Culture

'The New York Times Magazine' Wants to Know if You'd Kill Baby Hitler

You'll never believe what happens next, but maybe because this timeline isn't the one where this is happening, but maybe it is.

Stéfan/Flickr

This afternoon, The New York Times Magazine decided to tweet out the survey results to a very important, lingering question: “If you could go back and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it?” You won’t believe what happens next.

Before you see the reactions, here’s a photo of Baby Hitler to give you an idea of what you’d be up against as a time traveler.

In fact, many were perplexed as to why it has to be a baby Adolf Hitler.

Of course, those people seem to be ignoring The Times’ moral contradiction: A baby is innocent, but he can become an evil adult. Should you prevent that future? Like, duh, of course you stop Hitler. But could you off Lil’ Adolf?

Others took the question less seriously. Some even just flung parodies right back at The Times:

Then there are the folks who just question all this time travel business in general. Inverse’s own Kashann Kilson has wondered if maybe tinkering with the timeline actually prevents you from going back to kill Baby Hitler. Other Tweeters had their own paradoxical takes:

Lastly, there was the “let’s find a better solution” crowd. They thought pretty hard about this:

Jeb Lund figured out what The Times was really getting at with its incendiary question:

But as usual things didn’t get much realer than Desus.

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