He has super hearing and super speed, and can hear everything across the city. In NYC, an approximate analog of Metropolis, there are over 37,000 car accidents with major injuries or fatalities every year. That's 100 car accidents each day, every day, just car accidents. If he were to actually try to save everyone he could, he would never have any time for anything else, not even sleep. It's one thing to go take a sudden bathroom break when Lois is dangling from the ledge on the roof of a building. It's something else to leave the room every 15 minutes of every hour because people can't stop texting while driving.
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
78 points (86.8% liked)
Showerthoughts
37667 readers
719 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Well metropolis isn't exactly NYC, and he doesn't stop every incident. Mostly he is shown focusing on the major disasters, mundane incidents in close proximity, and on protecting a short list of people he looks out for.
Also he moves insanely fast, like he can canonically travel faster than light. So being able to stop even a hundred car accidents could be accomplished in a series of short bursts throughout his day.
Sure, it's fiction, and Superman's powers and limitations are whatever the plot demands.
But if he could move that fast, and he was in a real major city with real people and real problems, then he would be saving people nonstop. Because he could. If he's faster than light, he could go save everyone without anyone noticing he left the room (setting aside physics, of course). But he'd never be able to stop, and he would never run out of people to save.
And none of it would be supervillains and giant robots or space lasers.
But then, applying any sort of real world rationality to Superman never ends well.
That’s super sad and oddly realistic.
Superman deserves a healthy work-life balance
He's still only human, despite it all.
This is true of public services. Society is always making choices which balance the level of service with the cost. If we wanted to save the maximum number of lives, there would be a hospital next to every home. We accept that some people, who could be saved, will die while they wait for an ambulance.
Really? I don't think he'll let anybody die just because there wasn't a convenient phone booth around to get rapid changed in.
I mean, I dont know about you but work will start to ask questions if Im taking a piss break every 10-15 minutes.
He's a reporter, I think he has a little latitude to be away from his desk for a few minutes, even days or weeks at a time.
Any reporters want to confirm this?
Otherwise Im thinking about a career change.
He's a field reporter. He goes out into the world to write about stuff. If he's gone for three weeks working on a story, that's what it takes.
He's also super smart and super fast, so he can write the story in a small fraction of the time as most reporters.
So, as Superman, he flies to where the problem is, solves it, then writes about it as Clark Kent.
Same thing Spider-Man does, except a big part of it is also getting pictures of himself as Spider-Man doing the problem solving.
"It's a field; it's just dirt and grass and bugs."
These types of roles are extremely limited in modern news. They often involve reporting from within active war zones e.g. all the journalists killed by Israel. You don't just say you're going somewhere and fuck off the org will want to know where you are and what work you're doing so they're not just paying you to fuck about the countryside.
There's often references to his flakiness. Its a common trope in various series that he'll here someone in trouble and excuse himself to go save them. Sometimes it just shows him "accidentally" dropping a pen, reaching under the table to get it, and using his super speed to zip off and save someone.
People would notice at my work.
You dont have super speed.
The physics of that speed and the air pressure means he'd be literally blowing people's clothes off in the office.
There was an open window and they're on a high floor.
Though it was something I was thinking about. Could he somehow use his super breath to replace any displaced air? Does the same super-shielding effect that keeps his costume from get torn in every fight also keep him from being affected by air resistance and thus cause less disturbance when he's moving at super speeds?
Its all comic book magic, of course, but interesting things to think about.
Shit happens. As long as he comes back nude, no one is the wider. (Taps head.)
Maybe you shouldn't apply real-world logic to superhero stories.
Why? Gives you bad feels?
Because you're pointing out that the thing which was never intended to be internally consistent... isn't internally consistent.
And it makes you upset?
Sure, why not.
We dont talk about fictional incongruities around here, OK!
Something has to motivate the hero. If not innocent lives the whose?