If you could have one small thing as a superpower. What would it be and why?
I mean small like I sneeze and a 20 dollar bill appears in my hand or something like that. Not classic answers like flying or super strength.
To actually fall asleep within a few minutes of laying in bed, and stay asleep until I actually need/want to be awake.
I have this power, and it is in fact... super
A friend of mine does too.
I'm ready to form a supervillain league with the sole motivation of performing unethical research experiments on your kind. This power must be brought to the masses!
I have it too. It took me a few years to figure it out but now I average 12 minutes to fall asleep and can sometimes do it in less than 3.
I have this one too.
I used to have insomnia that came from anxiety about my future (I’m guessing.) When I started doing carpentry and started truly exhausting my body I gained the ability to sleep ANYWHERE ANY TIME FOR HOWEVER LONG I WANTED.
It’s seriously amazing. I’m 33 now and don’t have to work quite as hard, plus am used to the long shifts that are hard on your body. I can still sleep pretty much whenever, wherever.
I flew to England once (it was like a 14 hour flight) and seriously slept the entire time. I didn’t even have a window seat.
I did residential construction for a couple years, then 4 in the military, so no stranger to physical exhaustion... Insomnia hit even in those times.
The only way to predictably get a decent chunk of sleep is to kind of bank hours in the days leading up to it. Like if get 0 to maybe 3 hours per night through the work week, I'll sleep like a baby come Saturday.
Never been on meds for it. Was afraid to report it when I was active duty (fucking stupid) and now my rating isn't high enough to cover prescriptions and I don't have regular health insurance so... can't afford them. :-/
I wouldn't advise you to get depressed with this superpower. 🙂
"Wake me up when the world is worth living in."
I have the monkey paw version of this where I can fall asleep instantly but can’t stay asleep, I wake up several times throughout the night
Yeah, I get this too kinda. I find I get really vivid dreams when wake up but fall back asleep
It's called alcohol
The ability to know exactly where anything I think of is located.
You could make some serious money with this power. You could find anyone's lost pet or keepsake.
[Breathing Intensifies]
- Captain Jack Sparrow
Hoffa?
I’m definitely thinking historic lost treasure hunter would be an amazing career!
Ability to force anyone to objectively confront their own cognitive dissonance by maintaining eye contact.
Possibly too powerful. Some heads may spontaneously combust from a lifetime of preferring their own reality.
Ok but to balance it: it forces you to confront your own on the topic as well.
That would force you to selectively use it since often times reality is somewhere between our personal view of it and other opposing views.
Chose the wrong situation and you'll both be crying in the corner with shatter worlds. Chose the ones where the people are truly disconnected from reality and perhaps you'll change their lives - hopefully for the better.
Nah, I say that's part of the superpower. After using it a bunch, the weilder will have little or no more cognitive dissonance of their own. Every time they use it will further purify their own thought process. That's like a superpower where every time you use it it replaces a little bit of your body fat with muscle. After you use it a bunch, you end up ripped.
That's not a negative, I think. It might hurt a little at first, but you'll soon have removed most of your own errors and be a better person for it. What more could we wish for?
Sleep for 1 hour but with all of the benefits of 8 hours.
Just the ability to fall asleep instantly would be a godsend
For me I'd also like to add that I wouldn't wake up just because a loud car drove by. I can sleep fast, but staying asleep is difficult
the ability to know the right thing to say in every conversation
That's way too op
ok debuff maybe, it's the right thing according to the current time period moral standards and not based on what I want to say
I was thinking the inability to speak falsehoods would be useful for troubleshooting. "The problem is with the router." Nope. Not the router. "The problem is with the modem."...
Social engineering. I use it to get people to listen to be so they don't die.
You know when you have a discussion or confrontation, and six hours later you realize what you should have said? My superpower would be the wits to always think of the right thing immediately.
There's a French idiom for this: "Avoir l'Esprit d'Escalier" which means "The Wisdom of the Staircase". Basically, you often think of the best thing to say after you left and are walking down the staircase.
The ability to fall asleep instantly, anywhere, and choose exactly how long to sleep... And get a full rest regardless of how long that is.
Skyrim IRL
If you get a full rest regardless of the sleep length, why sleep for more than a minute or two?
Airplane rides
Because I want to fall asleep and wake up with my wife. It'd be lonely staying up all night by myself.
I'd be too tempted to take a 10 year nap.
Gotta hope they check your pulse right or they might just bury you after a few years. Imagine trying to figure out where you could lay down for 10 years. Immediately got overwhelmed thinking about paying rent and all the work I'd miss. House over run by plant life and roof started leaking until the black mold set in and half of the house collapsed on you laying there.... yikes
There ability to fall asleep instantly, anywhere...
I used to have that back when I started work at 4am... Oh wait, you meant voluntarily.
Cleaning up / scrubbing / etc. is as effortless as it appears on commercials.
Perfect control over memory.
So able to remember anything with high detail, but also able to forget the cringey stuff from middle school
Honestly, this is not a minor super power.
Maybe if there was a limit to how much you can remember. Like your brain runs out of storage kinda lol
But you have all the permissions in your brain. If you'd like you can delete English and learn Chinese when you're going on a trip. Maybe you can even forget how to breathe or forget what other food tastes like so I can go on a diet that has nasty food.
My biggest fear would be by the time I'm like 60 i would be attached to too many memories and wouldn't be able to learn new things
Ig it's not too different than regular older people lol. There are some people at work that I've taught them how to attach a file to an email like 5 times already and they just don't learn
To be able to hear the soundtrack. Like, if I walk into a building and hear the Psycho “reep reep!” I’ll get the hell out. But if I walk into that same building and hear “bow chicka bow wow”, I’m staying.
I have a disease which limits what I can eat, therefor the ability to digest any food or drink comfortably.
God I feel this. I'm probably not nearly as bad, but I'd like to not have to carefully analyze what I eat anymore
Yeah... It's crap
Makes you think that the things you take for granted on a daily basis can be a super power for someone else
Yup. Health is the most important thing you can have.
For people who are interested in the same things I am to glow faintly, the more similar interest, the more they glow.
When in an argument I want the ability to know what my opponent has to say in advance so I can always interrupt and finish their sentences. Every single one of them.
The abilty to change the color of anything.
Anything that would be improved by paint is on the table at a thought.
Likely way to powerful in a combat sense. You could tag enemy combatiants on a battlefield in dayglo orange or turn the whole landscape into that zebra ship paint they used in ww2. Hell, you could just turn everything bright white during the day and black at night except the enemy. Would be a nightmare.
Still, really neat.
Even if you limit it by range, like only recolouring things within 1 meter of where you touch… It’d still be a great power! Imagine the money you’d make, flawlessly painting whole rooms in seconds.
Not quite mind control, but I'd like the ability to blast common sense into morons minds by looking at them. Like a psychic mind dart that says, "maybe this line has a purpose and I should get in queue instead of trying to force my way in from the outside" or "maybe I should listen to the sign that says 'don't put your kid on a railing above tiger enclosure.'"
I'd like to be able to give people arch cramps by making eye contact and saying "bipity bopity boo" quietly.
We’re all here think of good things; you’re plotting nefarious powers.
I'm a simple man with simple desires. I'm also probably chaotic natural.
Only needing an hour or two of sleep per night, but getting all the rejuvenating effects of a perfect night’s sleep. I hope I would be productive with that time.
Why not just get rid of the need for sleep all together but still have the ability to sleep when you want if you want to?
That’d be preferable but I wanted it to still be a very minor power
I would ABUSE this power
Google for polyphasic sleep. By fucking with your own sleep schedule you can reduce the number of hours you sleep while still getting the same restful effect. There's a few different schedules, some work better than others. The concept does work though, I've done it.
I’ve looked into those, I’ve even done biphasic sleep a small amount. It sounds like one has less leeway the more one breaks down their sleep into smaller blocks. Which ones did you try?
I was fantasizing about all the things I'd finally do. On second thought I'll probably just use the night to scroll too lol.
If I can get a combo deal of; less sleep, super motivation, super disciple. That would be amazing. An extra 6-8 hours a day would be miraculous! Maybe I’d become like Batman
Knowing which of the last two pieces of fruit on my plate is sweeter.
Lol, so specific!
I'd like to relax people around me, make them happy and communicative. Imagine entering public transport during rush hour, and all of a sudden, everyone around you puts away the phone and people start to talk to eachother, with a smile on their face.
Put some MDMA in a spray bottle.
I'd like to be able to double jump, platform video game-style. Mostly pointless in daily life, but imagine how good it would feel?
I would like to know every song's lyrics upon hearing the first 10 seconds, think of the karaoke nights 🎤
Instead of sleeping at night, let me just plug in to a charger. It would be much more convenient and reliable.
No tendency to procrastinate
Absolutely. Having three exams in the next ten days and realy have to study. Guess whos on lemmy writing about procastinating instead od studying.
My advice, close Lemmy now and start studying.
Promise yourself to study just for 20 minutes (20 real minutes not distracted minutes) and then see how you feel.
Set a timer for 30 minutes and study. Give yourself a 5 minute break / treat. But try not to overload yourself with more info from the Internet.
Came here to say this. If I could get past crippling procrastination, I wouldn't need any other superpowers.
Be able to see 5 seconds in the future
Like, all the time or on demand? Coz if its a constant thing that would be torture. My ADHD ass can barely handle the present.
On demand but randomly sounds more fun
Like that Nic Cage movie?
That was 2 whole minutes into the future!
I would love to have the ability to know for any journey, no matter how complex, what time I need to leave to arrive on time.
Is breathing underwater too exceptional? I’d settle for charging batteries by holding them, or the ability to revive/kill plants that I touch (my choice, not some random thing or King Midas curse)
Your purpose in life is now to supply power to the grid. At first it'll be great, you're celebrated as a neat way to keep the baseline juice coming as fossil fuels phase out. Then you're asked to stay back a few hours as there's a shortfall predicted, you oblige out of duty. Then one day you wake up in a drugged daze, strapped to a giant battery, your nutritional needs piped directly to your bloodstream as scientists ever so carefully cut you open to try and figure out how this works, because despite their best efforts to keep your wrecked body alive, one day you will die, and the utter reliance of the grid on your free energy will die with it, and with that kick off the downfall of humanity.
Get me out after a couple of decades of the torture and this is the tragic backstory I need to turn evil and plot the end of humanity. Make my savior a nerdy but hot chick (Gal Gadot will work - just put some horn rimmed glasses on her) and have her die while escaping. I think we can get two sequels out of it.
Have you published anything?
I’d pick charging batteries while holding them as well except only if it doesn’t affect the battery health of the battery. I’d never have to charge my phone again.
Phone, flashlight, gaming system, headphones, laptop, jump start cars, watch (though the Apple Watch wouldn’t be compatible with my super power…same as in real life with all normal chargers).
The real question is if it would transfer energy magically, or would I experience a calorie deficit. That could go both ways in my book.
Take a mental note that I could review later without worry of forgetting it, for times when jotting something down normally isn’t practical such as while driving.
Knowing everything about my body.
What is my current blood sugar? O2 level electrolyte status? How much shit do I have in my colon?
Kinda like a performance monitor for your body. I would like that too
Ability to have perfectly control how awake i am
1 pound telekinesis in my line of sight. You won't be opening any safes or stealing anyone's gun, but you can do plenty of incredible stuff with even the weakest supernatural power.
I think I would be robbing casinos and thumbing the scale all over the place. It doesn't take much to make marginal opportunities into steady gains if you can cheat physics and break probability.
This power would be super useful. Imagine if using mirrors you could just lift all the dirt & grime off your skin, pick up all the dust on the floor, lift up a small camera and fly it through the air, or eat without utensils
I'd wave my hand and people arguing or hating in front of me or online, would suddenly be peaceful and conjointly coming up with solutions to their problems.
Whole political parties would cease to exist if that came true.
This would change my life more than any conventional super power.
The ability to turn most traffic lights green (not all of them just, like 90%), would basically be the reverse of my current super power of turning most traffic lights red
I think strobing lights set them off.
Being able to find the exact book page or moment in a Netflix series where I was when I fell asleep last night.
Or when my cat starts to make her first vomit sounds being able to beam her from the carpet to a floor with tiles in a split second.
Exactly once a month, I find a 20 on the ground. It can be anytime of the month and it can only be once a month. How great a feeling to find a 20 on the ground and no one is around?
The 20s are coming from scumbag people like jerks who don’t pick up their dogs poop or are mean to customer service people.
Why not once a day? You'd still not be making much out of it and I think there's enough assholes that you're not making much of a dent to the asshole flux.
Taking photos with my eyes. Would help a ton with getting pictures of cool bugs without having to fiddle with my phone and get defeated by autofocus
Not require sleep, ever, with no ill effects (fatigue, mental issues, shortened lifespan, etc).
So much time is wasted sleeping. I have too much shit to do! It's 2am because I was up getting some code working for another team at work, and we just moved, so I have tons of unpacking to do!
I feel like that'd be extremely boring, tbh. Constant uptime.
Being able to manually adjust my focus on and interest in what I'm doing.
oof.. i'm gonna go with slightly above average luck
If it's just enough to beat out the house advantage, it might be all you need.
The ability to control the temperature (and perhaps humidity and/or composition too) of air within 1mm of my body. Like a personal air conditioner. Would make going outside right now so much more bearable, pretty sure it would help with sleep too... Sigh, one can dream...
Lie detection
Someone once mentioned slowing time for like 2 seconds as a terrible super power, but as a skateboarder, I think this would be amazing.
Control my apettite at will would be nice.
Superhuman patience.
I want an audibe achievment fanfare everytime something i do goes according to plan.
I may already have that power. It's hard to tell.
With the example given, I feel like my go-to super power would still be applicable here:
Whatever I draw, I can make real. The first thing I'd draw is a pill that allows me to draw better.
"Small thing" and you immediately go to infinite wishes haha
just a little omnipotence, I'm not asking for much
The ability to know exactly the right thing to say at any given time. Because I often do the opposite right now.
To be able to stockpile time up to 24 hours. For example, if I'm running late on a project, I can dip into a time stockpile for 8 hours to get it done. At a later time I can then lose 8 hours from my time
On the one hand it does sound kinda minor because you have to give back the borrowed time.
On the other you have the ability to stop the flow of time...
I'm sure it could be OP if used correctly