ThiefIf Thanos had, instead of randomly wiping out 50% of all living things, he had instead in each species wiped out only the dumbest 50% what would the reaction of each avenger have been?
TheYear2525Would they all still exist?
pwnicholsonI can’t think of an Avenger or even sidekick who I would put in the bottom 50% of the earth’s population. Even the dumbest are probably in the top 10-15%.
Hulk? Depends on if the stones qualified he and Banner as separate beings
Draxx believed he was invisible if he stood still, he even thought he was invisible while eating a bag of chips. I’m not sure he’s gonna make it.
Let the man try!
naw I’d say Drax, Starlord maybe, and Hulk if he was in Hulk mode are all written to be comically stupid
but yeah that’s probably it, most would survive
There’s a lot of generosity toward Thor in this thread. And I think that’s great, even though he’s going to rule Asgard someday, while his brother is clearly more qualified.
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 🏆Banner is still around, but Hulk is gone.
Maybe Thor, too.
Quinn definitely is gone. So is Drax and many characters from GOTG.
There are plenty of dumb avengers, though a lot of them have not been featured in the movies yet.
Drax isn’t stupid, he’s just hyper-literal. If it comes off as stupidity, it might be poor writing or some assumptions made.
ddhHe’s not just hyper-literal, he struggles to adapt, rarely displays any strategy at all (which gets them into trouble repeatedly) and, you know, thinks he can’t be seen because he’s very still. Drax is loyal and courageous, but intelligence is not among his gifts.
Quinn?
Quill?
Starlord. I always mess his real name up 😖
Yeah. The interesting money seems to be on Thor. Could break either way. Place your bets everyone.
ivanafterallIt wouldn't shock me if Hawkeye disappeared. But then again who'd notice?
He would definitely be gone.
Clint isn’t a stupid guy. In the show, he’s hard of hearing, which some people might mistake for being dumb if they saw him on the street, for example. But remember how scary he was in The Avengers. Guy could shoot an arrow into the wind and knew it would blow up an engine. You know there’s some crazy subconscious math going on there. Also, his counter-terrorism rampage in Endgame wouldn’t have been nearly as successful if he wasn’t a great planner and tactician.
magnetosphereAlso, his counter-terrorism rampage in Endgame wouldn’t have been nearly as successful if he wasn’t a great planner and tactician.
I hadn’t considered this. You’re right. This is a man with no powers whatsoever. Meticulous preparation was essential. A mindless killing spree would have been suicidal.
This makes that scene much more unsettling.
They’d still be appalled and try to stop him given their strong moral code. And given that they’d be at full strength they’d probably find a way to stop him and reverse things faster than they did in OTL
Deep cut
I’m frankly astonished anyone could genuinely think the Avengers would ever somehow be more ok with letting Thanos kill “only the stupid people”. Like…that’s a very strange read on these characters to think they’d ever react any differently in this scenario.
RBGYou think none of the Avengers is in the “dumb” 50%?
Of course not, didn’t Drax have a calculus scene in guardians 3?
He’s still dumb even if he can do calculus
You missed the sarcasm mate. I chose Drax specifically because he’s clearly not in the top 50% and I havent even seen gotg3.
I thought it was obvious but actually I could totally see James gunn putting a tongue in cheek maths scene in a film.
Drax DID actually subvert his intelligence in the third film
And given that they’d be at full strength they’d probably find a way to stop him and reverse things faster than they did in OTL
Good point. But I dunno. Thor is a big power loss, and unless Captain America gets a free pass for emotional intelligence counting, they’re short in leadership, too.
underiskIf anything, I’d say eco terrorism is a far more defensible motivation than eugenics.
twelvefloatinghandsKeep in mind that people are part of the eco being terrorismed
Why couldn’t Thanos just wish for unlimited resources? Or universal peace? Or literally any number of things that would have solved the problems he was trying to solve without anyone getting hurt or never existing? His method was stupid.
But then you don’t get to massacre people
he was the Mad Titan not the Reasonably Thought Out Plans Titan
His method was stupid
He would be part of the dumbest 50%.
I think that the motive should be allowed to be dumb, and their mistake was making Thanos appear lucid and competent. They really should have leaned into “the mad titan” thing and made him act more like an unhinged despot.
Right? Nothing about him seemed really that insane or unhinged. Even killing Gamora, his adopted daughter that he appeared to care for, can be explained as him doing whatever it takes, not being insane. Even what he did to Nebula came off, to me, as just him being extreme in his desire for her obedience and perfect, like any other obsessed and controlling parent.
Honestly, he came off more as the “annoyed Titan” than anything else.
That would have at least made his non-sense make sense. If he’s crazy, he gonna do crazy shit. That may even be why I have always preferred the over-the-top cartoon villains. They were insane, and their plots didn’t have to make sense because they were insane.
“I’m gonna blow up the world!”
“But, um… aren’t you part of the world?”
“Shut up, you and pull the lever!”
I mean, he could have just created 200% more resources as well. Or he could have equually redistributed all the resources. The problem he was trying to solve would still eventually happen again, because solving the problem relies on everyone working unselfishly, which is simply not possible when humans are involved.
Actually a good point. He should have just done that.
I think he should have cut the birth rate to a third of what it now. No one would notice. No one would die or be missed. There’d just be a lot less people within fifty years.
OK while that would be a better idea the thought that no one would notice is laughable. We have detailed pregnancy rate records going back 75 years, an immediate 30% change would definitely raise a lot of red flags.
I think he should have made everyone half size. Then they would have only needed half as many resources plus there’s a little tiny, angry Spiderman jumping around.
MrZeeI kinda like the idea of randomly distributing how much each person gets shrunk. Each person ends up anywhere from 99.9% to 0.1% of their original size. Think of the added chaos it would create.
This would make a great short story. People would probably divorce and marry based on size
Yeah, I feel like it would create a hell of a lot more chaos than half the world disappearing. And hijinks. And genocide.
KoboldCoterieIf they were half as large, they’d need less than half as many resources, as their volume would decrease by considerably more.
That wouldn’t have impressed death. He is into goth girls.
Yeah, Dan Brown dealt with it in a much better manner.
Annoyed_🦀 Dude, he killed Vision and Gamora and other people close to the member of Avengers, no way they gonna let him off the hook.
I always wondered if your goal is to reduce population. Why not just make half the people infertile?
Too slow
Has to be more than that. People have multiple children and probably would. It’d need to be cut to at least one third or less.
Non-zero chance that the distribution of infertility does not match the distributions of male to female. Could result in complete population collapse pretty quickly.
Can we please not hypothesise about eugenics and people's reactions to eugenics, with the current global climate?
Pls touch grass
Entertaining how to react to fictional atrocities is useful in shaping our real-world responses to actual atrocities.
Entertaining for the people who are certain that they're not a member of an arbitrarily defined group. Whether their certainty is well-placed is a different problem, I guess.
I’m using the word entertaining as a verb. It’s a synonym of considering.
My mistake, I misread.
I agree that discussion is important in deciding responses, but discussions like these are also used as testing grounds for gauging acceptability. It's how places like 'active clubs' recruit and promote far-right extremism, they start with gauging the response to lower-level discrimination and slowly escalate to larger acts.
I don’t want to live in a world where we can’t engage in thought experiments.
And I'm sick of living in a world where thought experiments are used to casually label people as dumb, disposable, but they're ok because they mention superheroes and that makes the whole thing outlandish. Until the atrocities occur, again and then it's "why didn't someone do something sooner?".
OP didn’t perform a snap. No one irl did.
You have to be able to discuss hypotheticals if you want to know what kind of person you are.
The fact that this hypothetical makes you uncomfortable is ok, it just means you have compassion and that’s valid.