The sad thing is that a Cyberpunk dystopia is nominally interesting. Violent, terrible, and impoverished, yes, but also fastpaced and exciting. Our world is dull, programmatic, largely predictable, and extremely boring unless you have disposable income. We all have cellphones, yes, but that doesn’t make it cyberpunk.
That’s because people in cyberpunk settings actually have the volition and guts to make change happen, and to put themselves through adversity against all the odds. People in the real world probably won’t attend a peaceful protest in their area for something they support if they aren’t in the mood.
The characters the story is written about do. The people living in it that the main character doesn’t even interact with don’t. Nobody cares about salaryman #97543784 who, at the beginning and end of the story is still pushing pencils but maybe reads about an office explosion in the news.
This is true of any work of fiction. People in works of fiction - at least works of sci-fi or fantasy adventure - are typically more risk taking because that’s interesting to a reader/audience and the author knows this.
Nomads from Cyberpunk 2020/2077 were not on my bingo card for this year.
Obligatory:
The sad thing is that a Cyberpunk dystopia is nominally interesting. Violent, terrible, and impoverished, yes, but also fastpaced and exciting. Our world is dull, programmatic, largely predictable, and extremely boring unless you have disposable income. We all have cellphones, yes, but that doesn’t make it cyberpunk.
That’s because people in cyberpunk settings actually have the volition and guts to make change happen, and to put themselves through adversity against all the odds. People in the real world probably won’t attend a peaceful protest in their area for something they support if they aren’t in the mood.
The characters the story is written about do. The people living in it that the main character doesn’t even interact with don’t. Nobody cares about salaryman #97543784 who, at the beginning and end of the story is still pushing pencils but maybe reads about an office explosion in the news.
This is true of any work of fiction. People in works of fiction - at least works of sci-fi or fantasy adventure - are typically more risk taking because that’s interesting to a reader/audience and the author knows this.
I appreciate the text file in the image
This isn’t even new, just getting worse faster than it used to.
But think of the profits from squeezing finite resources trying to achieve infinite growth.
Think of the prevalence of van lifers
It’s been gaining popularity as it gets harder and harder to own anything
You know it’s getting bad when this news isn’t shocking to you anymore…
You better start believing in cyberpunk dystopia. You’re in one!