spoiler
I mean just an example:
Step 1: Commit murder
Step 2: Destroy evidence
Step 3: Delete memory of you committing the murder
Step 4: Live guilt free
Step 5: Profit?
Profession Sleeper Assassin
You’d have a lot of people erasing their trauma and then not understanding why they do or feel a certain way about things.
There is a great movie!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Sunshine_of_the_Spotless_Mind
I would be afraid of using it, forgetting I used it, and then using it again, in an endless loop. Other than that, I think society would change tremendously, and with change, specially regarding something as fundamental as memory, comes chaos.
Maybe I’d use it to forget some awkward, embarrassing moments, but I don’t know, I’m not that worried about them since I imagine everyone else has probably forgotten about those by now, I’d be worried that by purposefully forgetting crucial life-changing moments I’d be, like, losing a part of myself.
- You’d have a lot of scams / lies where someone is accused of doing something they don’t remember doing, they wouldn’t know whether they did it, and third parties wouldn’t be able to evaluate reactions / cross examine the accused.
- You’d have large corporations demanding that ex-employees forget everything proprietary, even if that would prevent you from building up skills in your career.
You ever hear about the US government funding experiments in mind control? One of the examples was a doctor who thought, since experiences are the key to who you are, if you could erase someone’s memories and replace them with selected others, you could turn anyone into a ‘good citizen.’ Turns out wiping someone’s brain can sort of be done, and will leave them without memories of the traumas of their past, but making them back into a whole person again isn’t so easy, and simply implanting whatever memories you want seems impossible.
I would cheat on my husband with an absolute knob, get pregnant, and then forget to delete that memory.
Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise.
Forget my favourite books and read them again.
Malazan Book of the Fallen and all associated works! Bonus points if I can forget the plot and remember all non-spoiler lore. My one complaint with those is going to the wiki to refresh my memory on something and going down a rabbit hole.
Movies and TV too.
Beware: you are now a different person than the one you were when you read that book for the first time. You could find it boring or silly if you read it again for the first time.
The only memory I would keep is that I really liked XYZ book/video game so I could replay reread it.
Fastest way to make it super illegal is to cause less consumerism
I’m sure the pigs will add a law that makes you lose access to anything you bought if you choose to erase it’s memory, so you are forced to but it again
That thing already exists, it is called subscription. Once you stop paying it like you’ve never paid at all.
“900 pages, fuck this shit”
Look at the US Republican Party. Pretending history didn’t happen is basically the party’s platform.
deletes memory of MAGA Parents
“So you were saying?”
…
“How are my parents doing? I don’t have parents, never did”
Alcohol already exists my dude
Alcohol prevents forming new memories, not delete existing already-encoded memories.
Not the way I use it
Can I have the reverse and selectively recall memories my AuADHD/limited working memory forget?
Delete my memories of everything pre-2016.
I feel like it would be easier to live in this nightmare if I didn’t remember a relatively stable, functioning world.
Based on the other comments, I wonder…
If we could re-read, re-watch, or re-play our favorite media over again for the “first time”, we might consume significantly less media.
Why try something new that statistically isn’t likely to be the GOAT when you can guarantee an awesome experience with something you know, because you already know it’s great?
I can imagine someone who only replays one game repeatedly for decades, only watches one or two movies over and over, only reads one book or series again and again, decade after decade.
I would be very weary of doing that, some of my favorite media was good because of the circumstances I was in when I first consumed it.
One such example for me is Metal Gear Solid, a lot of what made that game so special for me would not be the same today, some examples:
- Controls were good back then, but today they would be very bad.
- I didn’t spoke English back then, so a lot was trial and error until I found a version in Spanish, and then I loved the way the game tells you what to do (by radio calls) but that would be very annoying today
- There’s one part that it needs you to look at her physical game box, which wouldn’t be a thing nowadays.
- Psycho mantis, all of it, but namely:
- He named other games I played (by reading my memory card, which is not a thing anymore)
- He made my controller move by itself (nowadays everyone knows controllers vibrate, I sure didn’t back then)
- I needed to plug my controller to the second slot (controllers no longer have slots now)
- At the time I liked the story, nowadays I think I would roll my eyes to lots of it.
And just like that I feel that every media I liked might have lots of stuff that depends on the situation I consumed it originally.
Maybe that’s what life is.
Maybe its a video game we play and forget each time we put on the VR headset.
Lol
There is some horrible shit in my past that I’d definately get rid of. But, besides that gloomy sentiment, I’d use it to experience my favorite movies, games, and books for the first time again. Like seeing Whiterun for the first time or seeing the citadel for the first time.
I don’t think I’d personally have much use for it, at least so far.
But I see it going dark places. If people figured out how to delete their own, that’s one step away from authorities or even just criminals being able to rewrite other people’s realities.
