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The Infinity War saga contains probably the most satisfying troll I've ever seen in mass media (obvious spoilers of IW and Endgame)

ItWasMeantToBe19

ItWasMeantToBe19

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
20,440
So a lot of people are obsessed with population control based on one of these few possibilities

1. Big numbers scary
2. Racism
3. Classism
4. Incredibly bad understanding of economics
5. Attempting to dress up bloodlust or authoritarian desires with reasonable intentions.

And these edgelords immediately embraced Thanos after he was the protagonist of Infinity War. Their ideas were back being talked about by a lot of people again!

And then Endgame shits all over all of these people by showing how devastating Thanos' population control was to all the survivors. Thanos at the end tries to salvage his plan in the only way possible (that still supports mass murder) by going "well... I'll... just kill everyone and then make a new population half as big!"

A lot of really stupid people and edgelords really bought into Thanos as a character and then the Russo brothers completely destroyed all of these people.

..... It was really good.
 
Stinkles

Stinkles

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Oct 25, 2017
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User Warned: Derogatory language.
Who is they? Thanos was widely reviled as an edge lord corduroy chin know nothing failtard.
 
SaintBowWow

SaintBowWow

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Oct 25, 2017
4,082
Zero people walked into Endgame thinking it would show how the world was better off due to the snap and that Thanos wouldn't get defeated in the end.
 
ToddBonzalez

ToddBonzalez

The Pyramids? That's nothing compared to RDR2
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Oct 27, 2017
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Is population control something that's discussed seriously by anyone? I haven't heard of it, even amongst bigots.
 
Okabe

Okabe

Is Sometimes A Good Bean
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Aug 24, 2018
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Lord Vatek

Lord Vatek

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Jan 18, 2018
21,507
I'm pretty sure most people who say that Thanos was right are being ironic.

Those who aren't didn't go into Endgame expecting it to treat Thanos as a good guy.

I'm more glad that it didn't try to legitimize his love for Gamora.
 
Grenchel

Grenchel

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Oct 27, 2017
2,295
I dont think that was a prevalent expectation nor something the creators aluded to?
 
Zed

Zed

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Oct 28, 2017
2,544
Cantaim said:
I assure you that around my college campus for the last year the amount of times I heard "honestly I'm team Thanos" was more then you would be comfortable with.
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Were these people serious, or did they just enjoy the villain being the main character and/or winning in Infinity War?
 
Doggg

Doggg

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Nov 17, 2017
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I'm guessing those people were choosing to ignore the whole part about who gets eliminated is supposed to be completely random.
 
Cantaim

Cantaim

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Oct 25, 2017
33,322
The Stussining
Zed said:
Were these people serious, or did they just enjoy the villain being the main character and/or winning in Infinity War?
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It was a bit of a combo of "I'm actually afraid of over population irl and Thanos was charismatic to me". Though I should specify most were like "yeaaa it's wrong but something has to be done about it".
 

Lightus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,137
Thanos was cool because he was just the big bad who was charismatic. It was cool to see him win because after 20 something movies the Avengers haven't really ever lost.

Sure some internet edge lords clung to him but basically everyone knew he was being set up to lose in Endgame. Also The Avengers didn't defeat Thanos in any morally meaningful way. Sure they used his weapon against him, but they didn't prove racism was bad or undermine the edge lord ideals while doing so. It was a fun movie but I didn't feel a victory over bigots while watching.
 
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Dommo

Dommo

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Oct 25, 2017
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No one expected Thanos' plan to be presented as a net positive for society and no one expected him to have any kind of win in Endgame.

For the most part, the reason people liked Thanos' plan was because it grounded the conflict and gave a tangible and human justification for an otherwise villainous and outlandishly evil motivation. It made a big purple space monster trying to murder trillions of people into someone whose plight is understood. As in, audiences were just responding to good writing.

I'd wager the vast majority of people who said "oh yeah his plan has actual merit" don't actually think it's a good idea to exterminate half the population. They're coming at it from a naive and cynical point of view that humanity is a blight on the planet and we're eating up too many resources. What the hell does racism and classism have to do with anything? The kicker to Thanos' plan, the thing that makes it more interesting, is that it's entirely random, removing any kind of prejudice from the equation. It's a purely self-loathing disdain for the human race in all of its reckless consumption.

It's neat to have these themes explored. It's neat to have audiences respond to these things. It's neat to have a villain who isn't illogically evil and moustache twirling but has his own set of ethics and world view.
 
Dhoom

Dhoom

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Nov 7, 2017
251
This wasn't a good troll at all. A good troll would have him succeed wiping out humanity and the film cut to black, in a disappointing, subversive, D&D or The Last Jedi ending.

Stupid people? Edgelords? He has his own reasons for it, and even if his ambitions and motivations are bad, he was trying to help. People will latch on to his benevolent love for his planet and people, and hate his genocidal reasons, but for him it's not really a genocide as much as it is fixing the greater good. You can agree with some parts of what someone thinks but not their whole story. As has been stated above, nobody actually thinks Thanos was right. He's a power-crazed, devoted megalomaniac and despite his good intentions, has no redeeming qualities, and Endgame's biggest mistake was throwing all of Thanos' development in Infinity War out the window with Endgame. Very disheartening ending, as far as movies go.
 
Zed

Zed

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Oct 28, 2017
2,544
If anything, Endgame can be seen as too sympathetic to Thanos. Remember that the Thanos that dies in the first 20 minutes is basically a different character from the alternate universe Thanos.

The movie portrays Thanos Prime as a character who sacrifices the Infinity Stones than can basically grant him any wish just so he isn't tempted to reverse his plan. He also seems "quaint" since he is now some kind of farmer instead of some intergalactic space conqueror. He also is killed in cold blood. Contrast this to Alternate Universe Thanos who is basically a cartoon villain who wants to kill everyone.
 
borat

borat

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Jan 2, 2018
534
what? i don't think anybody ever took thanos' ideas seriously. what people liked was he was a very good villain and a bad ass. he became a meme.
 
chrisPjelly

chrisPjelly

Avenger
Oct 29, 2017
10,494
I'm sure there are more people misunderstanding what people mean when they say "empathy" than people who literally advocate genocide
 

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ToddBonzalez said:
Is population control something that's discussed seriously by anyone? I haven't heard of it, even amongst bigots.
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You see that expressed here on GAF Era all the time, particularly among people who don't have/don't want/won't have kids or who want to pin climate change on poorer/developing countries.
 
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OP
OP
ItWasMeantToBe19

ItWasMeantToBe19

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
20,440
Dommo said:
No one expected Thanos' plan to be presented as a net positive for society and no one expected him to have any kind of win in Endgame.

For the most part, the reason people liked Thanos' plan was because it grounded the conflict and gave a tangible and human justification for an otherwise villainous and outlandishly evil motivation. It made a big purple space monster trying to murder trillions of people into someone whose plight is understood. As in, audiences were just responding to good writing.

I'd wager the vast majority of people who said "oh yeah his plan has actual merit" don't actually think it's a good idea. They're coming at it from a naive and cynical point of view that humanity is a blight on the planet and we're eating up too many resources. What the hell does racism and classism have to do with anything? The kicker to Thanos' plan is that it's entirely random, removing any kind of prejudice from the equation. It's a purely self-loathing disdain for the human race in all of its reckless consumption.

It's neat to have these themes explored. It's neat to have audiences respond to these things. It's neat to have a villain who isn't illogically evil and moustache twirling but has his own set of ethics and world view.
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Population control is often proposed by people scared about too many African babies.
 
Border

Border

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Oct 25, 2017
14,859
I don't think anybody really bought into Thanos' dumb idea, except people that were just contrarians (who by their nature don't actually buy in but just parrot ideas that provoke).

I feel like the movie didn't really show the devastation of his actions that well. It seemed like society was functioning way more normally than you would have expected.
 
OP
OP
ItWasMeantToBe19

ItWasMeantToBe19

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Oct 26, 2017
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Border said:
I don't think anybody really bought into Thanos' dumb idea, except people that were just contrarians (who buy their nature don't actually buy in but just adopt ideas that provoke).

I feel like the movie didn't really show the devastation of his actions that well. It seemed like society was functioning way more normally than you would have expected.
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They were in society for like 30 minutes and everyone was incredibly depressed.
 
Ramala

Ramala

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Oct 28, 2017
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Nihilists, anti-socials and irredeemable cynics (there are a lot of them on this here interwebs!) liked Thanos because for a brief moment they got to live *their* power fantasy.
 
Alienous

Alienous

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Oct 25, 2017
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People liked Thanos, but I don't think his plan had much to do with the appeal.

Infinity War never presents it as logically sound either, so there's no twist in Endgame with regards to that. It's just some mad dude who had his crazy idea shut down and goes on a mad quest to prove himself right, not caring at all about resolving the problem but just about showing that his way would've worked.
 
Dommo

Dommo

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ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
Population control is often proposed by people scared about too many African babies.
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Okay but despite this being an absolutely baseless claim, the plan proposed by Thanos that you're saying formed a bunch of fanboys would be killing just as many white babies as it would African babies. The reason there was an interesting thought experiment there is that it was free of the bias and (immediate) cruelty of other genocides. You are just as likely to die as anyone else. Thanos was just as likely to die as anyone else. His plan establishes everyone as equally as possible. It's 'fair'.

There's no racial component to the plan at all. Again, it's a cynical and naive solution to the problem of resource-straining overpopulation. The themes are tackling environmental concerns, not race or class.
 
Speevy

Speevy

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Oct 26, 2017
19,326
I don't think people liked Thanos. They just thought he was a good character.
 
OP
OP
ItWasMeantToBe19

ItWasMeantToBe19

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Oct 26, 2017
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Dommo said:
Okay but despite this being an absolutely baseless claim, the plan proposed by Thanos that you're saying formed a bunch of fanboys would be killing just as many white babies as it would African babies. The reason there was an interesting thought experiment there is that it was free of the bias and (immediate) cruelty of other genocides. You are just as likely to die as anyone else. Thanos was just as likely to die as anyone else. His plan establishes everyone as equally as possible. It's 'fair'.

There's no racial component to the plan at all. Again, it's a cynical and naive solution to the problem of resource-straining overpopulation. The themes are tackling environmental concerns, not race or class.
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If you embrace population control because of racism or classism, you'll probably still take a character who isn't explicitly racism or classist but does support mass killing for population control.
 
Border

Border

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ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
They were in society for like 30 minutes and everyone was incredibly depressed.
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Society itself was functioning way better than you might expect from such an incident though. People will be sad, but all the major institutions of society remained unchanged. No governments fell, no wars occurred, nobody reverted back to some kind of lawless post-apocalypse......the economy appears to be mostly fine. Even the Avengers went back to fighting small potatoes crime. Thanos' plan wasn't centered around making people happy, it was about preserving society and as far as I can tell that was pretty much accomplished. That's maybe what is more frustrating about the film -- it doesn't ever go out of its way to point out how absolutely ruinous the loss of half of all life would be, particularly to ecosystems.
 

Lightus

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Oct 25, 2017
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ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
If you embrace population control because of racism or classism, you'll probably still take a character who isn't explicitly racism or classist but does support mass killing for population control.
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But the racists would be just as harmed by Thanos as the people they hate. It's not a genocide, it's just killing at random.
 
Vincent Grayson

Vincent Grayson

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Border said:
Society itself was functioning way better than you might expect from such an incident though. People will be sad, but all the major institutions of society remained unchanged. No governments fell, no wars occurred, nobody reverted back to some kind of lawless post-apocalypse......the economy appears to be mostly fine. Even the Avengers went back to fighting small potatoes crime. Thanos' plan wasn't centered around making people happy, it was about preserving society and as far as I can tell that was pretty much accomplished. That's maybe what is more frustrating about the film -- it doesn't ever go out of its way to point out how absolutely ruinous the loss of half of all life would be, particularly to ecosystems.
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Imagine how fucked the world is now. Society adjusted to this change over 5 years, no doubt scaling back on virtually everything...and now the world's population suddenly doubles again. And that's not even touching on the complex human relationships that get fucked by a world where say, your dead wife is suddenly back while you've moved on and had kids with someone you found solace and love with in the wake of tragedy.
 

Deleted member 198

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Little known fact: the Russo Bros actually are the first people ever to conceive of the idea of having an antagonist with ideals of ideas we can relate to on a limited level. It's never before been done and is definitely not one of the most important parts to writing antagonists.
 
OP
OP
ItWasMeantToBe19

ItWasMeantToBe19

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Oct 26, 2017
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Daytak said:
Little known fact: the Russo Bros actually are the first people ever to conceive of the idea of having an antagonist with ideals of ideas we can relate to on a limited level. It's never before been done and is definitely not one of the most important parts to writing antagonists.
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They didn't need to focus so much on him in the first movie and then leap forward five years in the second movie.
 
Dommo

Dommo

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ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
If you embrace population control because of racism or classism, you'll probably still take a character who isn't explicitly racism or classist but does support mass killing for population control.
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Why would you do that? If you're a racist you want black people to die and not you and your ilk. Thanos' plan kills everyone equally. How does this plan help a racist in any way at all?

You see how you're applying themes to the film that aren't there? And in turn applying agendas/motivations/biases to film goers that aren't necessarily there? Again, the fact that so many people responded positively to Thanos is not a sign that society is crumbling or that you live in a miserable racist dystopia - it's a sign that Infinity War was well written. The ability to squeeze some semblance of an empathetic humanised characterisation out of a giant CG purple monster who wants to annihilate half of the universe is impressive and reflects positively on the film.
 
OP
OP
ItWasMeantToBe19

ItWasMeantToBe19

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Oct 26, 2017
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I thought the "actually Thanos had a point!!!" people were more commonly known?

Even Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged has the creator express that Actually Thanos Had a Point through the Pharaoh.
 
Soundscream

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Nov 2, 2017
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Its quite an achievement when a internet nerd bubble tells you you're in an even smaller bubble. Well done OP.
 
Aske

Aske

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No one thought Thanos was right, because as everyone pointed out, all he had to do was wish that there were double the resources rather than half the people. I wish we'd seen more overt madness from him, to really drive home how absurd his plan was; not just because it was cruel, but because it was both stupid and unnecessary.
 
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