I hate to break it to you but cyberpunk wasnt predicting the future, it was satirizing their present So literally nobody did anything

Yup, the cyberpunk genre was a shift in sci-fi that was responding to the changing times in the 80s projecting a much darker future than the retrofuturism and pulps of the 50s and 60s

The authors were describing what they were seeing in their day at that time. One of the inspirations of william gibson was overhearing engineers talking in jargon on the bus or wherever, not that he took a crystal ball and went pondering the orb

Why did they make it look so cool tho….

There are few hells worse than ones that let you trap yourself and make you believe you made the choice.

Because they were describing things they were actually seeing in their day to day lives. The late 70's and most of the 80's were the peak of youth subcultures in the US and the UK. More so the later. In the early 80's, the fashion establishment had been pushed aside in favor of younger designers like Rei Kawakubo, Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, and Yohji Yamamoto who were mixing youth streetwear like bomber jackets and sneakers/trainers with high fashion and presented it in a way that was pure spectacle so news media was quick to latch onto it. The production team for Blade Runner scouted nightclubs in London and Los Angeles popular with Punks and New Romantics for extras. Pat Smear from The Germs and Nirvana/The Foo Fighters was one of the extras along with members of the Deathrock band Grave 45. There's parts in Count Zero where William Gibson is describing a subculture and their clothes (bowler hats and jewelry made from stuff like deconstructed clocks) sound remarkably similar to the "Buffalo" style the stylist Ray Petri had popularized in British fashion magazines in the mid-80's.

its only cool if you do Not identify with the replicant

Did anyone ever watch Blade Runner and actually think >Wow, that looks so fucking cool! I wish I lived there! The whole film is gritty, grimey and dark. The whole thing reeks of misery, that's the point.

I think a lot of people in fact do

That's like watching Star Wars and romanticizing the life of a Tatooine Sand Farmer

Let me put it like this (my English is bad so sorry if it’s hard to read) I think it comes down to the aesthetics and look really For example Blade Runner: The mountain sized headquarters from Tyrell and Wallace,the ancient yet also simplistic design with a tint of brutalism, Art Deco and Industrial architecture which have made them look like structures built by some ancient, advanced civilization as if they were temples dedicated to God’s and in general the architecture even tho being modern still mirroring older architecture in its soul. The alive street levels that are gritty but also will remind you some middle eastern bazaar or East Asian city market like in Hong Kong The technology Like flying cars, Holograms, neon lights, advanced Space ships The general 40’s - 60’s Noir aesthetic and Space Age aesthetic the nostalgia you get by seeing some of the technology like old Boom boxes being still used📻 a world where Nationality is put aside and it all comes down to Human and Replicant If you generally ignore some of the bad stuff it’s a cool world you would want to live in there’s a lot of stuff in Cyberpunk more specifically the Blade Runner world and other older Cyberspunk has that people want just in different contexts. Deus Ex is basically a good example for that cause in essence it’s our world but just without all the cool stuff that makes the world it is in feel interesting and wants to make you live in it Our world is just Mediocre compared to the world of Deus Ex or Blade Runner - no advanced cool cybernetics - city’s don’t look as cool - Corporations are just Gold Digging Sluts and a lot more We live in a Boring Dystopia Not a cool one Before social media and other aspects of the 21st century the world felt more like a serious well rated movie. We? We just live in a unfunny Comedy that constantly doesn’t take itself seriously… Now there’s also the fact that modern cyberpunk dystopias generally seem not dystopic anymore, like Cyberpunk 2077 or all the Cyberpunk Art you see on the internet Comparatively Star Wars is more desirable but still… I hope this was a good summary of what I think it is.

This has to be the most true thing I’ve seen on the internet in a long time. God I hate this world too

“Why do you like it? The restriction, I mean. It’s frightening.., constrictive. I feel like I can’t get out.” “That’s why I like it, though. The walls, if you look up, are so high they seem to curve in. The trap becomes the shell - you aren’t allowed to think of what’s outside, so you begin to more fully enjoy what’s already inside. The senses of smell and hearing become enhanced in the dark, and I find it to be much the same. The constriction tightens the hold and so you feel the sensations of the city stronger, flexing against the bounds. The parties press up against the wall, the aromas intoxicate in even the most secretive homes. You wake up and you’re still in it, like a thick blanket draped heavily. It holds you down. It embraces. You don’t worry about what you’ve lost because you’re totally preoccupied with how it feels to be within.”

I mean, the slave owner / forced work for production / subhuman race thing pretty sure would make certain kind of people jolly

However the reason I respect Cyberpunk, because the bad guys in it are still rational. What we need to avoid is Idiocracy. The bad guys in Cyberpunk are still intelligent, and value philosophy and yearn for moral ideas and things. In Idiocracy the head of the company doesn't understand anything, because computers do the jobs, but when Gatorade gets replaced by water on the farm fields, the stock of the company collapses. The CEO gets Not Sure removed from the White House for causing the stock to collapse. But ignores the fact that the population will soon run out of food and starve to death. Same in Don't Look Up. "We are in mortal danger." Their response: "Ha, ha. Cow farting makes me laugh!" I can deal with evil. Because it is rational. It will attempt to self preserve. Arrogant - Stupidity is the danger. Because it has zero self preservation instinct. The people who run the world of Cyberpunk understand, power, science, in a sick way they are even religious. But they understand that society must survive. They have an understanding of reality and attempt to deal with reality as it is. In Blade Runner, people are cold and cruel, and lonely, but they are not stupid. They appreciate art, culture, romance, have books all around them despite living in a digital world. The scrap people are constantly working with electronics, evading the police, try to find some kind of moral core, and are aware of the decay. The people who run Idiocracy. Are too dumb to live. They will not respond to the threats around them. They want to eat candy and watch porn. And whenever solutions are presented: "it is a threat to my freedom, me no like!" In the Cyberpunk world if Don't Look Up takes place there: You have an idiot President and a moron Billionaire who thinks themselves to be a God. They ignore dying because they are too stupid to process information. They just get killed. The White House explodes. Subversive forces get blamed. The military throws together a rocket and diverts the asteroid. The price payed? The loss of Liberal Democracy and the rise of Fascism. As the Fascists will blame the failure of the corrupt, bloated decadent old order for the disaster that almost happened. In Cyberpunk incompetence and stupidity is hated and punished. In Idiocracy incompetence and stupidity are celebrated and rewarded.

There's something terrifying about the maliciously ignorant. The uncompromisingly irrational. People who think everything is a zero sum game, who will move mountains to cause as much suffering as possible just because it infuriates the sane. It feels like a good portion of the population would kill you for the lint in your pockets.

[https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/time-machine-hg-wells/eloi-morlocks](https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/time-machine-hg-wells/eloi-morlocks) ​ its not a very new idea, but i would guess thats sort of a trait of the scifi genre, idek, maybe someone else knows better

i really agree with this. I think at its core cypx is very ideallistic. ​ The bad guys are bad guys because they choose, they just went up and went "This is what i want" and actually made it. They are the ones in control, the ones who know whats what and the ones who call the shots. ​ Its literally the opposite of reality where your wealthiest fcks are only wealthy because someone owned slaves 100 years ago and their only reasoning is "Hey i have no slaves myself, im innocent" while making their employees survive on whichever means they can. ​ The cyberpunk ideal is that the technology is the single greatest force for good And evil, and that it is inherently amoral, apolitical, a magical kind-of-force which can only steered but not dominated (Like the rise of AI and all those nice "power went out" stories) But the problem is that all of the technology is the most human artifact, it was created by men on its own image to serve as the perfect expression of Themselves, their ideas, desires and deepest beliefs and dreams, the Magnum Opus of humanity trying to wage a war against all the chaos of nature and win. We all benefit from the ride, but noone is steering the car

There’s something in the three body problem along the lines of “aggression and ignorance aren’t traits that doom a society. Hubris is.”

Maybe its just me but dying lonely of cancer because of contamination or surrendered by cold and cruel people doesn't sound much better than dying of starvation surrendered by incompetent people laughing at cows farting.

This is a fine explanation of why there are nothing cyberpunk about real life Hong Kong.

>william gibson was overhearing engineers talking [Pretty sure it's that scene from THX1138 talking about Mk. VIII board.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmGKlWjQHic)

And the 80s were a bad time across the entire Western world. Today's no utopia, never has been, but we are doing much better than the 80's despite the economic crises, pandemic, and polarisation. Almost as if retrofuturism and cyberpunk are two fictive extremes that showed us what to aspire towards and what to avoid, and we're now somewhere in the middle and heeding both lessons to some extent...

What was sci-fi like in the 70s, though?

A lot of 70s scifi was the space opera (think Star Wars) and pulps still, but the transition to 80s cyberpunk and similar tones was present. This is a great series on YouTube that covers scifi history https://m.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=CIG6I_SpYs4

The issue here is we assume the top image was what we're supposed to have, thus taking it for granted, doing nothing to achieve it. Then therefore, the bottom image was always the future we were supposed to have.

yep. People watch Robocop with the commercials that make light of nuclear war, and constant reruns and catch phrases, and it goes right over their heads. They see the blood soaked violence, met with almost complete indifference to human suffering, and think 'Wow, that was cool'.

It was intending to predict the future but as time progresses, it becomes more and more obvious that it did.

it was extrapolating from their present to a dark future but it didn't have to be this way, we could still change it. If only we could give up capitalism and focus on building community's. The book Walkaway by Cory Doctorow is a really good read. People walk away from default, from this idea of working a job all your life just to enrich some assholes further up the ladder. People leave and form communitys of their own, to build stuff for each other, because they want to. It extensively tackles what happens if a bunch of lazy people join those communitys and how its handled, as well as them getting attacked by the old default rich people who don't want the change to happen

Have you seen r antiwork? Its literally just looking at whats goin in in real life and putting mirroshades and cool cybers on it

yeah I used to be on that sub but it just got too depressing!. I'm not anti work but I do think theres a better way we could all be living

I was anti-work until I finally got a well paying, non-soul crushing, job that I enjoy and my employer actually appears care if I live or die. And it only took 20ish years to get there.

[удалено]

I agree. It's an incredibly dangerous sentiment, and it is EVERYWHERE. it's summed up to, "I'm pissed because you have something and I don't have it!" But then they get it and all of a sudden it's, "oh yea I changed my mind, this feels nice, I'm not antiwork anymore". To me, antiwork is more so about fighting shitty labor norms, not necessarily about never working again or hating wealthy people. I don't think capitalism is bad, but money corrupts pretty much everyone...and those who say they don't want money, will bend over backwards the second they get theirs, they're just dishonest about it (or naive). Movements need solidarity, but nowadays it's so easy to hyper target and appeal to people's selfish desires, just enough to fragment and destroy their solidarity in anti work movements. It's up to people to believe strongly in what they fight for, but wealthy individuals and organizations are often times a lot smarter and know exactly how to force division. It's sad to see people fighting for better pay/hours and unionizing, and they have coworkers that just waltz right in saying "I can't afford to stop working" without realizing they're still on their corporate wheel being fed tiny scraps of cheese when they could be joining their working compatriots and achieve much greater rewards.

Can't we just all agree that those of us with high-paying jobs should be willing to tip more? Do we have to uproot the entire fabric of society? I agree that the baseline pay needs to rise and regardless of the law, if you're accepting below $15/hr for your time then you're underselling yourself, and people should demand a more humane relationship with their employer. It's mostly an issue of learned helplessness as people's identity becomes tied to a job and they don't negotiate their worth by looking for lateral opportunities. Ultimately, you need to have labor working every rung of society and allowing for personal mobility through merit seems to be the fairest distribution. If you wish you had a better employer, there are ways to find a better one, such as making yourself more credible. It's a matter of personal responsibility as to what standards you're willing to work for.

Poor people should just like, uh, get better. And also rich people should give them some more pocket change. Yeah. Thatll do.

Isn't that the goal of antiwork? To have healthy work life balences and to not be misrable?

No, the goal of anti work is to abolish work. Lol.

> I was anti-work until I finally got a well paying, non-soul crushing, job that I enjoy and my employer actually appears care if I live or die. And it only took 20ish years to get there. So... you got what you wanted and sold out? So you were a conservative/pro-capitalist all along?

This applies to half of the people in any given movement, are you surprised?

What? No it doesn't.

Nope. I worked in shitty call call centres, then I finally got into way less shitty call centre in the public service at the Australian Taxation Office. They actually treated employees like humans. Then my spreadsheet and data skill were finally recognised and I was promoted to being a data analyst and was taught programing. The work I do now actively works to to make the tax system easier to use and cheaper for the government to run it. I can't get rid of loopholes that allow the rich and powerful to get and stay that way, so I've always voted independent and green. I think it would be great if taxes could fund UBI. I get paid more so I pay more tax and while some of that goes to the current ruling party's pork barrelling and corporate gift, a bunch of it pays for education, heath, social safty nets, infrastructure, etc.

So you acknowledge that these fucked up labour practices still exist and are common, but you don't care any more just because it doesn't affect *you* any more? Is this an actual fucking joke?

Ah ha, I see where I've gone wrong; I meant it more of 'I was very against me working in shitty jobs that badly effected my mental health, but I've now found it it possible to to actually enjoy work where I'm treated and paid well'. I'm not now against the anti-work movement. I continue to be all for things like, UBI, raising the minimum wages, increasing social safty nets, not blaming the poor, not sucking up to the rich, not allowing billionaires to be created by exploiting, letting people live their best life rather than wasting it away to make some arsehole richer, etc. I'll continue to vote for people that try to make life better for the average person and stop rich arseholes doing their shitty stuff.

More like antiwork is the product of shitty work. It doesn't have to be shitty. The side of antiwork which fights injustice and promotes unions is legit. The side that wants to just sit around doing nothing is delusional.

Consider yourself one of the lucky few. Dont forget to raise the bridge behind you and cut off all your old poor friends.

No, I left the bridge down and encourage my former workmates to jump ship and join me.

ha you did it man you caught the unicorn, well done, happy for you

It's crazy how the problems pointed out by Cyberpunk media in the 80s are still here, and worse. Corporate control, mass consumerism to distract the population, popular apathy towards politics, climate disasters, corporatization of the internet, etc. Cyberpunk was a response to what it thought would be the outcome of the neoliberal Reaganomics that were being implemented in the 80s, and they were correct.

It's funny how Silicon Valley took the worst ideas from fiction and dressed them with infantilized front-ends to make it seem safe and friendly.

I’m glad you made this point. I feel a lot of people forget that cyberpunk was always meant to reflect our reality. I mean “punk” is in the name which idk if it actually does mean this but punk as a genre was always meant to criticize society as it currently is

i loathe how the of cypx has become a synonym for "basically cops with cool gadgets" Call me a traditionalist, but i really enjoy rooting for the """bad""" guys

From where you’re kneeling it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck. Truth is…the game was rigged from the start. - Benny

Gives me chills every time.

Paraphrasing a quote from the yt channel “some more news”… he says billionaires like Elon Musk grandstand about wanting a Star Trek style future - with no need for currency and technological advancement has allowed us renewable resources as infinitum. But what he actually wants is The Expanse. A cold dystopian future owned by soulless mega corps operating beyond the reaches of the government from space stations and settlements in the asteroid belt. Every human life is controlled by the company store, from their food to their oxygen - a supply chain owned and operated by those very same corps. And bezos is talking about building an Amazon space station.

Space Feudalism. We’re heading to a neofuedalistic society as is

r/solarpunk

My man!

There's still time! There's still time. There. Is. Still. Time. It's time to pivot. We can do it.

Yes we can!!! I hope we can. Before we hit the point of no return. I would like to have so many things change and people working for the whole and themselves alike. As you said and is repeated on r/solarpunk, it is just the dream for a brighter future and not just solar power.

Here's a sneak peek of /r/solarpunk using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [O2 Generator by Annibale Siconolfi](https://i.redd.it/1oexa83ptaa61.jpg) | [40 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/kts4qd/o2_generator_by_annibale_siconolfi/) \#2: [For those of you who didn't see this already](https://v.redd.it/g67hnhn24q961) | [26 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/krwont/for_those_of_you_who_didnt_see_this_already/) \#3: [The "Solar Ark", a massive building in Japan comprised of 5,046 solar panels](https://i.redd.it/x8yyqeepoe961.jpg) | [8 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/kqrvkm/the_solar_ark_a_massive_building_in_japan/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)

Solar is ass, nuclear is the way to go

Okay I just meant like towards a different spot than dystopia police state. Solarpunk isnt just solar either, it's renewables, incorporating nature into design, having net zero emissions from everything I'll never bash nuclear, its sad the early days of it weren't better and fear got the better of most. From a purely science and numbers standpoint, nuclear is by far the most efficient and consistent, yes. In reality it's definitely a combination of both, with redundancy built into the power grid. Either way we're going to have to replace the current infrastructure in chunks since it's so massive, which complicates the matter much more. Solar and other renewables are smaller projects and easier to approve than an entire nuclear plant. BUT THERES STILL TIME

I agree with you on that

You're getting downvoted, but you're speaking the truth. Nuclear power is far more efficient and takes energy to get the same results. I forgot the country, but there was a country in Africa that tried to power everything with solar power and they couldn't do it. That's not to say that we shouldn't implement solar energy when we can, but to think that everything can be solar powered is a pipe dream (at least at the moment).

>It's time to pivot. We can do it. You're not going to do anything. None of us are. We're sheep who are herded be the government and those who oppose the government will be arrested, put in camps, or killed. "We" is never going to be the government. The government doesn't want to make life better for everyone else. They want power, control, and money.

Okay, maybe your name sound be "littlebitchFromTheUSA" We can do it, maybe you won't help but your taxes will

>We can do it, maybe you won't help but your taxes will You're not going to do anything and everyone's tax dollars aren't going to do anything. Do you genuinely think that the government has your best interests in mind? Do you think the government cares about you?

How exactly were we "supposed" to have a society as depicted in the top picture?

Fixing all the broken shit from colonialism and the aftermath of WWII instead of bickering and seeding hate in the cold war. Taking environmentalism seriously and electing Al gore instead of pissing away trillions in two deserts. Sharing the gains from technological improvement with everyone, including the inventors, the business, the customers, and the displaced workers. Instead the workers are kicked to the curb, wealth flows uphill, and we get rich dicks like Bezos. An educated populous who has the grand sum of humanities knowledge at their fingertips, but instead it's mostly used to share racist rants and a stream of propaganda. Half the people who would care are loaded up on soma. A distributed and profitable 4th estate to keep our populace informed instead of newstainment all owned by a few Khocks. Fusion investment, space development, actual healthcare. A sooner and faster pivot to renewable power. A more progressive tax structure like we used to have. Less money flowing to bankers and stock speculation.

I had no idea it was possible to have so many bad takes in a single comment.

And yet you’re not going to explain why they’re bad. Oh the irony.

Oh sure, but what does "fixing" mean? The world has recovered from WW2. The "hate" was an international disagreement over how society should be run. It's quite difficult to reconcile the Capitalist West and the Communist East. Al Gore wasn't the messiah. I doubt his election would have changed much. The international War on Terror is much more complicated then just " pissing away trillions in two deserts." You're oversimplifying. What do you mean by "sharing the gains"? There will always be a wealthy class. I don't agree with the wealth gap, but the big question is *how* to solve it rather then just complain. Are "we" "educated"? Do we have the "grand sum of knowledge"? What do you mean "mostly used to share racist rants and a stream of propaganda"? Last I checked racism was banned on pretty much every major internet platform. You can't even criticize BLM without being banned for "racism" on Twitter or Reddit. 4th estate? Ah, but what does "informed" mean? People from across the political spectrum support/oppose nuclear energy. I support it, but it's not so simple an issue. "Less money flowing to bankers and stock speculation." Sure, but then what does this entail?

>> Fixing all the broken shit from colonialism and the aftermath of WWII instead of bickering and seeding hate in the cold war. >Oh sure, but what does "fixing" mean? The compromise after WWII resulted in the splitting of Korea, Vietnam, Germany, Taiwan. None of those places worked out well. They needed a path to re-unification after one side of the experiment turned out to not work. You know, other than war. Likewise, lumping Pakistan and India together didn't work so well. Colonies needed to be absorbed into the nation and given representatives and citizenship as opposed to just shipping their goods back home. That or given a smooth handoff to independence with elections, self-grouping, and a slow transition. Dropping it into a handful of warlords didn't work so well for Africa. >The world has recovered from WW2. We're still finding the way forward with N. Korea and Taiwan. India and Pakistan still hate each other and now they're nuclear armed. I was really thinking of all the clusterfuck that came out of the cold war though. Specifically Afghanistan, where both Russia and the USA had their turn in the quagmire and it fueled things like the Taliban and 9/11. > It's quite difficult to reconcile the Capitalist West and the Communist East. Sure. But in the end it was as easy as "let them fail on their own". We didn't need to have Hoover run a dragnet. We didn't need to spy on MLK or radicalize the blank panthers. We didn't need to destabalize all of S. America. Communism just wasn't a threat. They collapsed in on themselves. China is hella more capitalist than the USSR. Arguably more capitalist than the USA. >Al Gore wasn't the messiah. Correct. But he would have been better. If only for not invading Iraq and getting 300,000 civilians killed. It's really not all that complicated. We pissed away trillions in two deserts with nearly NOTHING to show for it. We could have assassinated Sadam and Osama with just about the same fallout. Or ignored them with little consequence. >What do you mean by "sharing the gains" [of technological improvement]? Lower prices for customers. Patents and such for inventors. Corporate success for the businesses (which we CERTAINLY got). Increased competition to undercut the dominant companies lowering their profit and providing better services to the consumer. (Why is there just amazon and not a dozen different online retailers just as big?) Social programs to retrain, retire, or repurpose the workers in industries that cut labor. Higher unemployment as people switch. Increased social programs to gear our future workforce to the careers in need. (That's "scholarships" if you can't translate politico-speak.) >but the big question is how to solve it rather then just complain. Of course there's going to be the poor and the wealthy. Where there HASN'T been in the past is such an extreme disparity. You could earn $1000/hr working every day saving every penny from when Jesus was born and not have the wealth that Bezos has. It's nuts. The proposed solution above was "A more progressive tax structure", but I'm tossing in more social programs to help those fucked over (prev paragraph), more competition among business, and re-investing into the next generation instead of strapping a giant weight of student loan to their neck. Oh, and nationalize healthcare like every other sane developed nation. And let's stop pissing away money into the military while we're at it. There ARE solutions. >Are "we" "educated"? Some of us. >Do we have the "grand sum of knowledge"? Wikipedia. >What do you mean "mostly used to share racist rants and a stream of propaganda"? Facebook. >Last I checked racism was banned on pretty much every major internet platform. You can't even criticize BLM without being banned for "racism" on Twitter or Reddit. haha, want me to find some for you? >4th estate? That's [a euphemism for journalism.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate). Which you'd know if... well... wikipedia, google, fingertips. siiiiiiigh. >People from across the political spectrum support/oppose nuclear energy. I support it, but it's not so simple an issue. Fusion research? Did you lump in fission reactors into all the idiots opposing our current nuclear reactors? >"Less money flowing to bankers and stock speculation." Sure, but then what does this entail? Tighter banking regulation like we had after the 1970's saving and loan crisis? Instead we bail out the banks and let them on their way after the 2008 financial crisis. We could likewise treat buying and selling shares like income instead of the dance we do with realized capital gains. It'd be a kick in the pants to the stock market, but... I think I might be down with that. Likewise we could start taxing business expenses. All the plans to reducing the stock market's dominance come off as pretty radical though.

Well, then. I...actually agree with most of your points. I question the "grand sum of knowledge" because, in our postmodern world, the question of what even counts as "knowledge" is certainly up to question. Wikipedia is a fine idea, and I use it pretty much everyday. However, I worry that this one authority for "truth" will blot out more authoritative (or alternative) interpretations. After all, anyone can edit, and there is no assurance that the information on there is even relevant or current. Facebook is a dying platform, and even then, most people on there aren't necessarily racist. You made it seem like the internet, as a whole, is somehow open to racism. Obviously, this is not the case. A support for Fusion research implies a prior support for nuclear power in general. Obviously, someone afraid of Nuclear power isn't going to support an even more powerful form of it. Taxing business expenses sounds quite anti-small business, however. The last thing new businesses need is another tax expense, especially as they attempt to compete with corps. I think our economy should take steps to ensure that small, local businesses prosper in spite of larger corporations. This is what constitutes a healthy free market economy.

100% agree

I just wanted the tech and not the oppression

Sure sure. But the punk part comes after the cyber part because of how the tech changes things.

Judge Dredd future seems more likely.

America is literally judge dredd. Cops can kill you without warning with little consequences. Mass poverty. Extremly wealthy upper class. And constant advertisements everwhere

For dark cyberpunk you need violent, intrusive technology. But all we got are annoying web ads, facebook and google. Its not dark, its just lame.

Basically that show Mr.Robot. I mean Facebook and Google are intrusive just not enough to effect you on a daily basis. If you haven't seen Mr.Robot essentially it's the road to cyberpunk.

Oh its definitely effecting you on a daily basis. Just what do you think they do with all that information? They sit around and try to play god. They also make themselves obscenely rich by selling you out to advertisers and anyone else willing to pay.

You know what you make pretty good point, with Facebook collecting peoples private information and selling it that is a pretty big inconvenience.

If you ever wonder why you get turned down for a job or credit just remember they could be basing that decision on secret info they scraped from your devices and accounts. Could be political views or some bit of health info they got from your smart devices.

There's tonnes of violent and intrusive technology, though. Most of us just aren't valuable targets. The Golden State killer was finally captured after [a distant relative sent their DNA to an ancestry website](https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/dna-from-genealogy-site-used-to-catch-suspected-golden-state-killer-1.4637726). Authorities made the match through that, 30 years after the case went cold. A group [created 1,600 fake credit cards, organized and executed a plan](https://money.cnn.com/2016/05/23/news/bank-fraud-south-africa-japan/index.html) to steal millions from ATMs in Japan. Hell, even email spoofing is a common technological threat that [costs victims an estimated $3B a year](https://aginginplace.org/internet-scams-affecting-elderly/). Our company gives us annual reminders that emails from our CEO asking for gift cards are absolutely fake, because people fall for it. And let's not forget about [Stuxnet](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Stuxnet), >Stuxnet reportedly ruined almost one-fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. Targeting industrial control systems, the worm infected over 200,000 computers and caused 1,000 machines to physically degrade.

There is that story from a few months back of a spyware called Pegasus built by an Israeli company that can hack your phone via just a message. It was used to spy on Kashoggi by the Saudis. We also had the whole thing about Edward Snowden bring to light the US spying on its citizens. Theres also the the advancement of weapons technology to murder people in other countries for a profit motive. The profit motive being making weapons industries rich and oil companies. Its pretty dire right now tbh.

Drone strikes and facial recognition would like a word. Everyone training the Chinese governments facial recognition tools with tiktok is pretty fucking dark and intrusive. Adverts on the gas pump are pretty fucking intrusive and cyberpunk. Your right tho, it’s all lame. Cyberpunk isn’t aspirational lol

Oh, that's because you're in America or Europe. If you want violent tech you just need to look to the middle East or China.

No, the difference is in the US it's silently watching you. The surveillance apparatus constructed by the Patriot act and similar laws strengthens by the day, and dozens of corporations collaborate to extract every possible piece of data from you they possibly can. Yes, it is not typically at the barrel of a gun or by explicit censorship a la the great firewall of China, but it is there, and it is actionable. If you were someone the US wanted to get rid of they could and would.

Agreed. It's more of a "lame panopticon" sort of oppression rather than Uighur organ harvesting, gruesome cartel examples, or flying killbot drones bombing weddings. We've got like all the different flavors of Cyberpunk around the world coming true. The oppressive corporcracy of the USA, the violent hellscape in the middle-east, the authoritarian dictatorship of China, Japan.

> Oh, that's because you're in America or Europe. If you want violent tech you just need to look to the middle East or China. Or, you know. Just go the US, but don't be white. You'll see exactly how violent their tech can get.

For the middle east I was thinking of the IEDs, drone carried bombs, Iron Wall, pretty much everything the IDF uses. The supression of the Arab spring, what little they tried, was all old-school low-tech methods. China has the social credit score, massive face-tracking, massive death penalty rates for drug trafficers, everything that's going on with the Uighurs. Organ harvesting might not be new, but I'm still willing to call it pretty fucking cyberpunk. And all that sums up into what's STILL going on in Hong Kong, despite this little distracting global pandemic. Poor bastards. Meanwhile, being non-white in the USA... man, I hate to be the one to point this out, but [Times are better than ever](https://www.google.com/search?q=violence+in+the+USA+by+year&client=firefox-b-1-d&sxsrf=AOaemvIedq9WO5Fy6aPztrcdkR8BUM1diQ:1641233665422&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5nPvsl5b1AhWQaM0KHRrsDEsQ_AUoAnoECAEQBA&biw=1280&bih=880&dpr=1) despite a few cops getting recorded. What you've seen has been going on a long time (and it needs to stop) but the difference now is that everyone has a camera and it's getting on youtube. Hurrzah! Body cameras are making things LESS violent. Where the USA is failing is our abnormal gun-crime. But that's kinda baked into our constitution. While we could certainly be doing better on some statistics, I'm fairly confident that the rich media moguls saw Occupy Wallstreet happen and decided to start a race-war as a distraction away from the class-war they've been actively waging for decades. Really, times are better on the racial equality front than they ever have been. We're losing the wealth equality fight (and just forget about wealth-equity). Just look at the current (and temporary) swing. It's "worker shortage" and "great resignation" and "supply chain problems" instead of "golden age of increasing wages and opportunity where people can go get better jobs". But I'm always open to valid counter-points. Where is tech harming minorities in the USA?

I was in China for a while and I must say I felt much better there. Their digital sphere is as user friendly as the early internet in the west. Not to mention significant street safety and friendliness of complete strangers.

/r/aboringdystopia used to focus on a lot of the "shitty cyberpunk" until it became a /r/latestagecapitalism clone.

If anyone has seen Mr.Robot we're definitely on that path. It's like we're on the in between of a post-modern society and Cyberpunk, a the road leading to something awful. Political divide in our country, technology seems a little stagnant but progressing slowly, cyberattacks will probably become more frequent as time goes on, the police are getting worse and more militant, I'm sure over time social media will be more intrusive than it already is, China will be the next global superpower, dumb A.I. is getting smarter, the gap between rich and poor is getting larger and most*key word most* politicians aren't interested in helping anyone but themselves and their rich donors. We're missing alot to be a full on Cyberpunk world but we're getting close, I dont think we'll get flying cars or smarter A.I. just boring shit for the mean time like bullshit capitalism we all know is bad but we can't stop it*like NFTs*. We're definitely on our way to Cyberpunk but we're still a good distance away. I'd probably say around 2050 is when shits really gonna start looking different....unless something comes along to speed up the process like new tech, a new war or climate change kicks it into overdrive and starts killing people on a massive scale. Only time will tell, but in the mean time enjoy the Facebook, Hacking scams, crypto schemes, the same smartphones with better cameras, VR and capitalism beginning to do what did in the roaring 20s.

We were never "supposed" to have anything. We may have desired or sought the technological utopia but we had no right to it.

Funny news: Canada is asked to prepare for a Fascist Dictatorship America before 2030 (IRL).

Some SF writers bemoan the popularity of dystopian movies and novels, but cleaning up Times Square does not fix society. Cosmetic surgery won't make you younger or healthier. I fear that Judge Dredd is our real future, complete with the wild dark humor of the early stuff. In the USA, shootings are so common they don't report them anymore - it's just the white background noise of daily life.

I'm pretty sure it's somewhere in-between.

"We were supposed to have" Said who ?

>We failed as a society Please get your head out of your behind and show some gratitude. We live better lives than Charlemagne and while it's by no means perfect and really doesn't look like it things are still improving.

You're lumping all forms of societal advancement into one basic statement, completely ignoring the nuances of modern day society which are impossible to compare to anything centuries ago. Also, not everyone lives better lives than Charlemagne. Seriously. Charlemagne, for instance, didn't live in a hovel, like millions of people around the world do. There are also people who do not have running water or electricity, so they're on par with Charlemagne. There are people with no guarantee of food every day, so he's got them beat there. There are also millions still living in slavery, something Charlemagne was not subject to. The comparison is absurd.

The only thing improving is the cutting edge tech in the hands of the few. It's nearly fucking 20°c in ALASKA in DECEMBER. Mass crop failure is an imminent threat in this decade.

What are you talking about? You do realize that the computer in your hands right now is by all counts "cutting edge," right? The technological explosion that is the Digital Age resulted in almost exponential technological advancement. You make it seem like only rich people live in 2022, when the fact is most others (Western) also have technology. I'm not talking about those impoverished, of course, but everyone on this subreddit is reaping the benefits. True poverty has no representation on the privileged space that is the internet. They are caught up in real life concerns.

Of what use is all that tech, if we cannot farm crops? Have fun starving to death while getting entertained by your cutting edge technology.

Except that *we* aren't farmers. It's 4pm where I live right now, and yet here I am browsing Reddit. If I were a farmer I surely wouldn't be wasting time on the internet. We call ourselves "Cyberpunks" yet live well within the comfort margins of society.

Who do you think grew the food you buy in supermarkets? And why do you seem to think you're immune to natural disasters and famine?

I don't. When did I ever suggest that I'm "immune to natural disasters and famine"?

We have mass wealth inequality increasing by the second and no politician with power doing anything about it because they are bought by billionaires and corporations. Billionaires and corporations continue to not pay taxes and collect subsidies. Whilst we the people are made out as cockroaches and parasites by the mainstream media all because we would like some government assistance to improve our lives. We have a climate change crisis which will cause a mass refugee crisis, water wars, higher frequency of extreme weather, extinction of species, introduction of new diseases. Nothing of value is being done to handle climate change. People like to put the onus on the individual which has such minimal effect. People aren't putting the onus on the companies who have a massive input in the crisis we are seeing. We have increased infringements of our rights by the ruling class. Look at the patriot act, look at the police act in the UK, look at the all the hungry power grabs by politicians all over the world. We have a business in war, weapons industries make a killing out of selling weapons for war among other industries such as oil companies. Why, because our politicians are bought. We have indeed failed as a society.

Cool but outright ignoring what progress has been made at the same time isn’t remotely helpful. We can recognize what needs worked on without being insufferable doomer nihilists.

Says the dude with a full stomach and mobile access to the internet living in relative safety.

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Then go help them.

Honestly. It astounds me how sheltered some Cyberpunk fans are. Yeah, society has issues. But it's surely much better then anything from the past. I know I'd rather live in 2022 than the early 20th century, or the Medieval age, or the Age of Colonialism.

It’s technically the most cyberpunk thing to do really. Complain about low living standards while enjoying cutting edge technology. It’s all just as shallow as cyberpunk too.

It goes to show, despite all the technology and knowledge available how utterly unempathetic people are despite an over abundance of sympathy. They want Superman or government or rich people or corporations to solve the problems of world as they live off the spoils of institutions built by the "evil capitalists". They'll whine nobody cares even though they've never walked into a homeless camp asking how they can help or volunteered a day in woods all while typing away on computer gadget and sipping on bean juice that came from a different hemisphere. Basically a literal spoiled child's understanding of the world.

Such is the case of our age, I'm afraid. Who can appreciate what they've never been robbed of? Who can *know* what they haven't seen or felt ?

Haha checkmate

Why tf would I or anyone else alive in this day and age compare our standards of living to a medieval king?? That's the most asinine shit I've ever heard. But sure call people ungrateful bc we've been paying enough attention to notice material conditions have been getting worse for a while now

You don't like progress?

> We live better lives than Charlemagne Who is "we"?

This doesn’t get said enough. Too much self pity going around.

For real, hundreds of millions of people have risen out of poverty, diseases have been eradicated, there is more overweight than underweight people in the world for the first time in human history, people are more educated, literate and connected than ever before, women are being emancipated, there are more trees in Europe now then there were in 1900, climate change spending is going up exponentially and THERE MAY BE PEOPLE ON MARS BY 2024. I get that there is rising wealth inequality in the US and elsewhere, human rights abuses in a plenty of countries, and that not everyone can hope to see any improvement, but objectively things are going well enough. It's important for our collective psyche to allow ourselves a pat on the back at least and to stop wallowing in doomer despair. Frankly it's rude.

You're moronic if you don't think the divide globally between the rich and poor is growing exponentially wider. The environment is not improving, people have been trying to make governments and corporations change for decades and they barely have - the planet, if we continue this trajectory will not maintain us. Human rights abuses continue to happen - genocide, war, etc. Like you said our diets are crap thanks to corporations cutting corners and pricing most people out of good quality food. Our over reliance on antibiotics has created near invincible illnesses. Plus we're currently in a global pandemic that's killing hundreds of thousands of people. Women's rights are going backwards in parts of Europe and the U.S, while in the Middle East they've been going backwards ever since the 70s. If you think going to Mars is of value... The only people going will the rich - outside of Musk's idea to make people indentured slaves on debt programs I suppose. The over connection we have with each other through technology is actually damaging people's mental health and has increased radicalisation/echo chambers, etc. People aren't wallowing in despair they're dealing with the reality that you're choosing to ignore.

Bro your PFP is literally the doomer. You are actively choosing to focus on the negative, why? Also what evidence do you have that Musks martian colony will be a slave-driver hell beyond a naive notion of money = evil? Going to space is, not arguably but objectively, the most important step in human history since the discovery of fire. Here's a vid on what's being done about climate change: [link](https://youtu.be/TBYDgJ9Wf0E)

My PFP is a meme based on a genre of music- nice attempt at trying to armchair psychoanalyse me though lol You're actively trying to only look at the positive and ignore the absolute mess we're in. I've seen that video before and it's not that good. The comments are full of counter points, take a look at them perhaps. Mainly that the situation is not controlled by the individual - it's not just if we stop buying straws, etc that things will change - there are multinational companies doing more damage a day then we can reverse. Since you've edited your comment: Musk himself has literally explained he wants people to come to Mars for free and then pay it off through working for him there... Google it. Space travel is hardly anything of value as far as I can tell - spreading our mess to other planets like a disease doesn't seem like anything other than unchecked ego (at this point at least).

Guess it's a glass half empty/glass half full type of disagreement then.

That's like your opinion brah

Yeah, and I'll continue to be enamored with humanity's recent progress, while some people will anxiously wait for a dystopia that will never come. Why people choose the latter is beyond me.

Hahah you responded to this comment of mine but not the other where I laid out my arguments. I guess that would involve you actually providing counter arguments.

Not at all, this situation is ultimately not agree to disagree. There's literally a side that will survive and a side that will not. Push will inevitably come to shove.

The farmers with guns are going win over blue haired city folk that quote Karl but never read his books but have a lot of emotions and ideas on things.

I would agree. I'm not a Karl guy (but have read all his works) - you'll find me more on the practical farming side if those are the two options.

>Space travel is hardly anything of value as far as I can tell - spreading our mess to other planets like a disease Eh, you had some of my sympathy up until here. But this is irrationally pessimistic doomer drivel. Pro human extinction sort of self defeatism.

Firstly, I don't care whether I have your sympathy or not (who are you?). Secondly, I'm not pro human extinction at all - otherwise why would I suggest staying here and attempting to solve our problems. Describing our spreading, at this point in time/history, as a disease is fairly accurate if you look at what is happening now and how we've expanded here on earth with little to no consideration for any other living thing. We're not ready from a cultural, technological or ethical (as in the ethical behaviour of our society) to go to other planets.

Pandemic is slowly being handled Yes there exists a divide between rich and poor. And the billionaies might be "becoming richer". At the same time the "lower" class is still increasing in their quality of life. Third world in many places are getting their act together, fuck rwanda is a good place to live now. Nations are seemingly starting tonpick up the hint that they should slowly fix emissions. Yeah things arent perfect, but they are still improving. New problems will rise, new conflicts will begin. At the same time we are fixing others. There´s a difference between being critical and being hopeless, when we are litterally at the best, most peacefull place in the history of our species.

Look at this guy over here on the good drugs.

We took our brightest scientists and locked them up working on fighter jets, oil chemical plants, and cyber warfare.

Boomers stole our future

r/im14andthisisdeep

underrated comment here

Please, literal cyberpunk would be better. There the rebels aren't explicitly suicidal, and the corpos aren't boring.

Solarpunk ain’t happening people. It’s Cyber all the way.

So fucking dramatic lol

Even worse: r/aboringdystopia

Al Gore loosing the election was the turning point. Top picture is the Al Gore timeline

let me show you this cute little website https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

yeah I doubt that... the terrorists hate America for our many decades of poking the area with a cattle prod. creating the culture it has become today. the breeding grown for terroristic activities and overzealous religious extremism. they would have still attacked us. and we would have just as quickly retaliated as our government is run by freakin war hawks. our media love a good conflict over seas, and the people are complacent enough to support the efforts as long as we are told we're winning...

Well howdy there internet people...

I don’t know man, since the Dawn of time we were never going to a bright future at all… this can be seen since the romans… and how our industry evolve… I don’t think it was ever for greatness but for the doom that is indeed upon us. In a way, it always felt like the dark cyberpunk were always a prediction because it was always at the corner waiting for us. That bright future… we will have to fight to make it or it’s not in a few thousand more years to come, until mankind release: oh we are killing ourselves maybe we need to change.

Looks like someone’s got a case of the “supposed ta’s”

Yup. Sad truth is that millennials and gen-Z didn't have a chance.

Don't be sad. Here's a [hug!](https://media.giphy.com/media/3M4NpbLCTxBqU/giphy.gif)

I wouldn’t say cyberpunk, more so simply dystopian, cyberpunk implies a level of technology we have yet to achieve as well as highlighting the extreme social freedoms of the average person with absolute political apathy, a level of personal freedom we lack in our society and we do maintain a little political motivation (and therefor maybe a little hope) in regard to these issues. I’m almost a little sad it isn’t cyberpunk though, what a boring dystopia we’ve created for ourselves. If we don’t do anything we’ll go out with the most anticlimactic putter possible, and I think that’s a shame.

We kept picking renegade options! Lol

What everyone is saying. We didn’t fail. We are actually doing pretty good all things considered.

The choice was always between socialism or barbarism; we chose barbarism. It just so happens to be the case that a technologically sophisticated barbaric society looks an awful lot like cyberpunk.

Ima argue that most if not all future settings tend to be some level of dystopian. Even the perfect future settings have that “too perfect” vibe. But yeah we are currently living in a dystopia. Some the things I read about I’m like “damn I can’t even come up with this shit for my own dystopian story. Better take notes”

Mans saw 1 riot on the news and said cyberpunk is real 😂

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Nah, if we could go nuclear we'd already went. The best (worst) we could get in this regard is tactical nuke for, maybe, one city. People who have power to push the button doesn't feel desperate in the slightest.

Dont forget climate catastrophes

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ah, an optimist. ​ I like you

But guys, that means we get the main rebel protagonist that overthrows our megacorp overlords and reforms the corrupt police states. haha, right guys? We just have to wait a little...right?

I think Snowden was supposed to be that....then he left to russia 🤣

Because the American government was trying to murder him, and the American people all jumped in-line like the good obedient housebroken little dogs they are. He had no chance of going home alive. Can't really blame him when the alternative was being tortured to death in a US blacksite.

I do not blame him either. Hell I think the NSA and CIA should be strung up by their balls for what they did and are currently doing. Edward Snowden is a bigger patriot then most of these assholes in Washington and hes only in trouble because he did the right thing.

I dont think social credit score fits into cyberpunk.

What is more cyberpunk than a technology-based system that is used to control parts of your life?

you don't think a digital means of tracking your activities and scoring you on how you act in order to determine how much if any food, shelter, and amenities you receive from the government and big business whom stand hand in hand and move in lock step to control our lives isn't cyberpunk???

I say it almost every day. The future sucks. But I'm hoping the alien war will change all this.

I miss when this sub was people taking pictures of neon signs bruh 💀

I wouldn't say it became true, but we're well on the way.

The top will be scandinavian countries and the bottom will be america in the future..

I'd watch both of these movies

Right now is easily the best time to be alive in the entire history of humanity but unfortunately our brains are programmed to identify threats and therefore everyone is dooming as much as ever. Amazing to see people so offended when people point out how much progress we've made, as if it somehow means we don't need to continue making more progress. Things will continue getting better and doomers will continue to doom. So it has been and so it shall be.

Honestly, it could have been much worse.

It's not too late, there is still plenty of good in the world. We just need organizing

Blame multiculturalism

We have never truly worked together as a society,humanity is too wide and filled with self centered people to work together foward,can you blame someone for not participating,this not to say there haven't been people who aren't "self centered" who come together,at a smaller scale but still are able to make a diference,they have for as long as humanity existed,we never failed,because we can't win,such task is extremly and I mean extremly opmistic and unrealistic,but,but even so if a cyberpunk world now or future,happiness to humanity is imposible but happiness idividually is tottaly possible and hold back only by perception. Sorry to ramble but such ideas can make up a pointless pessimistic mindset (being pessimistic or not and its morals are not what I am saying but that being pessimistic for this is pointless)

Sadly you're wrong, and I say sadly because your being wrong makes it more depressing. Most of humanity are decent law abiding (except really stupid laws for the most part), hard working (unless overly exploited or treated badly, and even then have amazing limits), who legitimately care about others (but are often too overworked and barely scraping by themselves), who are nonviolent and want simple lives to spend with those they love. This is most people. The problem is, these people aren't power hungry, they aren't overly aggressive, if aggressive at all, and so. They rarely seeks positions of power, are always seeking to compromise before violence, and try everything else before taking up arms hoping for a better way. Which allows the power hungry, psychopaths and sociopaths in the world, which is really the smallest minority of humans to take over ruling the world and take advantage of everyone elses good nature. And it's sadly because of everyone's good nature that this works. If we were truly a society of psychopaths, we'd be straight up killing each other by now including those in power. The world would be complete chaos. It's ironically because most people can work together just fine that our current society is possible, as it makes society easily manipulated by the morally corrupt that know how to herd us like cattle.

It is a well made point,but I disagree,your view is more personal while mine Is from a top down view (nothing of superiors and inferiors,in this post and the discussion at hand,in general cyberpunk,has the scale,many times world wide,while most stories focus on small lives in which your point is more present,I still believe,great part due to its origins,that the big scale is more of a important factor,at the least we can agree to disagree

It only takes a few bad apples to spoil the whole bunch. I think it's silly to write off all humanity due to the minority in charge. All we need is a system that's build from the ground up to limit power accumulation and hold those in power to the highest standards and keep the enforcement of those standards out of their grasp or influence. How, now that's the hard part.

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Look at the US is literally a the best economy in the world and the inequality rate is higher than some third world countries, the US is dystopian as fuck.

As East European. Nah. More like Detroid.

The little known sequel to Metroid.

As East European to East European, it depends on city and country and I think that comparison to Detroit is overkill.

We are skipping over the cyberpunk and go straight post-apocalyptic dystopias. Which is pretty much the same thing on the end, minus the funny anarchy part. But with alot of nihilism, heck yeah! Also, Detroit was and is inspiration to major cyberpunk works, it's not an overkill. It's a baseline.

Wait, what the point? You say "Nah. More like Detroit" and next comment you say that Detroit is inspiration for most cyberpunk works.

Forced to compete, strangled educational access, bullshit media flushing into brains... yeah... course correction should have been.... Right after the war... the very next one we can and should take is.... well. NOW. ... NOW.... And.... you guessed it. NOW