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It’s a life, how much could it cost. $10,000?
That’s the premise of the Twilight Zone episode “Button, Button”. After she pressed it, the man making the deal said he’d go to “a random person on Earth” offering the same to them (implying that the person being killed will be the one who pushed the button earlier in the chain)
Someone just watched The Box lol
I immediately thought of this as well and am irked that now I remember this terrible film
About 2 people are dying every second anyway regardless, so if i don’t take the money, 2 people die.
Im actually saving a life by briefly capping the death rare at 1.
The next second 3 people dies, so you were just prolonging one’s suffering by 1 second
Prolong an inevitable death by one second for $10,000.
Is that stackable?
I would think you random death would just be added to the baseline.
I don’t know, I better take the money I think…
Well yes. But I think taking the money should actively kill someone, you can just get free money for a death that would happen anyway.
that was not a stipulation.
Sorry, but that’s not how it works. 3 people die that instant.
I’ll stick with the original scenario and gratefully receive $10,000 for saving a life.
But thank you for your new offer.
Honestly this seems like a pretty good representation of how powerful people cope with the consequences of their ambitions.
Nuh-huh
Yeah-huh
Can I only use it once?
-- every billionaire in the world
No.
Also, fuck Mr. Beast. A billionaire proposing yet another Trolley Problem for amusement and engagement bait.
The bourgeoisie already does that offer, the proletariat can’t choose it.
No.
Counter proposition: for every €10 I pay, a random fascist dies. I’m willing to spend all my money, and am willing to take gifts from others to continue paying more amounts of €10 for as long as I have any. I’ll even spend €100 to prioritize highly influential fascists first.
The monkey’s paw curls. The word fascist has become so debased that you are now $80 billion in debt. And dead.
This is an old twilight zone episode. A women is given a box with one button on it and told to press it is she wants the money.
She decides the push the button, and then someone comes to collect the button device, saying that it will now be reset and taken to someone else now for the same challenge. Some random person on earth. Implying that she will be the next to die if the button gets pushed.
Frankly not a bad system. Slowly cleanses the selfish from the earth.
I’m assuming the device gets passed on regardless if the button is pressed. If that’s the case, does it have any correlation to selfishness getting punished? Me living or dying has to do with the NEXT person being selfish, not whether I was selfish or not. Unless I’m missing something
I believe the idea is that if you push the button, it goes on to someone else. If they DON’T push the button, they get skipped. It goes to someone else besides them. And so on, until SOMEONE does push the button. And at that point, the last person who pushed the button gets iced.
And so in that way, every person who pushes the button inevitably gets killed, removing selfish people from the world while morally upright people get passed over.
This isn’t detailed in the episode, it’s just my mind filling in between the lines.
Ok that makes way more sense.
She got $20,000 if I’m not mistaken. In '80s money.
Also it was originally meant to kill her husband. They changed it for the show.
$200,000 - which if you consider that it was 1980s money, makes Mr. Beast’s $10,000 look very small.
By “originally meant to” I think you are referring to the short story it was based on ending that way.
A despondent Norma asks the stranger why her husband was the one who was killed. The stranger replies, “Do you really think you knew your husband?” strongly disapproved of the Twilight Zone version, especially the new ending
Frankly I find the twilight zone ending more chilling and suspenseful. The “do you think you really knew your husband” line is kinda sad trombone.
I’m an 80s kid but I skipped the old Twilight episodes … so I’m trying to darnest to catch up on them and I’m learning how awesome the ideas were even if the presentation is dated.
Just a random segue …
I sound naive but I didn’t realize that Rod Sterling wanted to tell stories about social issues – racism and stuff but the networks wouldn’t let him. If he wanted to tell a story about an alien or an invader then the networks would let it pass through. So it was a way for him to tell harder stories to the general public.
I think that’s a lot of sci-fi like Invasion of the Body Snatcher and such but I just never thought about it deeply enough.
There’s the treehouse of horror episode by the Simpsons where Bart is omnipotent and I knew it was based on something but I only recently learned it from: “It’s a Good Life” which is a book and a Twilight Zone episode. I only watched the parody up until this year and I just thought it was a fun concept. Then I watched the original and a breakdown and it was a take on totalitarian regimes.
Yeah some of them are little moral parables and some are just setups for a thrill/shock twist.
This “button” episode was actually from the 80s reboot of TZ, not the Rod Serling original.
Was the lady told what would happen if she pressed the button?
The dilemma is “would you push a button for money” not “would you push a button knowing what it did for money”
“Would you push a button for money”, on its own, is barely a dilemma. If you’ve been given no good reason not to press it then you don’t have a reason not to press it. I’d be curious to see this Twilight Zone episode because, if it really is presented that way to her, then it’s not her morals that are comprimised and instead that of whoever distributed that button.
She’s told that someone on earth would die and she doesn’t know them. The twist is that while it’s implied that it’s a random person, it’s revealed at the end that it’s the last person to press the button.
Some people are actually paid to press buttons.
There’s this cool new thing where you can search for stuff on the Internet. You should check it out. To answer your question, yes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button,_Button_(The_Twilight_Zone)
There’s this cool thing called linking, too.
Heaven forbid I try to have a conversation
Yes it was clear that someone somewhere in the world “who you don’t even know” would die. The characters have a debate:
“Maybe it’ll be just some Chinese peasant.”
“What if it’s someone’s newborn baby!”
More than anything I’m shocked at the casual dismissal of the Chinese peasant. WTF?
Anyway at the very end of the show the same guy who brought them this dilemma comes to collect the device and he very pointedly uses the same language to say “now it will go to someone new that you don’t even know.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button,_Button_(The_Twilight_Zone)
Yes, that somewhere in the world, someone she doesnt know will die.
When Mr. Steward returns to collect the button box after the button is pressed, the lady asks what happens to the box next. She is told it will go to someone else with the same offer, with assurances that the new recipient will not know who she is. As the previous commenter said, the wording deeply implies she would be the certain “someone” targeted by the next button press.
But what would happen if she didn’t press it? Would the button be offered to someone else again? In that case, she would be targeted regardless of her choice.
That’s not revealed, but I would think it just targets the last person who pushed the button. If you don’t, you succeed the test and get skipped. .
If there are no other rules, you break the cycle. That’s incredibility dark because who knows how long this has been going on with no one refusing the offer.
if anyone presses the button and I die I’m haunting your stupid ass forever
Since people are already dying at random I would take it. Given they do not actively enforce the dying part.
MrBeast is the kind of guy who asks why the banana is yellow
I would DL and repeat it until i read that MrBeast or - insert name of random billionaire - dies.
Ok Thanos
the chance of that happening is basically zero
Well with every death the chances grow :D
Every time I pet my cat, a random stranger somewhere in the world dies. There’s 8 billion people in the world, at least a few hundred are born and die every minute.
