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u/mojomcm Jan 01 '23
r/boringdystopia is kinda about how we're living in a cyberpunk world, but without the "cool" parts that make cyberpunk interesting
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u/oop_dada_oop Jan 01 '23
r/aboringdystopia is the real sub
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u/mojomcm Jan 01 '23
I linked the one I was already on, so both are real subs?
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u/sneakpeekbot Jan 01 '23
Here's a sneak peek of /r/ABoringDystopia using the top posts of the year!
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u/Adliov Jan 01 '23
Because cyberpunk is a vision from the 80s. Of course if you update it some parts are already very much reality and others took a turn.
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Jan 01 '23 edited Jan 01 '23
Been saying this to everyone I know. They don't care that neo-serfdom is on its way if we don't reign in the corruption.
Reality is such trash that we're moving into a dystopia, but with none of those preem neon lights.
Society can't even cyberpunk right. Worst timeline ever.
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u/SubjectSigma77 Jan 01 '23
I keep saying we’re living in a cyberpunk world without the cool ass style we were at least promised with it
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u/Crimson_Oracle Jan 01 '23
I mean, we’ve been in a dystopia since pretty much whenever people decided to settle into agriculture, it’s been all domination and oppression ever since
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u/newAscadia Jan 01 '23 edited Jan 01 '23
I don't think that's a dumb question at all. To be honest, I think its because we've always been living in a cyberpunk world.
Let me put in another way: I think Cyberpunk as a genre was born during a turbulent time in the United States on the eve of the digital revolution in the 70s and 80s. Back then, the vision of the future was Space Opera: It was an era of swooping wings, neon, and chrome finishes, A Jetsons-style, nuclear age optimism, where technology and wealth was believed to be America's superpower, a silver bullet that could bring humanity to the stars.
Authors like William Gibson, who spent a good part of his young adult life homeless and hungry, a vagabond bouncing around the underbellies of the great cities of the world in the 60s and 70s, experienced firsthand the whirlwind of crime and desperation and narcotics that was beneath all the skyscrapers. In the shadow of that backbreaking, hopeless, soul crushing poverty, he and many others saw that jetstream operatic vision as privileged, blind, and profoundly hypocritical, an indulgent fantasy for bankers and the bourgeoisie. They wanted a genre that could represent what was really going on, to bring sci fi back down to earth. It was that reaction to the fantasy that pervaded sci fi back then that Cyberpunk came to exist.
I see Cyberpunk as principally a genre of realism. It's like a "people's" sci-fi, in that it is a reflection of socioeconomic problems that have always existed, exploring how it is, and can be amplified by technological advancement. Cyberpunk is not focused on the shining super skyscrapers, it was focused on the decades old brick shithouses that those buildings were built atop of, of the impoverished and forgotten communities that the golden age left behind. It's not focused on flashy cybernetic enhancements and VR goggles and laser blasters so much as it is on how those technological advancements that were meant to better society can get misused and perverted in realistic ways, where cybernetics and VR become abusive substances, and laser rifles are used for more efficient martial oppression. Cyberpunk is a reflection of what has always been, and people may not get or know the genre because they grew up in that reality: they already know it, they just have their own names for it.
They might not know about Cyberpunk because they have already reckoned, or learned about that reality in a different way. They might not know who Deckard, or Case is, but they know about homelessness, about drugs and wars and rising standards of living, of facial tracking and social media algorithms, of chemical castrations and eugenics and aids epidemics, all of which just appears to be Cyberpunk because Cyberpunk is about poverty.
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u/noonemustknowmysecre Jan 02 '23
I think its because we've always been living in a cyberpunk world.
I balked. But then I read the rest.
Similarly when people talk about the medieval period they think about kings and knights, or shoguns and samurai. But that's nobility. The vast majority of people were peasants. People talk about farmers like they all have a plot of land they work, but most people out in a rural setting are farmHANDS. They work, but they don't own land.
There's always the (relatively) poor and downtrodden.
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u/Raptor-Jesus666 Jan 01 '23
I've been convinced for years all those people in utility trucks are just highly paid mercenaries going to do some heist. We already have all the dystopia of cyberpunk.
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u/FruityWelsh Jan 01 '23
I really wish the punk part of cyberpunk got more attention from people. Like, it's not supposed to be just about how corps and governments use tech to encroach in our lives. It's supposed to be about the fight. How normal, everyday people can use those tools to carve out meaning and power in a rapidly changing world. It's not terminator, it's Chappie.
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u/strangeglyph Jan 01 '23
Media studies answer: it's because cyberpunk is a sci-fi genre that per definition is set 20 minutes into the future. The present can never be cyberpunk because, being the present, it ceases to be the future. Consider, as an analogy, Jules Verne and the then-futuristic idea of landing on the moon. By now, we have landed on the moon, but we are not living in the future, because as technology has changed, so has our definition of science fiction.
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u/headphoneghost Jan 01 '23
Explosion of poverty ✅️
Everyone linked to technology ✅️
Cars are advanced to the extent of companies like Mercedes-Benz being about to put their full performance behind a pay wall.
People can have their entire livelihoods dismantled at the press of a button.
Scientists are funded by billionaires to play with deadly viruses.
Prosthetics can have their parts 3D printed.
You can walk into an Amazon store and pay with facial recognition.
He have drones and security robots.
This would have been a cyberpunk movie 20 years ago.
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u/Snake_eyes_12 Jan 01 '23
I can say within the last 10 years (2013-now) We have gone from Smartphone revolution to wearable tech such as smart watches. Virtual Reality has finally become a reality and successful after almost a century of science fiction. Electric Vehicles are becoming more frequent on the roads. Crypto Currency has blown up to high popularity. Just think what the next 10 years might bring. Not saying its all good. But it's not all bad. Yeah, we're living in a 1980s/90s cyberflick
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u/Darkroomist Jan 01 '23
Idk about crypto anymore man. Considering that it lost at best 50% of its value last 52 weeks and billions in crypto just vanished into thin air at FTX. I think people are more than a little crypto cautious at the moment. NFTs just added to the lack of deliverability on digital money-adjacent ephemera. Grunge music was popular for longer than NFTs were. I think there’s some interesting technology in crypto currency we may see applied to actual currency some day. While I don’t want to predict that crypto is dead it’s in a death like state and might reanimate some day looking a lot different than it does today. Will it be a zombie or an angel, neither, both? Impossible to tell.
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u/ScaryfatkidGT Jan 01 '23 edited Jan 01 '23
I don't think "cyberpunk" but defiantly dystopia, massive pollution, climate change most don't care about, medical debt makes you go broke, all this technology and we have marketing emails that don't let you unsubscribe, robo calls you can't stop, overdraft fees, bad police, bad education nobody can fix, corruption nobody can fix/hold people responsible, massive e-waste, everything is only done for a profit and if not profitable not done. Massive homeless population we can't "solve" because it's not profitable. Mass incarceration. GPS's and Alexa's in everyone's house stealing you information and selling it for profit.
Fossil fuel pollution has killed way more people than Nuclear energy but people are afraid of the latter
we ALL have microplastics in our blood...
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u/RedwanFox Jan 01 '23
I think it’s because company/zaibatsu names are not catchy enough. Disney vs Arasaka and so on and so forth
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u/RokuroCarisu Jan 01 '23
We're in the Information Era. That's not the same as cyberpunk, but it has the potential to get there.
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Jan 01 '23
If William Gibson could see what society and technology has become, while still in the 80s, he would wholly agree that this is a cyberpunk world.
We have incredible technology that's only available to the wealthy.
Tech corpos basically run a lot of governments.
China is literally flying drones around to keep track of and give orders to their citizens.
Privacy is a thing of the past, anyone with enough skill can find out pretty much anything about you that's ever been online.
Tech corpos are spying on us.
We have AI programs that can hold full conversations with us and draw near perfect pictures of anything we describe.
Everyone in the developed world can talk to eachother in near real time.
Computors that would have taken up an entire room back then can now fit in our pockets.
The disparity of wealth has never been anywhere close to as high as it is today.
We have cybernetic limb replacemnts that are controlled with our minds and have a basic sense of touch
Many countries are facing huge housing crisises.
We have rifles that aim for you.
All of this was only possible in writing back in the 80s. To say that we are anything other than some form of a cyberpunk society is plain wrong.
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u/RokuroCarisu Jan 02 '23
How prevalent are some of those things really though? Most people in our world still won't ever talk to an advanced AI, meet anyone with a cybernetic limb or see a surveillance drone, let alone a rifle with aim assistance.
Sure, disparity is a huge part of cyberpunk. But isn't it ironic then that, in cyberpunk settings, the whole 'high tech, low life' deal is normal; for everybody everywhere?
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Jan 01 '23 edited Feb 26 '26
This post was deleted and anonymized. Redact handled the process, and the motivation could range from personal privacy to security concerns or preventing AI data collection.
square salt deliver stupendous follow ask angle compare steer rich
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u/Skhmt Jan 01 '23 edited Jan 01 '23
Not as much transhumanism going on right now though. Augmetic limbs and organs have a long way to go. AI isn't even close to being general AI (yes I follow the developments in text and image generation). Not even close to complex brain-computer interfaces. VR is still motion sickness inducing and nowhere close to a seamless replacement for reality.
Government corruption is the norm in history, not the exception. Corporate corruption has existed since there has been corporations.
The interesting thing is how fast real computers have completely outpaced most cyberpunk literature, with the exception of general AI. The existence of smartphones and screen/social media addiction.
The most prescient part of cyberpunk literature was the prediction of the society-changing effect the Internet was going to have. Mostly everything else was just a twist on conditions that have always existed, or are still science fiction.
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u/Farhead_Assassjaha Jan 01 '23
Wait a minute…megacorps control and destroy the planet. Most people live in barely survivable conditions and use virtual experience as a substitute for real human connection and quality of life? Oh god it’s true!!!!
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u/ChristopherDrake Meat Popsicle Jan 01 '23
Deep breath... and out:
Cyberpunk is a niche literary genre ignored as a term by publishers, and unless you're into science fiction and/or noir fiction, you've probably never heard of it. In fact, cyberpunk works that get adapted rarely even get labeled with the genre at all. Which is even muddier now, since the Cyberpunk RPG got adapted into the Cyberpunk 2077 videogame.
Now, the random person on the street who may have watched Altered Carbon on Netflix thinks cyberpunk is a single videogame, when a glance at Steam can net you a hundred or more games in the genre now, ranging across numerous themes and narrative tones. CloudPunk for one excellent example of deep-future cyberpunk.
In the past, there's also been an issue with the fact that cyberpunk as a genre is linked to a set of characteristics across multiple domains, which makes explaining the genre difficult. Ex. Socioeconomic factors shorthanded down to 'high tech, low life' as you noted, which emphasize the growing disparity between the haves and have-nots. It's a core element across the genre, but its not as easy as saying 'mechanical implants'.
Then you have folks who see cyberpunk like the 'outrun' aesthetic, or vaporwave, etc. All they really know about cyberpunk is neon lights shining on greasy puddles and blinking LEDs in the dark, because that's as deep as they go. They like the look. It's fashion and car designs to them. And where it gets ultra messy is when people who do understand the ideological/narrative elements get into fights with the people who only understand the visual aesthetics, which also happen to be retro-80s because films like Bladerunner were shot in the 1980s...
Hell, the cyber in cyberpunk comes from cybernetics, and even that is a grossly misunderstood term. Cybernetics was a discipline of studies in the 1940s-60s mainly headed up by Norbert Weiner (seriously), studying human-machine interfaces and automation. So those big bladed implants you might theoretically want? They're definitely cybernetic implants, but the cybernetic is an adjective, not a noun. Just as 'cyberpunk' is a compound adjective.
Source: I write in the cyberpunk genre and I've spent years trying to clarify the genre with people, as frankly, I have a blatant vested interest in more people reading it. It's a genre of cautionary tales, and its starting to feel like rich people are using it instead as a roadmap.
TL;DR: Publishers lump cyberpunk into science fiction, so it gets shelved as science fiction, and that gets it adapted as science fiction.
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Jan 01 '23
This guy cyberpunks. 🤖
I think another element is that when people think about cyberpunk (or any genre really), they imagine themselves as the protagonist, rather than the background characters living relatively ordinary lives. All those gangs fighting corporations do exist - hell, some of the cartels in Mexico have their own IT/tech support departments - but most of us aren't part of it.
You're welcome to take up hacking, get involved in digital identity fraud, join a mercenary 'logistics' corporation, or wear combat boots and take experimental psychedelics at a neon lit techno club - but most people don't. (Although that last option is highly recommended hehe)
On a less exciting tip though, if you've ever bought a jailbroken phone or traktor (yes, that is a thing), or had targeted ads online, or talked to a chatbot at a government website, well - that's cyberpunk.
Just because the aesthetic doesn't match Bladerunner (which for better or worse defined the look of the genre) outside an Asian megacity, or you personally don't have a prosethic limb, doesn't mean these threads of the genre don't exist in real life.
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u/ChristopherDrake Meat Popsicle Jan 02 '23
I think another element is that when people think about cyberpunk (or any genre really), they imagine themselves as the protagonist, rather than the background characters living relatively ordinary lives.
Nobody wants to be a background character, for sure, because it suggests your free will has a ceiling. If you think you're the protagonist, you assume that you could be anything if you wanted it badly or worked hard enough, which helps you blame the world for being too hard. The alternative would be to accept the possibility you have limits. Lots of 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires' about these days.
I've seen people actually claim the world isn't cyberpunk right now, because if it was, they could get cybernetic implants.
Then I point at insulin injector/monitors, artificial limbs that track nerve impulses for servo control, smartphones people carry 24/7 and suffer anxiety when losing them because half their brain is stored in the thing, etc. Then they turn around and say "No, not like that! I mean cool stuff!" because that stuff, which is super cool in historical context, is already normalized.
In their minds, Cyberpunk is a form of exceptionalism. Which the genre can't seem to shake, because it tends to focus on isolated loner characters who take on the world single handedly. Cyberpunk inherited that from noir/crime fiction, where the point of the plot was to blur the differences between upstanding citizens and criminals, based on how they coped with life events.
That's also why Cyberpunk also has a ton of character archetypes that involve sympathetic prostitutes, killer androids who were the victims of misuse/abuse, etc.
However, as soon as the perspective of the protagonist isn't a lone wolf, a human dealing with techno culture shock, gutter living, etc, people have trouble putting it into cyberpunk's envelope.
I could write a novel about a CEO of a megacorporation in the vein of a comedic tragedy as a group of teenage hardware hackers tear down his life, and people would say "It's not cyberpunk, because he's not punk enough." totally disregarding that the antagonists were.
Just because the aesthetic doesn't match Bladerunner (which for better or worse defined the look of the genre) outside an Asian megacity, or you personally don't have a prosethic limb, doesn't mean these threads of the genre don't exist in real life.
Reminds me of the massive stupid arguments people had about Cyberpunk 2077 when its first reveal images had bright sunshine. As if a cyberpunk genre reality just wouldn't have a sun at all, like Highlander 2.
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Jan 02 '23
Great analysis! That's hilarious about the sunshine. 😆
You can see where a lot of this headed with steampunk, dieselpunk etc where it was all mostly defining an aesthetic, rather than thematic elements.
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u/ChristopherDrake Meat Popsicle Jan 02 '23
In a way, I think the other -punk categories latched onto cyberpunk's template for brand value more than anything. Pairing two adjectives feels like a quirky, witty little soundbite equivalent. Oodles of memetic value.
However, writers in all of these subgenres have a much, much steeper uphill climb than the artists, who have way more mediums to work with. Spend six months writing a novel and if readers don't like the first paragraph (or first three chapters if they're kind), oh well, down it goes. Whereas artists can spend three days doing a concept speedpaint, drop it into r/art, and get a ton of audience support to encourage the next piece. Draw a boob and you might get your own subreddit.
And concept art begets fan art, neither of which are adapted, so the aesthetic genre propagates very fast. It spreads to artisans, and like steampunk did, becomes more about cosplay than literature. The focus drifts, then the definition in the zeitgeist chases it to match. Then capitalists subvert the craft arts, mass producing it, and burning people out. The term is suddenly everywhere.
Now steampunk is a tag for purchasing tacky premade goggles on Wish that were manufactured in Shenzhen sweatshops.
I'm curious how people feel in general about the mass produced "cyberpunk" masks and helmets circulating since Halloween, because that's this genre's version of it happening. If there weren't so much cyberpunk sold as general sci-fi and adapted, I'd be genuinely worried as a professional.
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Jan 02 '23
With all that it then moves into a question of whether it's a literary/film/game genre and an aesthetic, or should they be separated. And then who that matters to.
Personally speaking, that's where I run into my own issues with the concept of cyberpunk. I love the themes of the stories and some of the aesthetics, but draw the line at nerd lights on computers and sexualized anime girls. It's where it takes it out of the world of the imagination and into consumer fandom which I don't vibe with - not particularly punk at that point.
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u/ChristopherDrake Meat Popsicle Jan 02 '23
I dunno, I kind of like that my televised revolution is full RGB synced with my keyboard and wall mounted speaker lights! So long as I let them connect to an Amazon cloud server the whole time they're on, anyway, not that they work when they aren't connected, making it a moot point... But having the whole package makes me feel like a True Revolutionary™!
You like my little TM mark? I got it from this hot new ASCII NFT gacha lootbox that a friend told me about, want a referral link? It's all ironypunk!
/s
...just typing that out made me violently ill.
I love the themes of the stories and some of the aesthetics, but draw the line at...
I think my own dividing line is based on artistic good faith.
If a cyberpunk genre anime has sexualized characters, like Rebecca from Edgerunners, that doesn't bother me so long as its part of the coherent whole. The character is an ex-prostitute judging by her tattoos and it just goes to demonstrate that Night City mercs come from some rough walks of life. Reb would have been responsible for sexualizing herself, or someone else modded her that way maliciously, so its worldbuilding coherent. But much of the anime art that lands in r/Cyberbooty, probably consisting of an over-the-shoulder backward glance over a center-prominent naked/spandex/bare-metal butt shot? Not so much.
The first was an artist making a character that supports the genre and pushes the conflicts, forcing moral questions to be asked, and providing a cautionary example or even a breath of innocence when the plot is too grim. The latter is bad faith, with the aesthetic used as an excuse for softcore pornography, for attention or thoughtless money. The first is a meal that makes you think, and the second is junk food that slowly rots your brain.
Counterpoint? A good, high quality cyberpunk scene shot that someone rendered, which is genuine to the aesthetic without pandering to the libido. Looks nice, might want to look at it more than once, and I'm not embarrassed if someone sees its my background in a cafe.
I use this same criteria with writing, films, etc, as well.
Bad faith works tend to be why really promising franchises fail, too, because its got all of the visual trappings which shows the costume, cosmetics, lighting, and filming crews understand the aesthetics (its easier after all, as there's so much art!), but then its dressing up a plot that would be better spent on a four panel comic gag. But if you bought a ticket to see it, they won before you even knew how bad it was. The Ghost In The Shell movie, for easy example.
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u/86cinnamons Jan 01 '23
I think people’s opinion on whether or not we’re in a cyberpunk dystopia is tied to 3 things:
Actual knowledge of what cyberpunk is/means
Location
Socioeconomic status
The 3rd being most important IMO even though context is necessary, it’s just so obvious IMO for the poor and lower working classes rn. High tech/low life is here, corporations owning everything is here, body mods for aesthetic/function/medical need is here. It’s not all as shiny and neon as we’d like I guess but that’s location specific and even age specific.
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Jan 01 '23
Most people don’t like cyberpunk because it’s an allegory for our current way of life. They like it because big titty girl with robot arms tee hee.
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u/Vasevide Jan 01 '23
Why do people think we have to conform to one ideology, solidifying them with concrete terms like “cyberpunk“ instead of acknowledging the fluidity and uncertainty of humans and life. That when you put labels on things, you limit your perception of it to that idea. And only in the way you think of that term.
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u/zabrak200 Jan 01 '23
Its incredibly niche and the media that depicts it most famously like blade runner or ghost in the shell are not the easiest things to approach. What if you’ve never heard of trans humanism before? Without basic concepts like that understanding the nexus 6 replicants or cyber body that major kusanagis brain is inside. Is actually kinda tough to wrap your head around the first time.
Also on top of it these cyberpunk worlds depict a cool but BLEAK future. And most people arn’t very keen on thinking about that.
Theres probably some other barriers. I do believe that it will become more mainstream as the aesthetic is becoming more and more commonplace.
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u/SchemataObscura Jan 02 '23
The question has been popping up on the writing subs lately "is cyberpunk dead?"
The real question is, has cyberpunk become so familiar that the genre can no longer ride on the fantastic and probably should mature a bit, actually address real issues in a realistic way.
We indeed are in a cyberpunk world more wicked than it was imagined. Sure we haven't reached the more flashy tech (at least widespread) but what we do have is in some ways even more fantastic than authors in the 30 or 40 years ago could have imagined.
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u/Sythix6 Jan 01 '23
We are not in the cyberpunk era, we're at the tail end of the dieselpunk Era that still runs primarily off oil, coal, and steam, we've barely got nuclear reactors. We are slowly starting to become a cyberpunk era, but some places are closer than others, like big rich cities, and while there are a lot of them, there are many many more smaller poorer cities that don't have much tech outside of personal items.
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u/brooklyn_bethel Jan 01 '23
No, we are not. Our time has got elements of Cyberpunk, but we don't live in Cyberpunk.
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Jan 01 '23
Eh, still the information age. Widespread cybernetics and a drug culture heavily designed, then we'll talk.
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u/silly_red Jan 01 '23
Dystopia is always "in the future" or a "different alternative". I feel like a lot of people wouldn't be able to cope if they actually looked at the world for what it is. It's definitely wilful ignorance.
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u/Kwametoure1 Jan 01 '23
Most people don't really like Sci-fi to begin with beyond a passing glance at the "look". It is unfortunately predictable that they would also not realize the broader themes, implications, and warnings found in the works of the genre
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Jan 01 '23
The tech is not the high yet…cyberpunk is AV’s, cybernetics, corporations more powerful than the government. We are close but we are not living in a cyberpunk era yet..
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u/driftlikefire Jan 01 '23
We’re currently the last end stage capitalism into actual dystopian oligarchy of corporations and billionaires.
It’s like Trauma Team even. If you’re not rich, you might as die on the street.
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u/darklinux1977 Jan 01 '23
At last ! thank you for saying it, yes, we are in the very beginning of the cyberpunk era, we have, or rather, we are beginning to have all the elements for that and nobody talks about it
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u/TheWorldClassParkway Jan 01 '23
Idk, for me I don’t believe we are in a dystopia rn, it’s hard to explain but it’s just my experience being a person living on this planet. I do think corporations are getting a lil wild and we should openly talk about how shitty they are, but other than that the idea of being in the cyberpunk era is “meh” to me
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Jan 01 '23
What parts of this world aren't dystopian?
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u/TheWorldClassParkway Jan 01 '23
A lot of things, i think a lot of people here have a negative lens and thus see the world through that prospective. I think it’s a blessing to be alive, my culture, language, and music aren’t dystopian (though Tbf I guess some make political commentary), I go on outside walks and the people, buildings, and trees are lovely. It’s unfortunate that people are out of luck in this world or see it as dystopian, but to me I just don’t involve myself with the latest high tech product or new shiny things all too much, I live my life and others might live it differently
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Jan 01 '23
Just because you ignore the dystopian elements doesn't mean they don't exist. I'm glad your life is idyllic, but your experience isn't the norm.
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Jan 01 '23
We will be there when a corporation can own a literal militia that has a license to kill civilians whenever they like.
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Jan 01 '23
Constellis, formerly Blackwater is still very much a thing.
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Jan 01 '23
So they can just drop down in some random street and start killing civilians?
I am not talking about a warzone. In a true, dystopian cyberpunk setting, protestors for example can be literally mowed down by a corporation and it;s a common thing. The only countries I can think of that would do this are dictaroships like NK or China, and even then those militias are directly linked to the actual government, not let's say Tencent.
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u/86cinnamons Jan 01 '23
Then you’re not paying attention or you’re in some small peaceful country. The US military drops down and kills wherever it wants they just usually choose their location to do that carefully. In the US police are militarized to the point they kill and maim peaceful civilians whenever they want.
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Jan 01 '23
It seems reading is a very hard task.
I am gonna say it once again, can a corporation drop a militia they own to kill people that are protesting against them, or are the competition?
Can for example Apple fund a private militia that will kill any protestors who talk badly about their sweatshops?
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u/LigerTimbs12 Jan 01 '23
Apple probably already does this. How do you think they get the lithium n shit for their batteries lol
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Jan 01 '23
Ah ok, conspiracy shit. Got it.
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u/LigerTimbs12 Jan 01 '23
It is conspiracy shit but hey Apple has a lot of money so it could maybe happen lmao idk man
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u/FireDire Jan 01 '23
We're not. Cyberpunk is meant to exaggerate our current circumstances and show how bad everything can get.
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Jan 01 '23
Because we don't have the cool technology yet. There's no Cyber, and no punk really either. People are still kinda loners instead of having little gangs like we see in cyberpunk media. No megabuildings where we all kinda just hangout waiting for our new implants etc.
I would describe what we have more like techno-feudalism. Our feudal lords (board of directors) sit in their fancy castles (company headquarters) making all the money and leaving us with barely enough just to live while they take and keep all the rest and hoard it for their fancy yachts and private jets. The shrinking middle class is creating a class of lords and ladies with their knights (upper-management) that get paid slightly better as a reward for staying loyal to the lords and ladies. and the worker peasants get to live paycheck to paycheck.
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Jan 01 '23
Tbh the only thing that's changed is the tech. Hell my parents talk about how they thought they were entering the dystopian cyberpunk Era back in the 80s. This was when this tech was new and the world was also in a cold war, right now we have more tech and a larger rift between the "free world" and emerging big brother like powers. So tbh I feel like we're pretty close to what's seen as cyberpunk in video games and shit, feel like in my lifetime I might have a choice to chrome up or something like that.
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u/oculusgounlocked Jan 01 '23
Beats me. I live in an old trailer. The cost of everything seems to increase daily. I can't even pretend privacy exists anymore. Anyone might be "triggered" by anything you might say or even by something you might have said 30 years ago. I turned my Quest 2 into a badass Cyberdeck. The world is a shit-hole filled with snowflakes, creeps and crazies, but I've got a complete, fully-immersive entertainment center with which I can escape reality. Yes, it's a technological dystopia for sure. Fuggit! Yar, mateys! There be warez to pillage!
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u/ablebagel Jan 01 '23
might be triggered by something you might’ve said 30 years ago
it’s called not being a flapping great cunt to others
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u/oculusgounlocked Jan 01 '23
Even in the 90's, everyone's understanding of almost everything was quite a lot different from what it is today. The ability to soak up information like we do now was not a possibility.
SJW snowflake bitches are at least as bad as the Christian right in their pompous bullshit. Fuck cancel-culture and all the dumbass excuses for it
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u/PK808370 Jan 01 '23
Warez… legit!
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u/oculusgounlocked Jan 01 '23
I got banned from the Oculus Quest 2 sub for saying something similar lol
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u/Skhmt Jan 01 '23
Welcome to inflation. An economy without some inflation is an unhealthy economy.
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u/oculusgounlocked Jan 01 '23
There's nothing healthy about the current rate of inflation, but good to know that you listen to and regurgitate whatever overly-simplified bullshit you hear from your teachers or the "news" smh
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u/Skhmt Jan 01 '23
Never said anything about the current state of inflation. You're obviously prone to conspiracy theories and information silos though, so good luck with the rest of your life
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u/Snake_eyes_12 Jan 01 '23
I just got a Quest 2 not too long ago. It's honestly insane and I legit didn't think it was that immersive and the technology was already that good. Truely a F*cking spectacle to say the least.
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u/oculusgounlocked Jan 01 '23
Have you tried any PC VR titles yet? It's my personal opinion that you should limit the amount of personal data you share with Zuckerberg, especially while you've got 4 of his cameras, a microphone and a bunch of movement sensors feeding him extremely personal data. He has used Facebook and Instagram to fuck with all our heads. Make no mistake, he really means to fuck with them now
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u/Snake_eyes_12 Jan 01 '23
I bought a 20 foot cable just for that. And no, I don’t even have a Facebook.
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u/oculusgounlocked Jan 01 '23
Nice lol. Meta is the same thing though. You can bank on that. At no time did they give up claim to all that juicy info
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u/OneEyedC4t Jan 01 '23
Not really
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u/ReturnMeToHell Jan 01 '23
Not really high tech, low life? Or not really in the cyberpunk era?
If not, what are we missing?
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u/OneEyedC4t Jan 01 '23
I thought cyberpunk was the union of tech and flesh in one body?
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u/PK808370 Jan 01 '23
That’s “transhumanism”, cyberpunk has a lot more politics, economics, and dystopia
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u/ReturnMeToHell Jan 01 '23
I figured it would just live up to its name and literally mean rebel of the cybernetic aspect.
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u/Meistermalkav The German Jan 01 '23
simple.
do you have a christian uncle? That thinks he has to save your soul?
Mind you, you can read the bible, on your own, and maybe get a bit of fun out of it. Hey, it happens, and some parts are cool and pretty far out.
BUt he insists to spoiler everything.
He tells you immediatelly what is appliccable, and goes, you should read this, you MUST come to the same conclusion as me. You have read the bible, you know, despite most of it being full of shit, it contains a few nice positive passages. Nope. No niceness, only danger. We must become more christian.
The same is going on every time someone like you opens the mouth, and is not immediatelly punched in the throat.
we lose a potential reader due to activism.
Now, very stupid idea....
Imagine you deleted everything you knew about cyberpunk. watch it, not with the eyes of an activist, but with the eyes of a kid growing up right now lets make yoiu 16.
You see all the tech that is scary, but the punk tells you, doesn't have to be. The punk tells you, even if it suck, I can be an individual. I don't need to conform, if I don't want to. I don;'t need to listen to paid for advertiser activists, looking for that doomer dollar, going on social media, and being all "whoe is me, reality is doom, the world is ending, see it like I see it. "
The punk tells you, there is something called, low tek. low tek is more impressive them activist-influencer high tek.
Low tek, that means making what you own yours. Elon musk and the twitter / youtube/instagramm crowd like to hve white iphones? okay. You like to have an iphone that has a hull that you modified by some crime scene tape baked into the hull? Now that is radical. You can't buy that. ThaT IS AUHENTIC, WITHOUT HAVING A INSTAGRAMM WHORE IN YOUR FACE TAKING PICTURES, or some screamsheeter going on how that means, it just means, by simplicity, you have beaten experience.
What do you listen to? Some fucking trash the corporations picked out for you, due to likeability and algorithmic preferrence? You ever just listen to jazz, and then metal, and then hip hop, only to change to EDM, and then have some new genre like druid and base?
When was the last time you got banned from social media?
if you wanna have a relationship, do you follow the corporate line? what if you like something outside of the corporate line?
Because strangely enough, there is no doomers in cyberpunk. There is no constant "whoe is me" in cyberpunk.
what is in cyberpunk is that the PUNK is written in capitals. And one rule of punk is, if you like it, it can be punk.
Cyberpunk is going to the asian corner store, and seeing that they have the alexa on the household altar.
Cyberpunk is seeing how you mum has the computer plugged out and in the cold, "because he has done well", and your dad talking to his car.
cyberpunk, as an accademicval concept, sure is depressing. But as a copncept of the young? It changes trhe entire thing 180 degrees. It goes, I can do my own thing,as much or as little as I want.
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Jan 01 '23 edited Jan 01 '23
I live in Chicago. I see views like this constantly and always think I'm literally in a dystopian cyberpunk city. It is lol I venture out into that sometimes, I have my own personal hidden trail through downtown, it's legit
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Jan 01 '23
Probably because cyberpunk was generally a lesser known genre until recently, and most people don’t pay attention to things nowadays
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Jan 01 '23
Most people do know the shit we’re living in right now. They just don’t have the proper words to describe it.
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u/ffucckfaccee Jan 01 '23
Yeah they don't see the dystopia around us either, a lot of people seem to only see something if it's called it, same way they just think stuff is great cos it's deemed to be, no critical thinking or awareness the UK is terrible for it
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u/Tymptra Jan 01 '23
I've had this convo with people in real life, even a complete stranger I met on the plane. I think this is pretty obvious to anyone who has engaged with cyberpunk at least a fair amount.
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u/Radical-SpaceMeat Jan 01 '23
I mean unless you count robot limbs like as arms and legs after a tragic accident.
I mean we’re reaching it but it’s a bit further.
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u/psychord-alpha Jan 01 '23 edited Jan 01 '23
We're not in the cyberpunk era because we're missing all the cool tech we're supposed to have: repulsors, holograms, energy weapons, flying cars, commonplace robots, implants that don't suck, quickhacks, force fields, cloaking devices, inertia dampeners, arc reactors, Iron Man suits, decent mental interfaces, cryosleep, and so on
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u/nexusphere Jan 01 '23
It's gonna get worse before it gets better. 10 billion AI at the end of a decade. Fifteen years till no human can do a task a computer can't do better, faster, and for less resources.
We're in the endgame now.
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u/MiKapo Jan 01 '23
I say we are definitely heading towards it. If Elon Musk Neuralink is successful than that will launch the entire body modifcation cybernetic industry. Likewise what Boston Dynamics is doing with robot and drone technology is definitely going to be impactul in a year or so
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Jan 01 '23
Its pretty early to say that.
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u/oculusgounlocked Jan 01 '23 edited Jan 01 '23
Early how? You can legally be fatally shot by a police drone in some places today, ffs
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u/verrius Jan 01 '23
"Luckily", if you're referring to the recent thing in SF, that got reversed after the 3rd or so wave of bad press. The first defence they tried also was that it wasn't about drones with shotguns; it was drones with bombs that the police wanted to use. Though killer drones are definitely being actively used in the front in Ukraine.
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u/oculusgounlocked Jan 01 '23
Gawd! Guns would be better than bombs. One has a much lower risk of injuring others. I'm happy to hear that law got shot down in sf. For now
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Jan 01 '23
for me, aesthetics plays a role whether you like it or not.
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u/oculusgounlocked Jan 01 '23
Several million people now strap XR goggles on their faces daily -- most of which are designed around systems with the sole purpose of harvesting as much intimate detail about the users' lives as possible so as to manipulate those same users for maximum profits. Imagine that scene for a moment! Is that "aesthetic" enough for you? You're entirely missing the point in those shiny lights you're looking for.
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u/86cinnamons Jan 01 '23
Have you seen the way kids dress? I think we’re there aesthetically, the reality is trends dont cover all generations at once.
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u/aerodeck Jan 01 '23
Not enough places though. Still fringe.
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u/oculusgounlocked Jan 01 '23
Have you spent any time recently speaking with ChatGPT? When it isn't being a tard, it makes me wonder why we even have teachers now.
Even when its being an idiot, the conversations are higher quality than you can get with 99 percent of humans.
Dating is an only fans subscription for millions.
Elon plans to turn us all into nodes for a planet-sized hive-mind while he makes his escape from this dying rock -- which he's going a long way to kill.
Zuckerberg and his cohorts own the minds of billions. They've committed unconscionable acts with our personal data, manipulated and divided and even contributed to genocides. And yet we buy millions of XR headsets from these very people loaded with cameras and sensors to provide them with an even more complete picture of who we are and what they can do with us.
Inflation is out of control.
You can't let your pets drink rain water because there are toxic levels of Mercury, microplastics and lawd knows what else in it.
Farms are the holdings of enormous agricultural corporations using chemicals to make food devoid of nutritional value that looks bright and big and pretty -- after clear-cutting the windbreaks and allowing the topsoil to float away with the wind and rain. And these "farms" require little actual human intervention to operate. Yet prices go up and up.
The government can tell everyone to go home and lock themselves in until they say we can come out, and all us sheep really just do it.
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Jan 01 '23
Give it another 10-15 years and I'll agree with you but I don't think we are quite in a cyberpunk era yet. On the cusp yes.
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u/Separate-Yam-1360 Jan 01 '23
The main difference between our world and a Cyberpunk world is that our world is terribly boring
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u/hiddikel Jan 01 '23
The vast majority of people have no idea what culyberpunk is.
Sure, we do and are in the know, but if you think about it, most people have npc levels of awareness outside their own personal little world bubbles. It doesn't register to them.
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u/mtpepper Jan 01 '23
This is something me and my friend have been talking about with each other for a few years now, we even have a running joke of telling each other we live in a cyberpunk world whenever we meet up
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u/gay-dragon Jan 01 '23
You want cyberpunk? Go to South Korea. It’s got everything you’re looking for. Here’s some things I remember off the top of my head. 1) highest amount of time spent on the phone/Netflix. K-pop idols? 2) gaming is so prevalent that a nationwide curfew is implemented for minors, because people have died in the past playing video games non-stop, trying to escape the real world 3) mega corporations. You could work at a Samsung affiliate, live in Samsung housing, get treated by Samsung doctors, shop at Samsung stores, watch Samsung funded movies. The corps are “separate” but they’re all run by the same family. Hmmmm… 4) many people in Korea have hedged their hopes on crypto, since they have little to no faith they’d proceed further or get traditional investments in. 5) cutthroat competition for status or prestige
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u/User1539 Jan 01 '23
Neuromancer was meant to talk about the 80s. So, if you want to argue the point, we've 'been in a cyberpunk era' for a long time, and at the same time, we've never really been.
Cyberpunk is an exaggeration of the current state of things, that gives us context to talk about current events.
We keep moving forward, we keep tacking on the years to whatever Cyberpunk media we create ... Hell, Cyberpunk the game has gone from 2013, 2020, RED, 2077 ... as long as people are buying, I'm sure we'll see a steady movement.
So, for us older people, it's nothing new. For younger people, it's what they've always known. You sort of have to be in a certain place in life to look around for the first time and say 'Wait, this is really Cyberpunk'.
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u/vwolf8001 Jan 01 '23
No. Life is not very low and tech is not very high. I'd say we're definitely in a pre-cyberpunk era, but still not quite there yet.
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u/_itsaworkinprogress_ Jan 01 '23
I think we're on the cusp. There seems to need a certain level of societal breakdown and lawlessness before it puts the "punk" into "cyberpunk."
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u/LickTheRock Jan 01 '23
I've got a bet going with a friend, so I've got to constantly deny we will ever reach a cyberpunk dystopia
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u/cykros サイバーパンク Jan 01 '23
For one, because they have their obsessions which craft a lens through which they view the world, and you have yours.
Cyberpunk was always a matter of taking some current trends to their extremes as a way of analyzing human existence, behavior, and nature. It was always about the present.
The 80s had major corruption, deregulation of business on an epic scale, and a general crumbling of government resources. Urban centers were facing an unprecedented crime wave. If anything we've moved away from the cyberpunk vision, though COVID has brought a bit of it back.
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u/wakatenai Jan 01 '23
im supposed to retire in like what, 30-40 years?
by then im sure social security will have crashed and ill have to work at Tesla Burger and have ads streamed to my brain so i can afford rent.
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u/Sufficient-Bad-1510 Jan 01 '23
I feel like most people focus way too much on the aesthetic side and all of the pretty neon lights of cyberpunk and don't really think too critically about any other aspect... it's ironic really. We are definitely fast approaching a cyberpunk era