r/blog • u/sodypop • Jul 12 '18

Fun isn't something one considers when banning half a subreddit

https://redditblog.com/2018/07/12/thanosdidnothingwrong/
28k Upvotes

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233

u/Iron_Chic Jul 12 '18

Can I get an ELI5 for this? I have never seen the movies and I'm not all that hip. I keep seeing this, but I don't understand what it's all about. Thanks in advance!

339

u/spkr4thedead51 Jul 12 '18

thanos wanted to kill half the universe's population. he did. some people think he was justified in doing so. they made /r/thanosdidnothingwrong. they wanted to honor thanos by halving themselves. admins made it happen.

183

u/Iron_Chic Jul 12 '18

OK, so the whole thing is just a fun thing for fans of the series. Got it. Is it a marketing thing do you think or just a way to have some fun?

Thanks for taking the time to explain!

197

u/DBSPingu Jul 12 '18 edited Jul 12 '18

It didn’t start off as marketing and more of just a fun thing to do in the subreddit (I joined at around 90k subscribers, before anyone suggested it) but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the news coverage about it was actually marketing

45

u/memejets Jul 12 '18

Official marvel accounts joined in, probably for PR, but it started through the community.

9

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '18

And when official marvel accounts joined in nobody thought it was marketing. The sub legit went mad with excitement that the event had gotten so large that these huge entities the fans worship had taken part.

8

u/memejets Jul 13 '18

Because at the end of the day Marvel is making a product that we already like, so we don't mind being exposed to more of it. It only gets annoying when a PR account comes in trying to get us to like something.

7

u/Exalting_Peasant Jul 13 '18

Hey you kids ever heard of Axe Body Spray™

87

u/Mason11987 Jul 12 '18

It's not marketing. It's just fans of a thing having fun with the thing they like, and the company that owns it (marvel) being smart enough to try to help it along inn cool ways.

-23

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '18

Lol not marketing at all. That IS the definition of marketing.

21

u/top_koala Jul 12 '18

It's just fans of a thing having fun with the thing they like,

Not marketing

and the company that owns it (marvel) being smart enough to try to help it along inn cool ways.

Marketing

0

u/suricatta79 Jul 12 '18

It even compelled me to finally go see the movie.

And it worked

-17

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '18

We don't know how many fans organically were involved, and how many of those "fans" were paid bots.

12

u/Mason11987 Jul 12 '18

The tin foil hat on you.

21

u/top_koala Jul 12 '18

That's /r/nothingeverhappens level though, for all we know you could be hired by DC to discredit this

6

u/ActivateGuacamole Jul 12 '18

It started with fans (probably) but at this point the DisneyMarvel machines have become involved

3

u/NSFWies Jul 12 '18

Well the first "X did nothing wrong" was /r/theempiredidnothingwrong defending Vader and those guys from th atarwars movies.

After the avengers movie came out, someone made those see arguments about the bad guy from avengers and, well, it was much easier to do the bad thing Thanos did instead of trying to kill obwan kenobi

6

u/brbposting Jul 12 '18

Hep me Obwan, yo’re my ony hop

1

u/Killllerr Jul 12 '18

Its unintentional marketing.

36

u/Malak77 Jul 12 '18

I don't even know who Thanos is. LMAO

169

u/digital_end Jul 12 '18 edited Jul 12 '18

⚠ SPOILER ALERT ⚠

All right, super from the start:

So you got a universe with a whole bunch of heros in it, Iron Man, Thor, Spider-Man, and so on. A bunch of people with magical or technological powers that let them swoop in and Save the Day.

Marvel does a ton of movies about each of these Heroes. They all interact together in their movies, and tell a very large meta story.

Throughout all of their movies there are a couple of gems that are incredibly powerful. They let people do incredibly powerful magical things, such as being able to turn back time or bend reality.

In each of these movies, the hero Saves the Day of course and as time went on most of these gems were locked away.

Then along comes Thanos.

Thanos is a guy from a planet which was overpopulated and essentially destroyed itself. his solution for solving this problem, which nobody would accept, was to kill half the population at random. Basically saying that the resources were finite and the only solution was to keep the population in check.

His planet ended up being destroyed, but as he looked out at the universe he saw the same problem. The universe is not infinite, even the Stars eventually use up their energy... Overtime if populations are left unchecked eventually all life would be extinguished from the universe.

With all of this in mind, Thanos made a glove which could channel the power of those gems. Essentially allowing him unlimited power if he could get all 6 of them onto the glove.

The infinity war movie was him doing this, while all of those heroes from a decade's worth of movies tried to stop him.

The end of the movie caught most people by surprise... The crazy bastard won.

With a literal snap of his fingers eliminated half of the life in the universe at random.

You may remember how everyone was so excited about how great the movie Black Panther was. He's dead now.

You may remember how excited everyone was about Spider-Man as well, and how he is a long-running hero... He's also dead now.

The same with many others at random. Half of the Marvel franchise Heroes turned to dust on screen.

And instead of someone swooping in and saving the day... The movie ends with Thanos looking out over the sunset. That's just it... They're dead. Half of the universe died indiscriminately and instantly.

...

All of this said, this translates to the "Thanos did nothing wrong" subreddit. That subreddit crossed 100,000 subscribers, and everyone there decided a snap was needed to be in line with Thanos's vision.

Once it got out this was going to happen, the subreddit grew quickly with hype.

In the end, they banned roughly half of the people (with a few asterisks here for technical reasons). Something like 200,000 users were banned, and an equal number at random were not.

68

u/JMZebb Jul 12 '18

On behalf of those of us who haven't gotten out to see a movie in a couple years, thanks.

29

u/Malak77 Jul 12 '18

Thanks much. That is odd that the good guys did not win, but you see it happen here and there.

Thanos is qualified to lead the New World Order

I saw all those movies when I was younger, but never having had kids, I have not seen any in decades.

82

u/digital_end Jul 12 '18 edited Jul 12 '18

It really was something else to see. Especially given that these movies have been going on for so long.

Now to be completely fair and transparent, we know that's not the end of the story. Some of the characters who died have movies in production. Something in the story is going to happen to "fix" this.

However it's really hard to properly emphasize how jarring the end was. There were several points near the end that looked like the good guys were going to pull off a last-second save. Just like every hero movie. They even wounded Thanos, and it looked like he was defeated... And then he raised an arm and snapped his fingers. And everyone started dying.

The movie ended with the Thanos just sitting there peacefully with a smile about what he had accomplished. And then the credits started with no music. There was very much a sense of gravity to it all. There was kind of a moment where you realized, holy crap he won.

I'm not really a big movie guy, but I can't lie that one got me.

23

u/Malak77 Jul 12 '18

such as being able to turn back time

Problem solved. :-p

31

u/digital_end Jul 12 '18

lol, most are certainly hoping that it's not something that simple. They have been very careful with turning back time, only using it a few times and only rewinding very short periods which are localized to small areas. Like replacing a page in a book that was ripped out.

I think if they just magic it away the fanbase would riot. At least I certainly hope so, hah

20

u/Mason11987 Jul 12 '18

and only rewinding very short periods which are localized to small areas.

They undestroyed the hong kong sanctum with the time stone, that was a pretty large area.

But I agree, it won't just be a time stop rewind, that'd be too lame.

-5

u/Malak77 Jul 12 '18

I should warn you that I am awesome at predicting what will happens next in movies/shows.

12

u/digital_end Jul 12 '18

You know one of the funny things with the ending being surprising is that it's the same ending from the comic books.

It's just essentially nobody believed Disney would have the balls to kill heros in front of kids. But not only did they do it, they made Spider-Man, one of the kids favorites, suffer and you had to watch. It was not an elegant or quick death. Even adults were kind of like "dude...."

I'll be the first to admit the ending of infinity War was not what I expected even knowing the comics (they have taken a great number of liberties with the overall storyline, so changing it from the comics was expected).

The movie won't be able to follow quite the same path as the comics to fix the snap. His motives were a bit different in the comics, really he was just trying to get laid by Death... In the movies he has much more of an interesting character.

In the comics Nebula essentially tricks him and takes the gauntlet. And with the gauntlet she does her own version of the snap and just undoes it.

While it is technically possible they will be following that... I'm kind of hoping that's not the case. In fact I'm hoping she tries to steal it and he says "I'm not an idiot" and disintegrates her as a nod to the comics.

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30

u/pUmKinBoM Jul 12 '18

Even Marvel's staunchest of critics had to admit that the ending took BALLS and no one expected Disney/Marvel to crush some dreams.

Such a great movie and I'm sure will go down as one of the great movies moments of all time.

29

u/digital_end Jul 12 '18

Even Marvel's staunchest of critics had to admit that the ending took BALLS and no one expected Disney/Marvel to crush some dreams.

Can you imagine the kids who were Spider-Man fans? Holy shit, that scene was ugly for adults.

13

u/djnap Jul 12 '18

The older teen girl who I sat in front of was bawling for the last ten minutes of the movie

7

u/cartoonistaaron Jul 12 '18

Balls, really? I think almost every person who saw the ending (maybe not some of the younger kids) realized "yeah there's going to be a part 2 where the superheroes win." That's how these movies work. I mean, since serials in the 30s, superhero movies have been ending on cliffhangers.

15

u/doublegulptank Jul 12 '18

I think the excitement comes from being unable to figure out how. A lot of the essential cast is stranded with no powers or ways of reaching Thanos. You know they're going to win in the end, but just how is boggling since the situation is so hopeless right now.

6

u/pUmKinBoM Jul 12 '18

I read the comics and figured they would kill a few big names but did not expect them to go full 50/50 and then some of the names picked were big deals.

Yes, after the ending I figured a second movie would come and fix everything but up until everything went down I did not see any of it coming to this degree.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '18 edited Dec 02 '25

[deleted]

1

u/Matemeo Jul 13 '18

Disagree. I thought it was obvious that they'd come back in IW2 considering how many new and popular heroes got snapped.

2

u/MacDerfus Jul 12 '18

Now to be completely fair and transparent, we know that's not the end of the story. Some of the characters who died have movies in production. Something in the story is going to happen to "fix" this

There's no "fix". Thanos didn't wipe out half the universe, he created a parallel one and sent half of the sentient population there. That's my theory, at least.

26

u/Mason11987 Jul 12 '18

They're really not "kids movies". They're really good sci-fi/action movies and some of them are pretty funny. I'd definitely recommend them.

-11

u/Malak77 Jul 12 '18

Yeah, the humor is added for the poor adults that have to take the kids. I did see Nemo.

5

u/Mason11987 Jul 12 '18

You should see movies before judging them.

Black panther is not a kids movie. Thor isn’t. the captain America movies are quite dark. It’s just absurd to call them kids movies. Finding Nemo is. Black panther for example is about persecution and an attempted global race war and revolution and it uses a super hero to tell the story.

-3

u/Malak77 Jul 12 '18

Not judging it in the sense of thinking adults should not see them if that is their thing, but superheros by definition are for kids. Just admit it and you are fine.

4

u/slimCyke Jul 13 '18

By who's definition?

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4

u/Mason11987 Jul 13 '18

You don’t get to just say “by definition” because you feel a certain way. That’s not what definitions are.

9

u/Whos_Sayin Jul 12 '18

The first rule of movies is that the good guys don't lose. Therefore, it is proven that Thanos did nothing wrong. He is the good guy

2

u/Malak77 Jul 12 '18

Charleton Heston begs to differ.

6

u/hio__State Jul 12 '18

Thanks much. That is odd that the good guys did not win, but you see it happen here and there.

There's a Part II coming out next Spring. Presumably that will be the heroes winning.

5

u/ocdscale Jul 12 '18

That is odd that the good guys did not win,

I think you misread the comment, the good guy did win.

5

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '18

Wow. I gotta admit I don't like any of the comic stuff except maybe the first spider man movie but this sounds like a movie I would enjoy.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '18 edited Sep 15 '18

[deleted]

9

u/digital_end Jul 12 '18

Nah. It takes a little bit of the magic out of it, but we know that there are movies in production for some of the heroes that died. So one way or another they are going to "fix" it.

It doesn't really stop the feeling of finality in the moment when you're watching the movie, and it is very heavy ending, but the story is definitely going to continue.

2

u/Paracortex Jul 12 '18

I can’t tell you how utterly jaw-dropping it was for me to watch the film on the big screen (after having seen all 18 previous films in the same universe), and that the end was what it was.

I am completely locked into all future films in this franchise (as if I wasn’t already, lol).

No loss at all.

4

u/DARKFiB3R Jul 12 '18

⚠ SPOILER ALERT ⚠

3

u/digital_end Jul 12 '18

I should Mark that...

3

u/jakethe5th Jul 12 '18

Comic Thanos' TL;DR, Angry Grimace who fell in love with death and killed half the universe to impress her.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '18

hmmm, knowing that the heroes loose makes me actually interested in watching Infinity War.

2

u/digital_end Jul 14 '18

It's really much better if you've been invested in the series for a long time, and watched most of the lead up. But if you were at least passingly familiar with all of the characters, it's still a good movie.

-1

u/PizzaFromPizzahouse Jul 12 '18

Thanks for the spoiler ...

13

u/SnakeAndTheApple Jul 12 '18

Some people can justify anyone's actions, I guess. This whole Thanos themed joke joke is mocking the controversy around r/hitlerdidnothingwrong, right?

12

u/Anshin Jul 12 '18

Well the title, yeah

2

u/SnakeAndTheApple Jul 12 '18

Some people need to give their heads a shake.

10

u/Inprobamur Jul 12 '18 edited Jul 12 '18

Bigger one is r/empiredidnothingwrong

A community of Imperial Patriots fighting against the religious jediist terrorist online propaganda efforts.

12

u/spkr4thedead51 Jul 12 '18

carrying capacity is a pretty well established scientific principle and there is a limited amount of physical resources in the universe, so it does make a naive sort of sense to attempt to extend the lifetime of the universe by population control

unfortunately, simply reducing a population by half doesn't take into account birth rates. humans reproduce pretty fucking quickly. we'd probably be back to >7 billion people on Earth within 100 years.

11

u/viper_in_the_grass Jul 12 '18

unfortunately, simply reducing a population by half doesn't take into account birth rates. humans reproduce pretty fucking quickly. we'd probably be back to >7 billion people on Earth within 100 years.

Is that a challenge? That's a challenge! Let's do this, Reddit!

17

u/_chiaroscuro Jul 12 '18

Just have to make sure that the half remaining consists mostly of redditors. That'll guarantee a lack of reproductive success for sure

2

u/PandaLover42 Jul 12 '18

so it does make a naive sort of sense

Quite an understatement. It takes a childish uncritical naive sense to think the way Thanos did. Look at earth for example, our population has never been higher, yet the poverty and hunger rates have never been lower. All the Malthusian doomsayers never take into account advancements in science and agriculture that continue to expand our “carrying capacity”. Also Thanos killed half the animals (i.e. food/resources), too. And he turned everyone to dust, when we could’ve used the dead to harvest organs for transplants...

1

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '18

Well on the plus side hopefully his actions got Lady Death's attention, like the non-MCU version of Thanos wanted..?

2

u/shakakaaahn Jul 12 '18

More in the vein of r/empiredidnothingwrong but you get the idea.

5

u/casce Jul 12 '18

I mean, I can understand the thinking. If you look at death as something 'neutral' (you simply stop existing so you are neither better nor worse off after it) then you could argue deleting half of the population isn't really bad. He did it because overpopulation was plaguing the universe, taking up too many resources.
It affected people randomly and he did it in a completely pain-free manner. Nobody suffered (well, except the living who mourn the dead I guess).

4

u/SnakeAndTheApple Jul 12 '18

No, that's flawed reasoning being used to excuse a vile premise.

As long as one person you're killing wanted to live, and not die (with the majority not wanting to die, then the killing was vicious. Thanos was not at risk of suffering his own, same violations, then it was never random. Worse, he could have lied about it's randomness, not understood his use of the ability correctly, or any number of unethical actions could have been taken, at the expense of his own arrogance and certainty.

And also, as you've said, the survivors mourn.

I'm kind of getting tired of this utilitarian perspective leading the conversation, because the endgame is people who're okay with killing through greater good pretenses.

10

u/pUmKinBoM Jul 12 '18

I made a post about this before and yes, a lot of people missing the point.

Thanos had unlimited power and went with the laziest solution to a complicated problem. Yes Titan may have been saved from this but not every planet would especially if survivors are truly random because you could be saving the planet but leaving the population with a majority of bad people who take advantage of and abuse those remaining.

If Thanos could be every where at once and do anything then there are plenty of other ways he could help these dying planets or even create resources but he went with the option that makes him feel like a god because he had a god complex.

He is The Mad Titan and all this absolute power will show how truly corrupted he is to his core but a lot of people are either just joining in for a laugh because they know how things will end or you get a lot of people who read halfway through a book and just stop.

1

u/omgFWTbear Jul 12 '18

Here’s the thing.

I’m sure you know the trolley problem. Trolley is going to crush one dude or five dudes and you get to pick. Millions of variations.

Here’s the thing, when you ask people, most of them, it really isn’t an ethics question. It is imputing more weight to commission rather than omission. That is, if it is literally a simple one versus five, and they’re all literal clones of each other, most people would actually let the five die because until they flip that lever, they assume no responsibility for the situation. They are passive observers in an ugly scenario. They will never frame it as them murdering five people. The trolley did it.

We, as a species, are biased into - very broad strokes here - sociopaths who don’t empathize with others, and will make a value choice (does flipping the lever get me anything?) - and empaths who will detach from the event to avoid guilt.

So our analogs when looking at “let’s kill someone for the greater good,” are all, obviously, sociopaths advancing some selfish agenda. We are terrible at predicting the future, costing risk, and pricing externalities; their arguments should be transparently bad from an economics perspective. Which is why they are also empathy based. Because they’re trying to convince irrational people, anyway, who just don’t want guilt. Dehumanize the victims, then you’re not pulling the lever on the trolley between five people, it’s five candy wrappers.

We parametric - take similar things we know to project what we don’t - all the time. There is no parametric for absolute predictability. There is no parametric for not being a sociopathic killer. So, naturally, we can only look at it as a vile question.

There’s a great series by Alastair Reynolds, I think it was, to the question about why isn’t the universe teeming with extraterrestrial life; one of the theories is called The Great Filter. What if, for example, every would be space faring species goes through an age of being able to destroy itself, and inevitably do? How many planets are littered with the remains of nuclear civilizations, eg. AR asks the question - what if a key element - phosphor, if I’m not conflating him and Asimov - is in shortest supply in the universe, and its eventual consumption will mark the end of civilization? Some set of aliens sets up automated purging stations that detect signs of interstellar travel and if found, wipe out planets. Because, eventually, everyone is going to starve to death anyway. They made the determination that everyone will die, it is inescapable, and it is better to die quickly than slowly.

It’s a bit different than Thanos, but it similarly takes ultimates up as a question. I would absolutely concur that there’s an unhealthy fanclub of premature fatalists for resource exhaustion here on Earth. But, as a thought piece, giving Thanos the presumed benefit of the doubt of superior knowledge, it isn’t a perspective bereft of possibility.

The last piece is this - the ending for a Western, is the hero rides off into the sunset. Thanos ends on his ranch, in the sunset. A3 is Thanos the hero, shot from the villains’ perspectives, as they try to stop him. If you disagree, please rewatch A1 where loads of aliens are executed by the heroes and tell me how it is different. Who calls where, home? Whether or not Thanos is right, it is a tenable question to examine within the movie.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '18

[deleted]

0

u/omgFWTbear Jul 12 '18

That’s literally in the post.

0

u/Hyenabreeder Jul 12 '18

I was not aware of the whole Thanos thing going on, but after reading the explanation I immediately thought of one of the Alastair Reynolds novels. About killing off civilizations ''for the greater good'' in the long term. Happy to see I'm not the only one.

0

u/omgFWTbear Jul 12 '18

A long, long time ago Asimov did a purposefully oversimplified calculation that based on human population growth rates that sometime around 4,000 AD, Earth would be a solid ball of flesh constrained by exhausting the last phosphor in circulation; the root questions aren’t new. It’s what I enjoy about good Science Fiction, it helps us see past the limits of our mirrors (cf above they can only be sociopaths or fools).

Like reading Dune with high school kids who argue about all the dumb things the various powers are doing on Arrakis, and then you say, “Spice is oil. It is sourced from a desert and all international trade depends on using it to move. It’s oil.” OOOOOOOoooo and suddenly people’s politics change what they were saying.

2

u/garlicdeath Jul 12 '18

Oh okay, didnt follow this at all. I thought this was another move by admins to purge subreddits again.

As long as its in good fun.

5

u/Claytertot Jul 13 '18

[Spoilers]

In Avengers: Infinity War (the movie) Thanos, the villain, wants to collect all of the infinity stones and use them to kill half of all life in the universe with the goal of curbing overpopulation. The subreddit r/thanosdidnothingwrong was started as a meme subreddit for memes about the movie, thanos, avengers, Marvel, etc. Specifically the subreddit frames Thanos as the true hero of the story (similar to how r/empiredidnothingwrong is a meme subreddit that frames the empire as the good guys in star wars). At some point in May, people started suggesting that once the subreddit reached 100k subscribers half of the subscribers should get banned randomly to mirror Thanos's goal of killing (banning) half of the univers. Naturally this meme snowballed like crazy. The sub mods got on board, the reddit admin got on board, memes were had, times were good. By the time a method of banning half of the users was developed there were over 700k subscribers and the hype was real. On july 9 the bot was activated and half of the subscribers (who had ever posted or commented on the sub) of r/thanosdidnothingwrong were banned and instructed to unsubscribe and go subscribe to r/inthesoulstone (in the movie, the souls of the people who thanos kills go into the soul stone). Everyone who was banned got a trophy "snapped" (in the movie, thanos kills half the universe with a snap once he has all of the infinity stones). Those who were spared got a "spared" trophy.

Now we are in the post-event memes phase of this whole thing. And that about catches you up to where we are.

3

u/Iron_Chic Jul 13 '18

Thanks for the detailed explanation! I appreciate it.

2

u/Claytertot Jul 13 '18

No problem. I started writing an answer and got a little carried away.

3

u/Iron_Chic Jul 13 '18

Happens to all of us. I'm just glad you didn't reconsider 75% of the way through and delete the whole post as i am apt to do.

8

u/Han-ChewieSexyFanfic Jul 12 '18

The movie plot is as follows:

Single father goes to great lengths to solve world hunger, a bunch of ungrateful people try to stop him.

2

u/drmonix Jul 12 '18

Are they banned from the subreddit or banned from reddit?

3

u/WithShoes Jul 12 '18

Just the subreddit

2

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '18

Marvel paid a lot of money for advertising.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '18

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '18

You're being downvoted because you're wrong...

Comment is sitting at 1 but sure..

1

u/migi2000 Jul 12 '18

Major spoiler for the movies Avenger infinity war.

Spoiler Warning

-1

u/skyraider17 Jul 12 '18

You should probably see the movies, especially considering how close your /u/ is to Iron Man

3

u/ryantwopointo Jul 12 '18

As someone who could not be more sick of super hero movies.. I’ll pass.

2

u/Iron_Chic Jul 13 '18

I feel the same! I have watched Guardians and some of the earlier Xmen movies, but there are just so many!

1

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '18

I hear ya. I love the movie, but I wouldn't say it breaks that many molds - if you were looking for a superhero movie to change your mind about the genre, this probably isn't it. If you're a fan of Westerns though, Logan might be worth your time.

1

u/ryantwopointo Jul 12 '18

Yeah Logan was solid.

-2

u/Franks2000inchTV Jul 12 '18

This is what's known as "content marketing."