r/hypotheticalsituation Mar 25 '26

Mod Post Warning about posts involving violence

32 Upvotes

Hey everyone. I wanted to provide some information and a warning on a topic we've seen come up several times recently.

We're seeing an increasing number of accounts (including both mods) receiving warnings and bans for "threatening violence". We've seen messages like the following.

Reddit is a vast network of communities that are created, run, and populated by people like you. In order to keep communities welcoming, safe, and great places to be, everyone who uses the platform operates by a shared set of rules—a set of rules you may not have realized you broke.

Warning for threatening violence

We flagged the following as a potential policy violation:

After reviewing, we found that you broke Rule 1 because you threatened violence or physical harm. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for threatening violence against people or animals. We don’t tolerate any behavior that threatens violence or physical harm against an individual, groups of people, places, or animals. Any communities or people that threaten violence towards an individual, group, animals, or place will be banned.

As a result, we’re issuing this warning, removing the violating content, and asking you not to break this rule again.

This is something happening on a sitewide admin level so the mod team has no influence over it. We strongly suspect that some sort of bot or AI is handing out these warnings and bans. Due to the subject matter frequently discussed on this subreddit it's happening to quite a few users here due to discussions of hypothetical violence. So what does this mean for you?

  1. Hypotheticals involving violence aren't outright banned but we strongly recommend that you be cautious when posting them or responding to them. Consider your wording and whether it could be mistaken for a threat by a bot. If the community as a whole starts getting admin attention we may be forced to ban these posts in the future. Posts that look too much like a real-world call to violence or a request for advice on how to commit violence will be removed under rule 3.

  2. If you do get one of these warnings or bans, please appeal them and explain that you're posting on /r/hypotheticalsituation and there is no real-world violence or threats of violence being discussed or contemplated. It's not a guarantee but we've seen these appeals work in the past and they may prevent your account from getting banned.


r/hypotheticalsituation 2h ago

You have the power to switch between male and female at will.

163 Upvotes
  • You have the power to switch between male and female at will.
  • When you are male you have masculine features (taller, shorter hair, optional facial hair, deeper voice, broader shoulders, etc).
  • When you are female you have feminine features (shorter, longer hair, no facial hair, softer voice, wider hips, etc).
  • Your skin, eye & hair color stay the same.
  • Your overall attractiveness level stays the same (eg. if you are a 7 out of 10 man, you will also be a 7 out of 10 woman).
  • If you become pregnant as a woman then switch you will not be pregnant as a man - but will still be pregnant when switching back to a woman.
  • Nobody else knows that you have this ability.
  • You can only switch when there are no witnesses and no cameras (so you cannot use this power to become famous).
  • You have ID for both versions of yourself (so you are fully able to work/travel/whatever either way).
  • You can basically live as two different people - just not at the same time.

How are you using this power? How often will you be male? How often will you be female? Any differences in how you will go about your day in each role? What is your plan to have the best possible life/lives?


r/hypotheticalsituation 5h ago

You walk into an auditorium with 2000 people seated. All of them are single, around your age, and are the gender you're attracted to. How many of them do you think are attracted to you and would say yes to going on a date? (more info in description)

181 Upvotes

- You must walk to the front and give a 5 minute speech about yourself. You can use this time to talk about your hobbies, interests, values, and/or why you would make for an appealing partner. You are not allowed to lie, a magical force prevents you from lying.

- After 5 minutes is up, every single person in the audience is given a paper with only one question on it. "Do you want to go on a date with this person?" If they write yes, then they will receive your phone number.

How many people do you think will say yes?


r/hypotheticalsituation 9h ago

You can be in the top 10% (90th percentile) of all humans currently living on earth, in whatever category you choose.

280 Upvotes

The genie asks you to state your wish in this form where you can only change the last two or three words of the statement that could go like "I would like to be in the top 10% of all humans on earth in wealth ownership" or "...in chess proficiency" or "...in physical height" etc. In other words, you choose your category or parameter, where the parameter can be anything you wish, but the sample size has to be "all humans on earth", not a narrow section of it, eg "in the top 10% of billionaires on earth" is not allowed as all humans are not billionaires.

Your parameter itself can be something narrow (ie, not everyone plays chess, so that's a narrow parameter), but you still have to pick from all of humanity.

So what's your wish?


r/hypotheticalsituation 3h ago

Loopholes Encouraged You wake up tomorrow with a message on your phone.

81 Upvotes

It says:

"Press ACCEPT and you'll receive $50 million tax-free."

There's only one catch.

The person who loves you the most will instantly forget you ever existed.

They'll never recognize you again.

You won't be allowed to tell them what happened.

Everyone else remembers you normally.

You only get one chance to decide.

Do you press ACCEPT?


r/hypotheticalsituation 6h ago

Loopholes Encouraged You have 13 ‘bad luck’ events in your life. How do you allocate them?

56 Upvotes

On your 13th birthday a demon comes to you in a dream and reveals that you’ve been given the ‘curse of good fortune’ Here are the rules:

- you are destined to live a fortunate life, you will only have 13 times when bad luck strikes in you life and you get to pick when it happens

- you choose to use a bad day the night before when you go to sleep

- your good fortune protects you from random twists of fate, not natural consequences, risk, or skill based ‘chance’ (for example, you could still lose if you gamble all your money away; you won’t automatically make the team if you go try out for the Lakers; if you jump out of a plane with a parachute the parachute will definitely work, but if you don’t have a parachute you won’t miraculously be saved)

- the bad luck can range in severity from ruining your day (ex: your car breaks down and you miss a trip you’ve been planning) to a truly tragic event (the sudden passing of a loved one), but at the very least it will ruin your day

- you don’t know or control the severity whatsoever

- your good fortune can extend to others if logical (ex: if your wealth is held in stocks the world will never experience a massive stock market crash on a good day)

- the luck system does not affect your own death in any way. You might die on a good luck day, but also a bad luck day won’t increase the odds that it happens

- if you fail to use all your bad days before you die you are punished with 10000 years in your own personal hell for each unused day

How do you live your life knowing that you have this curse?


r/hypotheticalsituation 8h ago

An unkempt stranger hands you a bag of money and says "it's your problem now" before running off. You take some out, the bag refills and prints a receipt "3 months - John Simm, London UK" with his smiling face on it. You take more, bag refills, similar receipt with another persons name.

69 Upvotes

Every time you take money from the bag it refills and the amount of time on the receipt seems to have no connection to the amount of money you take. It seems to be more of a judgement on what you're spending the money on but you can't confirm for sure.

You have no idea what the times mean, but a few times you've seen numbers as high as "30 years" and it's only been a week. You confirm the receipts are talking about real people with matching faces but the ones you've found seem fine.

Do you keep spending the money? How do you try and figure out what the times actually mean? I mean... for all you know, the magic bag might be extending their lives, or just messing with you... right? Can you look into their eyes and still take the risk?


r/hypotheticalsituation 50m ago

If you'd never seen a baby before, would you be confused on what it is?

Upvotes

I was watching wonder woman (2017) the other day and realized a couple of things

- she is the only child on the island because all the others are adult women
- this means she's never actually seen a baby
- babies look kind of weird

So my question is when she left her island with Steve and came to the human world, did she see a baby and think "what on earth is that?" I just feel like she would be confused.

So if hypothetically you grew up on an island where everyone was adults do you think you would be confused about what a baby is? If you saw one would you recognize that it's a human and think it's just deformed or would you think it's a new species?


r/hypotheticalsituation 1h ago

Humor Encouraged you have to fight an ant, but every time you win, another ant comes to fight you that is exponentially better then the last one, how many do you think you could get through before one kills you?

Upvotes

so, you and an ant have to fight in your house, the ant will spawn somewhere in the house. you goal is to kill that ant and the ants goal is to kill you. if you kill that ant, another ant will appear with the power of 2 ants, kill that one, another with the power of 4 ants, then 8, 16, you get the point, how many are you getting through?


r/hypotheticalsituation 4h ago

You're offered the opportunity to become a multiple person

19 Upvotes

A group of scientists contact you with an offer. They have developed a technology that allows them to clone people and distribute that person's consciousness among the clones. The technology has been tested thoroughly and they're ready to go live with the first public demonstration. You meet a unique set of parameters that make you an ideal subject. They offer to perform the procedure on you for free and provide any followup care necessary. They provide whatever assurances you require that the procedure is safe and actually works. It's not some trick.

They have enough cloning vats to make up to 9 clones of you, so you could inhabit 10 bodies if you wanted. Your consciousness would be distributed throughout whatever number of bodies you chose. The clones aren't independent entities, your consciousness would be expanded to inhabit and control all of the bodies. Your ability to multitask and focus on multiple sets of senses at once would expand, though it will take you some time to adjust. Eventually you'll be able to use all of the bodies as easily as you use your hands and feet to do separate things.

Growing the clone bodies would take about a year and the clones would be the same age as you. The procedure to expand your consciousness to all of the bodies would take about a week and you would be in a medically induced coma for that time. Once you're inhabiting all the bodies, they estimate it will take you 3-6 months to adjust and have full use of all the bodies. The bodies will all age normally. When one dies, your consciousness will "shrink" to inhabit the remaining bodies, and when the last one dies, your consciousness dies too.

This is a one-time deal. Whatever number of bodies you pick is what you get until they all die. You can't get more clones created later on.

Do you agree to the procedure and if so how many bodies do you want to inhabit? And what do you do once you have multiple bodies to control?


r/hypotheticalsituation 5h ago

Serious Replies Only To everyone who’s in a long term relationship/married — what would happen if your partner divorced you now?

9 Upvotes

What would your position be? Move out and find your own place? Move in with your parents? What about your kids? How do you seperated your assets? Do you start looking for new love right away or enjoy single life first?


r/hypotheticalsituation 16h ago

For 1 million dollars, would you choose to be drunk for an entire month 24/7?

74 Upvotes

You don't have to drink alcohol, you'll only experience being drunk at its full capacity, borderline about to pass out, but never do. You'll feel like puking but not because you're drunk, but because you're moving around too much.

24/7, full month, all of this by yourself, no help from anyone. If you die you die, so don't fall off the stairs, don't do too much around the kitchen, careful when taking a bath.

You have food for about a week, and you can't drive, you can't ask for food, but you'll have free Uber during that month but only to take you to buy groceries; you can stack up food for the whole month if you want.

You can go to jail, so you have to be careful about how you proceed.

Would you do this?


r/hypotheticalsituation 21h ago

Would you accept 100 million in exchange for turning into a random animal for one day (24 hours) every month?

136 Upvotes

r/hypotheticalsituation 1h ago

Humor Encouraged Carl or Gwenpool level powers, but no pants

Upvotes

You get Dungeon Crawler Carl or Gwenpool levels of powers, except your can’t wear pants. Ever.


r/hypotheticalsituation 6h ago

Other Everything we generally don't want spoiled, stops becoming spoiled. What now?

7 Upvotes

How would this impact the world and the world's economy as a whole?


r/hypotheticalsituation 1d ago

You are reincarnated into the world of the last video game that you've played

179 Upvotes

But luck is on your side. An angel grants you a wheel that you must spin only once before you enter the game world

The chances are 60% for a curse (which can be something like weakness or a disease), 30% for a benefit (could be proficency in a weapon, currency or a relic). There is also a 10% chance to get a mystery item. This can be a literal stick or the strongest weapon in the game world.

Once you have spun the wheel, you are dropped into the world with whatever you obtained from the wheel. You will have to use your item to your advantage and survive the game world. If you die, you will lose your item and become a ghost.

What do you do?


r/hypotheticalsituation 20h ago

Choose a roomate

83 Upvotes

You have two options for a roomate:

  1. A beautiful pixie, around 4 inches tall. She is glittery and smells amazing and the room lights up when she flutters in. However, she does not like you. She doesnt really make conversation with you and sometimes she pinches you, occasionally in your sleep. She has a job, a boyfriend, and a friend group so she is not always in the apartment. Sometimes she’ll watch tv with you. She forms her own opinions about your friends, she might like them and hang out with them or she might pinch them.

  2. A depressing troll, around 5 feet tall. He is hideous and reeks of sadness. However, he lives to serve you. If you ask him to do your work, chores, etc he will do it. He isnt magic, he just tries his best. If you ask him to fix your car he will spend days studying nonstop how to fix cars but ultimately might just make the problem worse. He gets more depressed if you dont give him a task or if he feels he is failing you. Your friends are put off by him.

They will come with you anywhere you move.
Neither of them currently exist, you will them in to existence when you choose them as your roomate.
Feel free to ask for more information!


r/hypotheticalsituation 4h ago

Drown or Electrocution

3 Upvotes

You’re swimming in a pretty deep pool, can hold your breath a decent amount of time. You dive way down to the bottom of the deep end.

Right before you go back up, you see power lines had fallen onto the surface of the pool. You assume they’re still live, and assume you’re far enough down that you don’t feel the zap.

However, if you were to swim back up, you’d most likely get within distance of the electric field in the water.

You’re running out of air. Do you accept your fate and drown? That’s a horrifying way to go. Or do you swim back up, risk hopefully you can stay far enough away from the lines to get out, but you might slowly get electrocuted to closer you get?


r/hypotheticalsituation 1d ago

You have a full set of SWAT body armor and equipment. You must survive 1 hour in one of two time periods to get $10 million.

200 Upvotes

You are given a full set of SWAT body armor (including full head protection) and equipment (rifle, side glock, dagger, ammo, accessories) etc and will receive 24 hours of basic weapons training. You must survive 1 hour in one of the following time periods to get $10 million:

  • Option 1 - You are teleported to the middle of a large forest in 1300s medieval England with 100 soldiers waiting to kill you. They are equipped with various weapons of the time (swords, axes, cross bows) etc but no guns. Some of them will be wearing armor, others won't. They've been told someone from the future is coming to kill them so they really want you dead. You must fight back to survive there's no chance to escape them. To prevent any moral issues, consider it to be a simulation with no real people.

  • Option 2 -  You are teleported to 20 April 1945 in the middle of the Battle of Berlin between the Red Army and the German army. No one is aware you are being sent there and you simply have to survive for 1 hour before you will be teleported back to the present. You can try to hide or fight back but both armies would see you as a hostile soldier and try to kill you.

After 1 hour you are instantly teleported to the present again. If you die before 1 hour has passed you just get teleported back and get nothing. 

Which one are you choosing?


r/hypotheticalsituation 23h ago

You are offered 5 million dollars USD, but your best friend turns into a sentient chicken and KFC is tasked with hunting them down. If you can protect them from being turned into a 3 piece combo meal for a whole year, you both get to split the money, would you accept the offer? what's your plan?

87 Upvotes

Your best friend will turn into a chicken. they will be able to talk, have human level intelligence and retain all previous memories of his former life, they will turn back into a human at the end of the year if you succeed.

Every KFC in the entire world will dedicate all of their resources, wealth, and connections as well as manpower into hunting them down. Every manager, every CEO, every drive thru employee will be in on it, and no one else in the world will know what's going on except for the both of you.

You have only what you have on you now, to accomplish this goal, no supernatural abilities or materials will be provided for you. The cash is instantaneous and arrives without tax implications.

EDIT for clarification:

what they know: They know nothing about you or that you are supposed to protect your friend, what they know is that your friend is a sentient chicken, a photo of their chicken likeness, their old address, and their human identity.

How they can find them:

They have all the resources and money KFC has though, so they could hire private investigators, and tech related companies to help their investigation, and distributed locations and manpower to locating them.

The friend is also a green chicken, to be able to be distinguished from normal livestock.


r/hypotheticalsituation 8h ago

You somehow release a genie who is a big fan of competition based reality tv. So much so that you're told that your wishes can only be ones that relate to reality tv.

5 Upvotes

You can't wish for this rule to be undone.

Standard three wishes.

Standard rules: can't wish for anyone to die, can't wish for more wishes or genies for that matter,, can't wish anyone back to life and can't make anyone fall in love with you.

With that in mind, what do you wish for?


r/hypotheticalsituation 13m ago

[No Loopholes] You are the only human being left except for one person on the other side of the world, what do you do?

Upvotes

Every other human being suddenly and inexplicably disappears from the world as if they were never there, except for one person: a human of the same gender and age as you on the opposite side of the world to you (at the antipodal point to you, or the closest point on a landmass to you if that is in the ocean).

This should be obvious, but contacting them (if you want to do this) will be hard. You don’t know anything about who they are, you don’t have their number, nobody to fly you to them. Might not be impossible, but still hard.

What would you feel about being one of only two left? What would you decide to do with your life now? Would you have sex with the other human of your age and gender?


r/hypotheticalsituation 8h ago

Would you let someone else's dying wish influence your creative passion work?

3 Upvotes

You are a talented solo-developer working on a story chapter based video game, and have released the first couple of chapters with decent success (let's say you have made about $170,000 USD in your first two years of sale, after tax, from roughly 30k sales). While your game is only about 1/4th finished, you have a very clear picture on how you want the story to go, and have an arc planned out for the main character which a lot of your fans have grown very attached to.

One day, while developing your game, you get an Email from Make A Wish (which you quickly verify is legit), asking if you would be willing to partner up and help them make a wish come true. The email explains that a 14 year old child is being hospitalized for a deadly disease, and upon asking what they wanted their wish to be, requested that the rest of your story go a specific way.

The young fan asked that the main character of the story go on a completely different character arc than what was originally planned, and end the story in a way you believe that a large portion of your current fanbase could not accept. Your once compelling MC that you have given a lot of thought to would be flanderized into someone far more basic, and overall you think they would be despised by a ton of fans who would feel betrayed into having their favorite character ruined. The fan also requests that once the game is complete, that no sequel is ever made, as to not ruin the MCs ending.

Upon asking if the young fan wanted any other wishes should this one not be accepted, they said that there was nothing they wanted more than for your game to be changed to fit their image.

Make A Wish says they will do anything to help this last wish come true, but cannot do so unless you agree to their terms.

Even if you decide to make more games with a similar story and MC, it will never quite hit the same as this story, and will take many more years to create something even remotely similar.

Do you accept their deal? If so, what would you do to try and not upset your fanbase? If not, would you try to do anything to potentially appease this fan?


r/hypotheticalsituation 1d ago

Loopholes Encouraged One Single Giant Mosquito?

265 Upvotes

You have the option to press a button that instantly kills all the mosquitoes on earth with no ecological side effects. However, once the button is pressed somewhere in the world a single mosquito with the accumulative size of every mosquito on earth will appear (~275,000 metric tonnes - approximately the size of a football field).

Do you press the button?


r/hypotheticalsituation 1h ago

You’re the owner of the company, and you’re going out of business. Who is the last person you lay off?

Upvotes

Payroll keeps dwindling, and you’re slowly laying off staff while wrapping up operations, helping customers adjust, looking for last minute Hail Marys, etc. It’s a major employer and you started with 1000 employees. You’re down to the last 5.

In what order do you lay these people off? You have 1 month left before money runs out.

A. Linda- the 65 year old admin assistant. She’s been with you 40 years. She knows where all the bodies were buried and has access to everything. Shes skilled administratively and technically. She’s generally nice, but she’s a black hole conversationally and every time she needs something it devolves to 30 minutes of her talking about history. She was planning on retiring next year anyway but really needs her income the next 6 months.

B. George- the director of IT. He has all the passwords and skills you don’t. He has been logging what everyone’s done on their work laptops. Linda can pick up some of his work but only 15%.

C. Sara- the Assistant Manager of operations. She’s a bit of an airhead, but functional. You had a crush on her for 3 years. She’s literally hot as fuck and wears hot outfits to work daily and comes into your office regularly and sits on your desk with her legs crossed. She promised you if she’s the last one standing, she will “make it up to you” but you have no idea how serious she is. (Note, if you’re not attracted to a straight woman, Sara physically becomes your ideal sexual partner in your scenario).

D. Chaz- Sales guru who does a ton of coke but lands some deals. He’s exhausted his Rolodex and is effectively useless, he scrolls tik toks of 20-something year old women dancing all day. But he’s literally your only shot at getting a home run contract or deal or investor to stay afloat. He’s extremely likable and charismatic.

E. Kristi- she’s about 20 years in. She’s a jack of all trades but heavily overpaid. She has some sales and administrative skills and currently manages one of your 3rd party software programs. She drinks a ton and is married with kids. Her husband bought her a Porsche 2 years ago that she never shuts up about.

Note: you laid off your HR director 1 month ago because who TF needs her? She’s just going to make things worse.

There is no reward from the magic genie, just purely survival. Or maybe going out with a bang!