this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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Asklemmy
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You'll need to make it very visible and very real to as many people as possible, and make it sound credible that "shit like this starts up again, and I'll be back, be excellent to each other or else"
Remember those found-footage style videos that were going around a decade or so ago, where there was this mysterious figure in black who just appeared and was offing criminals in fairly graphic ways? There was speculation that it was a viral ad for some anti-hero superhero movie, but it never materialized.
That's the way. Be mysterious. Be featureless. Don't talk. Give them no way to track you after it wears off: appear, do, disappear. Repeat for 48 hours, then disappear.
I still think it wouldn't last long. The temptations of power and wealth will override any fear; after year, it'll be back to business as usual. 5 years later, it'd be mostly forgotten.
Now, if you could parse out 48 hours in 2 hour chunks over 12 years, with a couple of "examples" every year at random times, that might have a lasting effect. Do it 4 years in a row, give it a break for 2 or 3 years and let people think it night be over and strike again... that would probably have a more lasting effect. But I still think, at some point after your powers run out a decade or two at most and the shenanigans would start again. Humans believe what they want to believe, and what they're best at deluding themselves and is "that can't happen to me."