It starts off innocently but before long, you are eating snacks

Ok but that sounds like exactly the kind of shit test God puts people through in religious parables.

Give them an unbelievable and entirely random thing that SAYS it's supernaturally evil (and it actually is, but it's also so out of left field--) and if they don't take the warning at face value and put it back down they will go to hell forever or something.

the first thing I would do is write my name in it so no one steals it

Death Note should get a new series and it should be entirely about every evil billionaire currently alive in 2025

"This is the ~~LockPicking~~NotebookWritingLawyer... allow me to desmonstrate one more time to make sure that it is not a fluke"

"You shouldn't be trying to use a potentially supernatural notebook and accidentally cause the death of people. But if you ever find yourself accidentally become the owner of a death note, then you'll need a good lawyer, but if you need a great lawyer, contact my law firm. You don't just need a legal team, you need The Eagle Team!"

"What a cool notebook! I'm going to make this my new personal phone book and spend all afternoon putting all my contacts in it."

"Surely that was a fluke, it won't work for a second time!"

"Twice in a row? What are the chances. I wonder if it works with pencil instead of pen."

...

It could be 101: the first a surprise, the next 100 to establish a meaningful statistical correlation.

I recently saw a sticker that said, "If at first you don't succeed, try a few more times to establish a baseline."

a more advanced version of the death note, would be control devil contract from chainsawman, she only needs to hear the name to instantly kill the person, instead of a time delayed time bomb.

Ahhh, but if you attempt to kill someone and the fact that it could be a freebie is part of your decision process then it isn't a freebie. So having read this you no longer get a freebie.

Second one is also free cause we all would use it on Musk the moment the first one worked with Trump.

Death note would be impossible in current year. Like, your test use would have to be on a huge name otherwise your phone analytics would super rat you out. I can just imaging light starting to get ads for burner phones and VPNs.

Doesn't a shinigami come and explain how it works? It's been a bit since I've seen death note so I don't remember if that happens before or after you use it. If it's before, there's no reason to assume it wouldn't work since a supernatural being appears to explain how it works which adds credibility.

But like it would be so unbelievable that you can't just say, oh x died bc I wrote his name, that would be ludicrous. You need a decent sample size. I think I'd need 3 freebies. Before that i would not believe this notepad kills people.

Iirc, you can write how the person behaves before death on the death note. You can easily write your own life fanfic and peaceful death there to ensure you don't get Raito'd or L'd in the meantime

Invariably I'd have drawn a comedy penis in there somewhere, and some poor lad somewhere would likely find his plonker refusing to work one night, or died with his old chap at full mast for maximum embarrassment.

It's still pretty unrealistic that anyone actually figured out how the deaths were occurring. Even if you thought "maybe it's magic" nobody else would take it seriously.

My death note would be the same as fortune 500

Remember, when someone unexpectedly kicks the bucket. That leads to a power vaccuum. Instead, you got to go after the middle managers. The people who carry out a politican's agenda. In theory, another faction would be able to capitalize on the situation. While taking out some politicans would be a net beneft, the fallout would be terrible. A civil war in nuclear armed Russia? Another Middle East war?

Now when it comes to billionaries and the other parasites. Take those fuckers out. The World doesn't have to worry about a corporate power vaccuum taking everyone down like a civil war in a country.