On average, most people given a Death Note would probably list at least one high-profile idiot that would have caused way more deaths through their reign of terror than a Death Note ever could. In that respect, I would say no amount of evil wreaked by writing names would outweigh the good from that one name, and it’s arguably a net good.

Honestly, some of the worst idiots would have to slow down the kill people with a Death Note, so giving them one might be considered a net good as well.

It’s kind of genius in a metatextual way, because that’s exactly what would make an artifact like the Death Note so tempting in the first place. During the stint where Light loses his memory for a bit, you get the impression that he would just be a regular person if he never had the notebook in the first place. He could have grown up to be a cop like his dad. But one day he finds himself with the power to kill instantly and anonymously, and who wouldn’t at least think about using that in a world where injustice happens every day?

I think it’s a near universal human experience to see a horrific crime on the news and think “that person should hang”. It’s a form of temporary tribalism that affects even the most hardened opponents of capital punishment. But most of us are never given a means of acting on that dark thought, so it just remains a thought and we move on. I think what makes Death Note such a great concept is that Tsugumi Ohba tapped into this experience and really examined it.

God, I love this series. Can you tell?

I wouldn’t have much fun with it per se, but I’d still use it. Pretty sure you could change the course of this bullshit within 12 names, if you pick them right and link their outcomes together.

Example:

“At [precise time], [target], opens their veins with the nearest sharp object and writes [portion of the message] in their own blood upon the nearest surface, while screaming ‘We were wrong, and judgement comes!’, before dying from a brain aneurysm.”

Run it in batches of 3 over a Friday to Monday, when the US markets are closed.

The precise time corresponding to part of an IP address.

The message: [Stop being evil controlling cunts for/your own gain and selfish desires/Or die alongside all your works/I know who is really in charge amongst you].

Batch 1: The three most visually and vocally problematic governmental figureheads.

Batch 2: The three most visually and vocally problematic billionaires

Batch 3: The three most embedded of aides that facilitated the first two groups

Batch 4: A random selection of Billionaires who have been way too quiet recently even as their money flows to make everything shittier.

They’ll figure out the IP address pretty quick.

Then they’ll hit the page with the instructions:

• Make an international trust foundation with a legitimately open, controllable, and auditable operations by the people, with the charter to improve the lives of all Humanity

• The instruction to ironclad formalize mechanisms so that the foundation ends up controlling no less than 99.9% of all their assets, by midnight Monday, and the promise that there will not be individual billionaires allowed to exist after that time.

Bam. The grand majority of the hurdles for a better world out of the way.

Then we can get to the real and important work: Deciding which specific leftist ideology is most correct and which form of Anarchism proves it wrong, as God intended.

Wait, I fixed it all, why is Ryuk still laughing?

Isn’t the whole arc of the story that the power corrupts and perverts it’s wielder?

IRL, the person with the Death Note is just Donald Trump. And Ryuk is Israel.