchs, or dictators, but I will always advocate for organizing with others to address the systemic drivers of injustice rather than acting alone and throwing your life away in an act of impotent violence. It’s better to live for a cause than to die for one.
See the problem is Light didn’t use the thing correctly. He could have written, “while suffering from a massive stroke, Senator ___ voted to pass nationalized school lunch.” Sure, the killing people sounds fun, but it’s what they do while dying that could make the world a better place.
Problem is he completely lacked a systemic critique of society and fixated on crime, which he took for granted as the cause of all problems. For Light, all evil in the world comes down to individual moral failings, and by getting rid of the criminals he was eradicating evil.
I’m built different.
Never watched it.
Killing people who keep abusing that position of power within an exact amount of time however would either get rid of the position or stop the abuse eventually.
There’s only so many times a person in a very specific position can be struck by lightning or have a heart attack before everyone sees that position as cursed or becomes superstitious about it.
I mean, dictators have historically often met with a rather grisly end (Mussolini shot and hung upside down by his toes, Hitler blowing his own brains out, Gaddafi sodomized with a bayonet) and that doesn’t seem to stop people from pursuing the same power.
We’re talking year long consequences, after being in power for years. And then the next leader doesn’t meet said fate.
Every month though? Different story. Especially if it’s something like getting struck by lightning
If all that happened in the same month I bet it would get some people talking tho.
Eventually you run out of monsters to fill the position (and the supporting positions below). At that point you now have people willing to make positive changes in the world in positions of power
That is not how it works at all, and it’s actually a very childish way of thinking. There is not some finite pool of monsters these positions of power draw from, the positions of power make the monsters. “Power corrupts” is the most common trope in fiction since the advent of fiction for a reason and it’s baffling that so many people still don’t get it.
Insisting that tropes are universally true just because they’re repeated is absurd. It’s something a child would think up.
Go look at history. There’s plenty of examples of people who do the right thing when in positions of power. This is because power doesn’t corrupt - it reveals who people truly are. It’s just that selfish people are more likely to seek out power for personal gain.
Then the replacement uses it as justification to further that endeavor.
Deathnote can kill in any way you want as long as it’s realistic. Not sure how they’d figure it out. Which means that at some point people will start to think divine intervention, especially if ending the war stops the heart attacks / eagle attacks / flag poles falling on said leader, or whatever other symbolism you’d choose.
So many corrupt preachers are gonna get struck by lighting…
I wonder how long it would take for me to start straight up killing rival sports teams.
Politicians already have that, but instead of a heart attack its just a special service member shoot someone.
I would kill people that don’t deserve it (no one deserves it really), but those people, or rather groups of people, are inherently intertwined with the maintenance and proliferation of global power structures that feed off of inequality and suffering.
Their sudden absence will have unforeseeable consequences of course, but the world will be incredibly more based without them.
The issue is that with a death note, you’re a global power structure that feeds off inequality and suffering now.
that feeds off inequality and suffering now
How would that have any connection to a Death Note? You can’t just throw that accusation out there without logic backing it up
Getting murdered sucks. Being friends or family of someone who got murdered sucks. Using the Death Note inflicts great suffering.
As long as the Death Note user remains anonymous they can avoid any sort of accountability, while they can hold others accountable to whatever standards they wish. Using the Death Note creates inequality between the holder and everyone else.
Being friends or family of someone who got murdered sucks.
I don’t give a fuck about the family of the health insurance CEO that got Luigi’d. They got their fortune from killing millions of Americans, and they still get to be stupidly rich for the rest of their lives.
If someone used a Death Note to take out the 100 most wealthy individuals in the world, you’d save hundreds of thousands of lives and improve the lives of orders of magnitude more people than that.
Eh, still a net positive in the end I think.
I dunno. They defaulted to a lack of empathy with those affected by their actions and got defensive when challenged on that. That seems like it could be enough to spiral like JK Rowling when put in a similar position of power and public scrutiny. With similarly catastrophic results - if not more so, given the power of the death note.
(And to clarify: I don’t think they’re a terrible person. Most people have issues that, if expanded to horrifying scale by a weapon of mass destruction like the Death Note, would lead to horrible outcomes. Given what little interaction with them I’ve seen, I just don’t think they’re an exception).
They defaulted to a lack of empathy with those affected by their actions and got defensive when challenged on that.
Is it truly a lack of empathy to look at the pain and suffering a relatively small number of people are inflicting on the rest of the world and be disgusted by it? The health insurance CEO that got Luigi’d is respobsible for 10’s of millions of deaths. Elon Musk and DOGE removing USAID killed over 100,000 children worldwide. And Peter Thiel is literally trying to recreate 1984. How you consider anger over that a “lack of empathy”?
Also consider that if the elites that are trying to oppress the world are ever taken out by a Death Note, their friends and family will still be significantly better off than the oppressed ever would. As in, they still would never need to work a day in their lives and still be well off. It’s hard to feel particularly sorry for them whem they have so much comfort that a small reduction would greatly benefit hundreds of millions of otherd.
It’s hard to feel particularly sorry for them when
Exactly. It is hard to feel sorry for people who have done horrible things and whom the world would be better off without. It’s hard for a Marxist-Leninist to feel sorry for the petit bourgeoisie. It’s hard for a liberal to feel sorry for criminals. It’s hard for you to feel sorry for rich people.
The question is how freely the list of people you don’t feel sorry for grows as you make a business out of murdering people, ignoring the anguish of their friends and family, and dismissing reports on the negative consequences of their death as propaganda.
The list could expand ahead of you so fast you never have a crisis of conscience. You could hit boundaries that dissuade you temporarily but which you abandon after you’ve grown more cynical. You could actually have solid boundaries in many areas but still have some where the list grows to massive proportions. Or you could cause changes in the world that lead to more people you don’t feel sorry for.
The ease with which you dismiss these concerns make me think the expansion of your list will not be bounded.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
(no one deserves it really)
I call bullshit. Would you claim Hitler, Stalin, or Mao didn’t deserve death?
Be careful when speaking in absolutes. The world is rarely black/white
Well, yeah. I believe in rehabilitive incarceration. Of course they likely wouldn’t be let out ever again, and given their control of their countries military; killing them would likely be the only option (unless we had a death note >:3).
*Like they would have mandatory cognitive therapy which would create opportunities for them to right their wrongs as much as possible by communicating their new thought processes to their ‘followers’.
Of course they likely wouldn’t be let out ever again, and given their control of their countries military
Except there’s historical examples of tyrants getting out of their sentences and taking control of their military. The most notable that comes to mind is Napoleon.
Not for a justice system that was developed hand-in-hand with the KKK (yes, the police really did develop that way) then I’ll agree in that condition due to the system often being used to suppress minorities. But that’s not what’s being discussed here.
I’d just write the names of the entire Republican Party
if you’re doing that don’t forget the non gop that jump ship and conveniently vote with the gop in minimum quantities to win the vote. or just be lazy and all the politicians that aren’t demonstrably not evil
That’s why they use fake names. To protect themselves.
That is way, way, way too many people. Being summarily murdered from afar should be reserved for people currently engaged in a genocide or major war crimes. Not their milquetoast lackeys.
Okay then let me just check my notes on who that would be
the entire Republican party
Neat
I guess now we know why those stories are told as allegories for why we shouldn’t give power over life and death to people. But usually the protagonist needs to slide into abusing their power. Blood thirsty mitherfucker. Smh.
How many elementary schools do they need to bomb before they’re evil enough for you? How many pointless wars? You good with the actions of ICE, no murders there? Women dying in their cars from pregnancy related issues cool too? These people are mass murderers all ready.
Sounds like you would have let the Nazis go after Hitler died.
To be clear I’m not talking about Bob down the road who voted Trump, sure he’s responsible for enabling this bullshit, but I’m not a monster. I’ll let the responsibility stop with those in the government voting to let this all happen
The bar for summary execution on only your judgement from afar, or mine, should be incredibly high. Much higher than before an official court and out in the open. I have exactly the same opinions about your (rather US centric) list, but I would not want to use the power to murder them on a whim. And if this is the list that you start with, where will you be after sliding into the moral quagmire of where to stop?
Wtf dude you hopped on a thread talking about the Republican party and now you’re upset that it’s US centric. Which Idk how bombing a school in Iran is US centric, but whatever.
My moral quagmire starts when the fascists are dead. Honestly I’m taking this a lot less far than many here would. I’d stop with those actually responsible. I don’t waste time hand wringing about bombing schools and empowering ICE to brutalize the country
Says the centrist who’s fine with claiming to take the moral high ground so long as they can stay confortable
The sci-fi version of that is “we built the torment nexus from that famous book ‘don’t build the torment nexus’”
