Perfectly Balanced

A frame from the story of Thanos and Gamora

Thanos shows a young Gamora a double-edged blade and says “Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.” The conversation is tied to Thanos's conviction that the universe can be brought to order by destroying half of all living beings. Avengers: Infinity War opened in American theaters on April 27, 2018.

In the close-up the blade crosses the finger, and the characters' faces stay outside the frame. This cropping shifts attention from the conversation to the object and the line: the viewer sees literal balance, and the caption can substitute equal numbers, a pair, or equal portions.

How a line became a formula of equality

Soon after the premiere, the words started appearing in posts about even outcomes: for example, when positive and negative reactions on a scale of likes matched exactly. On July 9, 2018, the r/thanosdidnothingwrong community carried out a planned random ban of its members using a script: 231,488 accounts were blocked, while the community had more than 700,000 subscribers. So the number of bans was not half of the whole audience: “half” was the concept of the stunt. It referenced the idea of halving from the film and made it especially noticeable.

By September 2018, online posts already featured a template with the blade image and a caption. Early versions of the phrase itself spread separately from the scene: it could be attached to any even result, and the screenshot added Thanos's recognizable image to the formula.

The quote and the image have different jobs. The text turns equality into a solemn comment; the picture adds Thanos to it, who seems to confirm even a minor coincidence as a law of the universe. That is why the joke can describe either an exact pair of numbers or a random order that nobody planned.

Why imbalance looks like order

The phrase sounds as if equal distribution were right in itself. In a funny caption it often describes not harmony but an absurd coincidence: tasks were split evenly, identical numbers came up by chance, or two sides reached the same result. Thanos's tone lends a trifle excessive importance, as if he had pronounced the final verdict on how the world works. The irony appears when a random coincidence gains the status of a moral law.

Equality can be shown through exact numbers or visually: identical portions, participants, or sides of a chart. If one object turns out to be left over, the solemn line turns into a premature conclusion: a small imbalance breaks the confident formula.

Invented captions

“Two boxes of cookies, and each has one left.” This is an invented caption for a situation where symmetry arises for no particular reason, and that makes it funnier than the leftover itself.

“Two people said ‘I'm just leaving,’ but both are still looking for their keys.” This is also a new example: an identical delay becomes a small balance that doesn't decide who is actually ready.