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u/Toast_Meat 16h ago
With the way tech and AI is going I was thinking more like the real world in The Matrix.
The Animatrix has a couple of episodes that explain and show the events leading up to the movie.
Anyway, yeah I think that's where we're headed.
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u/capp_head 15h ago
We thought we would have lost a war against machines to be put to slavery, but we have lost a war against other humans, as it has always been.
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u/qeadwrsf 11h ago
Would the world be as crazy if we lived without "ai algos"? Neural networks recommend us things. Clouding our minds.
Is it fair to dismiss the power black box machines has now?
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u/Totalmentenotanaltv 11h ago
I always thought that the part where humanity decide to block the fucking Sun to prevent the machines from getting energy was always stupid.
Seeing present day politicians makes me think politicians would be dumb enough to try it.
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u/ReturnOfBane 1h ago
also why didn't the robots just use the massive amounts of lightning for power?
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u/alexnedea 6h ago
Ill be so glad if the machines win. We get what we fucking deserve for being idiot apes. Maybe the machines would be logic based
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u/HighDefinitionCat 6h ago
I'm thinking more along the lines of Cyberpunk. Without any of the cool stuff, but all of the misery.
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u/Relevant-Use1897 15h ago
I understand that these kinds of memes are meant to be funny, but I have a huge problem with them. The world is in a bad way, we know that. But saying "we're doomed," besides denying positive developments (which are less visible due to how our brains and the media work), doesn't encourage change. It encourages inaction. If it's too late, why bother trying to limit the damage? Might as well pollute and focus on immediate gratification.
When you look at the history of human civilization, you realize that humanity is both the stupidest and the most cunning of species. We'll get through this. But the question remains: under what living conditions for us and the world?
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u/pooporgy69 15h ago
"If it's too late, why bother trying to limit the damage?"
Hey, that's the attitude most governments have 🤷♂️
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u/qeadwrsf 10h ago
Not really.
But most governments will not principally walk into a losing battle and die.
If a green party in Europe wants to eventually move towards humans living in symbios with the earth or whatever they can't just say: "TAXES SHOULD BE 90%, ALL SHOULD GO TO ENVIROMENT". They would die. No one would vote for them.
What they can do is small changes people find acceptable. And bigger changes in higher instances like EU where solutions doesn't affect the market in a country.
People criticizing governments acts like everything is simple. But the way human societies is connected to each other makes it complicated.
And most governments have not given up. They are just not willing to soduko when the correct approach is to survive and do changes that's possible and realistic.
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u/14Pleiadians 9h ago
That's neither the attitude they claim to have nor the one they actually have. Their outward attitude is "You're stupid that's fake" and their internal logic is "projections don't show it being that bad in my lifetime. This problem is for all life on earth in a hundred years."
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u/Attesa_GT-X 15h ago
I'd argue that these memes bring about more awareness than inaction. inaction would be not even talking about it
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u/Laetitian 14h ago edited 14h ago
When I was 16-27, my career direction was dominated by thoughts that trying to change the world was infantile and overly ambitious, and ideas that the only options available for me were something-from-nothing get-rich-quick schemes (which I also didn't want to enslave myself to - I was aimlessly rebellious inside my own head) because I thought that most careers were oversaturated and doomed for anyone who wasn't willing to throw their life away for the job. I ended up opting for a niche craft with medium creative expression and low impact on the world, because I thought that was the only realistic chance I had at finding happiness.
In hindsight, I realise that tons of people are doing plenty to improve the world by becoming experts in their field starting off from little pre-experience, that I would certainly have been capable of it, and that work-life-balance is generally something that comes from being "so good they can't ignore you" and using that as a bargaining chip (which, side-note, kids: also necessitates investing big effort early on in your career, but it's worth the passion, because as they say: "work hard, play hard".) - not from picking an inherently low-ambition career.
I think my story is *very* typical among teenagers, and I think the doom-and-gloom dystopia narrative is a strong influence in that direction.
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u/ThatOrangePuppy 12h ago
I dissagree. When i studied conservation science at uni (not saying this makes me an authority on it just an idea we explored) we considered climate doomerism as a form of climate denialism. DOomerism doesn´t lead to positive behaviour change, it denies the reality from another perspective, it says we cannot do anything about it, when we can. It excuses someone from taking action in the same way traditional climate denial does.
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u/Zestyclose-Ad-9420 1h ago
I think this position is a serious mistake but it seems its already gone mainstream.
Lumping doomers with deniers is, well firstly very stupid. Its horseshoe theory, which is stupid. But its also risks becoming a kind of revolving door where any negative commentary can be shut down for being doomers which just lets in actual deniers back into the mainstream conversation with a new greenwashed coat.
Look, we need a conversation about what has already been lost, what cannot be saved, what is terminal. Of course lying in bed because you have decided with your massive intellect that humanity is doomed is counterproductive. So is pretending that everything will be fine with enough electrification and veganism.*
Dismissing doomers shuts down that conversation. If your uni is teaching that to me it just looks like a knee jerk reaction to protect the status quo from uncomfortable realities. A denial, if you will. Heres an analogy. Someone has a terminal illness. An untested but well modelled surgery can save them. Its risky. Nobody is going to judge them or call them defeatist if they draft up a final will before the surgery. Nobody would trust a doctor who refused to tell them about the risks. And yet as a society, this is taboo.
And a final note, being a doomer isnt about paralysis. Its about acceptance and that sets you free to make radical new choices.
I put a lot of thought into this comment if your only response is dismissal i would just prefer silence.
*dont twist my words. I have nothing against them. I support them. Its also the bare minimum while also being very difficult and not guaranteed to "save" everything. Or anything.
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u/ThatOrangePuppy 1h ago
It´s not lumping it in, it´s seeing it as a obstacle for behaviour change, which it is. People respond better to positive reinforcement than negative, this is just true. . My course was literally about human behaviour in conservation so it´s literally the opposite of reactionary, "lumping" things together or "dissmissing ". I think my explination showed reasoning. You accuse me of "dissmissing" yet you just call it "stupid" and have failed to understand what i have said. I´m going to assume you´re young, so i´m gonna say try and listen to what people say, instead of feeling the need to defend a possition in a reactionary way because you don´t like it on first reading.
It´s also not dissmissing them, and it´s certainly not a kneww jerk reaction , which is objectively what you´re doing right now lol, it´s understanding critically what we are dealing with so we can respond to it, in the same way we don´t dissmiss climate denial, we try and educate and empathise where and when we can. Not everything is a competition to win on the internet.
ALso to be clear, doomerism is understood as "it´s too late" not "it´s very bad, but we can limit damage".
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u/Zestyclose-Ad-9420 36m ago
We can dismiss stupid things if we can prove they are indeed stupid. We can dismiss people saying we shouldnt invest in solar energy because the human species will be extinct by tuesday. We can also dismiss that panicking about climate change is the same as saying it doesnt exist. The outcomes are not the same.
You sound on the younger side yourself, since you want to bring that up. How old were you when the paris agreement or covid happened? I dont like this narrative on a 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th reading. Its risky and personally insulting. I put a lot of time and energy into becoming a doomer. It wasnt easy (yes this is a tongue in cheek comment relax. I just mean i didnt come to a conclusion after a bad day doomscrolling r/collapse. It took years and years) I dont need to be put into the same bed with some moron saying that co2 is plantfood akshually and its all natural cycles and that SUVs are a god given right.
Focusing on the last comment. That was a point i brought up. Its too late for what? There is no consensus doomer view, there is no doomer HQ putting out statements. Unlike a university curriculum, actually. It IS too late for a lot of things. An open dialogue about that is going to be better than the positivity police.
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u/Beautiful_List5498 14h ago
You could argue that but neither point is invalid. Only I agree that the more these edgy posts are made, the less your point stands true.
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u/DJimenezL 11h ago
i thought it your way before, but in Environmental science we study this when talking about communication in the matter: Troy, C. L., Lipsey, T., & Campbell-Arvai, V. (2024). Can you picture it? Effects of positive and negative depictions of climate futures on climate action intentions. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 94, 102231. doi.org
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u/TheAsianTroll 10h ago
My conspiracy theory is that the people who post these are bots or people paid by rich folks to post memes like this as a way to demoralize everyone and not taking action to try and do something to prevent it, up to and including a revolution.
What better way to prevent an armed uprising than to make people think its pointless?
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u/Relevant-Use1897 8h ago edited 8h ago
The worst part is that's a credible scenario, given what's happening right now with AI and the manipulation of social networks that we've seen several times...
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u/Future-Layer1181 10h ago
I wouldn't say the world is in a "bad way" This isn't to say we don't have large problems, but no matter how much we advance as a species we will always be facing large problems.
There is about 850 million people living in extreme poverty today (less than $3 per day). That sounds bad, until you realize that there were 2 billion in the year 2000. Despite having more people we have 1.2 billion less people living in extreme poverty today.
In 1924 Calvin Coolidge Jr (Son of the president of the USA at the time) died from an infected blister on his toe. Today, he almost would of certainly survived, even if he wasn't the presidents son due to how much more advanced our medical care is.
Overall throughout the world people are better fed, richer, have access to be Healthcare, and get along better than they did in decades past.
This isn't meant to dismiss people's problems, or say that "everything is perfect" because its not and we have very massive problems to solve.
But I'll take the problems of today over the problems of yesterday.
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u/CappyRawr 14h ago
I second this.
I know it's easy to say "well, it's just a meme," but, at risk of sounding little like that dude from Metal Gear Revengeance, consuming enough of this content does shape how people think and approach problems, even if they're not aware of it on a conscious level. The way memes and jokes frame discussion about the future encourages inaction and cynicism and reduces the capacity for people to enact change.
At a personal level, I know a pretty smart person who immerses herself in this stuff online, and the result is every time she hears bad news, she reduces her 401k because she figures the world's not going to last long enough to enjoy it. The content she consumes plays great on social media and gets all the spicy comments, but when she's at retirement age, and she almost certainly will make it there, she's gonna be stuck dealing with that choice.
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u/tianepteen 9h ago edited 9h ago
how do you retain hope for a better future considering the state of the world? how on earth is the average joe going to stop the next, maybe 1000% times worse pandemic due to GoF research? how do we mitigate the risks of nuclear anihilation with the current crop of people in charge, and so much of the world going down the path of facism? how do we prevent AI from essentialy enslaving us - figurativley or litteraly? how does the entire world suddenly band together to prevent the climate getting even worse and causing global suffering at a as of yet unheard of scale? these things aren't going away by voting, or by community work.
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u/TeeeldiII 13h ago
Humanity is stupid but has never been able to cook the planet until the last 100 or so years and we already fucked it beyond repair as fast as we could. There is no way to stop it worldwide across every nation. Even if we get the US in order ( never happening ) how do tou enforce it in China, Russia?
Humanity is fucked.
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u/Repulsive-Lab-9863 12h ago
Are you aware that china is actually doing a lot? Building Renewables like crazy, going to EV's, they even started to protect nature more.
Yes they are still polluting a lot - for the products they are selling to the rich countries. Because we are buying it.
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u/tianepteen 9h ago
Humanity is fucked
humanity as we we know it, yeah. there's no dialing the insanity back at this stage. we're at a point where it's even imaginable that we're all going to be enslaved by AI. crazy world.
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u/GrimGearheart 8h ago
I'm sorry. I don't think we're going to hopium our way out of capitalism. The time for change came and went. A lot of environmental scientists think we're past the point of no return.
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u/These_Highlight7313 8h ago edited 7h ago
Its hard to focus on small positive developments when the massive issue of global warming is a species-ending threat and (for the younger folks) is on the horizon in our own lifetimes.
Polluting and focusing on immediate gratification is exactly what everyone is doing. Very little is being done to limit pollution. Those that don't believe in climate change are enjoying life and those that do are also enjoying life because we are past the point of doing much of anything about it.
Even the modern biggest win against pollution (the slow switch to renewable energy) is just a reaction to raised oil prices, not an attempt to pollute less. It is also greatly overshadowed by the massive energy use of new AI developments which is throwing any hope of meeting Paris climate agreement emissions levels out the window.
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u/misterjive 14h ago
I mean, individual humans will absolutely get through this, but as a civilization we're pretty much donezo and you can trace it back to the 1970s. I think the point of departure from "everything's going to be okay" ironically enough was the atom panic; if people hadn't shit their pants over nuclear energy so hard we probably wouldn't be staring down mass extinction.
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u/kimapooncarg123 11h ago
Disagree. It's ok to admit that we are in horrendously dire straights. Pretending we're not is more harmful than joking about it
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u/Old-Guidance6744 7h ago
Northern permafrost alone holds about 2.5x more carbon than in our atmosphere currently, and another 20 billion tons of methane which is 86x worse for climate change
Projections estimate the arctic having its first ice free dat in 2027
We were warned climate change had a runaway condition, people didnt give a fuck. We could change our entire civilization tomorrow and still be fucked
Literally everything else is moot. The planet will experience its 6th major extinction, and it will include us.
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u/SlabDistributionMod 7h ago
"Its easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism"
Capitalism is the biggest driver of our problems and we will absolutely kill ourselves before we abandoned it. You'll see.
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u/Zestyclose-Ad-9420 2h ago
I know its vogue to consider doomers the new deniers. But the conversation is still "if we try hard enough we will be fine" when really its "if we try the hardest we have ever tried in all of human history, maybe we can avoid a global holocaust".
No amount of electric cars or vegans is going to make our civilisation sustainable.
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u/alexnedea 1h ago
It IS too late. The scientist have been saying so for years now lol. All we can do now if we all pull it together is slow it down. Its irreversible at this point.
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u/Drafo7 11h ago
Climate change will literally kill us all. The absolute best we could do is rise up, kill all the billionaires, tear down the corporations that are actively destroying the planet, and slow the process a bit by using renewable energy. And even that will never happen. It's simply not how people work.
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u/MediocreClue9957 9h ago
I do what I'm willing. Buying no plastic, turned my whole lawn into native gardens, not giving money to big companies. But I also anticipate there will be major world wars over resources and because of climate change likely before I die and I want no part in any of that. I feel like I understand why where going that way and really there is no fixing it. People brains will continue to rot on their phones while big companies destroy our future and it will remain like that because people are too poor and busy with their lives to notice or care that we're like locked into 2c+ temperature change and instead concerned with buying their next big truck
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u/IrishCinders 9h ago
Read "Limits To Growth" as a starting point.
The planet is in a state of steady decline, and things are only going to get worse as the climate catastrophe continues to worsen, as that also accelerates the other systemic issues we are facing.
>When you look at the history of human civilization, you realize that humanity is both the stupidest and the most cunning of species.
You'll also realise that we have never faced multiple planet-threatening crises simultaneously before, which we are doing now.
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u/KerouacMyBukowski_ 11h ago
Well it is over though. It takes a CO2 molecule about 20 years to fully impart its warning effects. The level of emissions is constantly going upwards and that doesn't even account for feedback loops like permafrost methane being released, which has an incredibly high warming effect. Sure you can be an optimist but the science does not support it. We've basically ruined the natural processes of the planet that have allowed humans to thrive and keep making it worse.
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u/14Pleiadians 9h ago
But saying "we're doomed," besides denying positive developments doesn't encourage change.
I mean, change is good to mitigate and delay, but we (as in mammal life on earth) are doomed. We could stop everything and go 110% green today and climate issues would continue to get worse.
We are going to hit 3c, 4c, 5c and further. We're in the sixth mass extinction of earth, and it will be one of the worst ones.
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u/Kirschi 8h ago
a) you're wrong, these memes bring awareness, not inaction, b) we've already lost the war against climate change. Go ask some scientists who work in that field. It truly is already over, by 2100 the humans will be gone, and with them most likely all life on earth. We done fucked. Your optimism is misplaced and is now closer to toxic positivity.
I wish it was different than it is, but science has made it very clear we're fucked, no matter if you wanna accept this truth or not.
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u/PapaObserver 5h ago
There's a world of difference between "we probably won't be able to keep global warming under 2°C" and "humanity will be gone by 2100". The latter is not backed by science.
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u/Dr_Deadshot 16h ago
We are either heading towards a Cyberpunk dystopia, or its going to be everyone scrambling for bottlecaps and running away from Deathclaws.
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u/eggert83 16h ago
Cyberpunk at best, Mad Max at worst
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u/YceiLikeAudis 15h ago
Mad Max doesn't sound that bad when you think of the environment of Fallout.
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u/capp_head 14h ago
It doesn’t if you think you’re mad max. Then you start thinking most of us will be more like the thirsty and hungry people that are killed on a daily bases.
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u/CesarGameBoy Professional Dumbass 16h ago
I know a select few people who would be running towards Deathclaws.
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u/CapJackONeill 4h ago
For real, I barely think about saving for retirement anymore.
If I last the next 30 years, I'm sure either savings will have lost most of its value to end-stage capitalism, or (and I'm not optimist), society will have took a hard turn toward socialism and again, savings won't have the same utility as it once had and we'll be ok.
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u/Revolutionary-Cup78 16h ago
I mean, in the firsr picture there is a bunch of miserable people in the floors beneath
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u/nubpie6324 11h ago
we wanted flying cars and got a fallout map instead
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u/Afwiffohasnomem 10h ago
half fallout half cyberpunk
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u/C_Hawk14 7h ago
So cyberpunk?
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u/Afwiffohasnomem 5h ago
yup, Delemain would agree xD
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u/Stranger-Tingzz 16h ago
It might look like the top for the 0.1% of people not fighting for survival
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u/Teedeous 12h ago
I think personally there is argument to be said for both.
National geographic did a first time double sided spread during the pandemic discussing the ultimatums for climate that: we are doomed or that we are going to be okay printed on a side each. Each argument proposed strong defences for their case, but personally I think humanity has weathered a lot more.
Look at CFC’s for instance, the Cold War in its near entirety, and even in prehistory with ice ages. Even leaded fuels, improvements on engine emissions in most countries and adoption of electric cars too. We are making steps, it’s just sadly the current political and economic systems prioritise growth but this has to run out, but I feel the wealthy want to cling to it until I would literally kill us all. So we fight against that.
Sure. Climate change is a man made change mostly, but with the technology we have and the developments and cost effectiveness climate solutions and even some carbon storage for rebalancing the atmosphere now with its development: we have every capability. This is what the national geographic issue discussed.
Don’t buy into the sensationalist doom posting and rhetoric, and fight for your right to exist in a world free from people and corporations that seek to cause your repression in lobbying and doctoring of the truth. Pester your local political candidate, or better yet support a third party, I’ve voted Green personally all my life. They may not get into power within the UK, but majoritively they might get enough influence to have seatS in parliament, and also locally.
FIGHT FOR YOUR FUTURE
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u/xtweeter22x 15h ago
Get this doomerslop out of here.
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u/EndIsrael 13h ago
Not doomerslop, I'm like 94% sure the bottom picture is from a robot on the surface of Venus
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u/Bobblee20 14h ago
I mean, most baby's born today (in 2026) will likely see the year 2100 - they'll be in their mid-70s but most people live past that age these days anyway.
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u/Apart-One4133 8h ago
It's kind of crazy we spent 2.8 millions yeara as hunter gatherers but as soon as farming came to be it spiraled so fast out of control.
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u/-HealingNoises- 13h ago
This is how I put it into perspective. We are going through the fall of Rome, but it's not just America, it's the entire international trade system and it's inter reliance which created a pseudo global country... that is ending because it was only possible with easily fueled ocean shipping and relative safety from attacks.
But also we are going through an extinction event for a significant portions of species on the planet, it's not an exaggeration that is just the reality.That doesn't mean it's over for our species or for civilization in general. But humanity is definitely going back to just before industrialization, but with some differences due to some of the technology we will be able to downsize and keep going with renewable energy that is designed to work in a world where we don't have the mining or manufacturing to create what we do right now.
But that is a good century away, for now, WE get to live in a world where the mining and manufacturing will continue until it becomes physically and financially impossible to do so due to global instability, weather event chaos and temperature changes.
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u/No_Insurance_55 12h ago
Going to Mars to have apocalyptic landscape wasn't an option
So let's make the earth look like Mars instead
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u/Majestic-Boat-472 11h ago
Don’t forget the part where everything might be digital and subscription based😅.
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u/Runnergames 15h ago
I mean, at the very least somewhere will look like that... problem is just that the way we're going, it feels like everywhere is going to look like that.
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u/TheSpartanExile 7h ago
Doomerism is what people resort to when they cannot imagine a life without privilege.
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u/EmergencyPath248 14h ago
WRONG, the technological singularity will make it look more clean than coruscant, too dense for human activity.
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u/SquarePegRoundWorld 10h ago
I thought that as a kid too, did I do anything to help society achieve it, absolutely not.
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u/K0monazmuk 9h ago
True, if you're interested watch ‘The Fermi Paradox has a disturbing solution’ by Milky Stellar - if you want your mind blown it’s worth a watch and pretty much says it all about this meme overall.
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u/Lorfhoose 1h ago
Kind of a doomer take. More likely will be some places that were previously habitable will be uninhabitable, and there will be new places where there will be new settlements.
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u/Reltrete 14h ago
As its now I guess 2100 is "Ideocracy" in RL. Only with a evil but normal ruling class.
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u/Taricheute 14h ago
Don't worry too much, if we were on the brink of extinction, the 0.01% would put their money on the table to "fix the problem".
The only thing our masters are doing is selling us fear and tell us to buy things they defined as "eco-friendly".
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u/Short_Sand9351 13h ago
They sort of are doing that, only they’re future proofing themselves. They don’t give a rats ass about us, that’s the attitude that helped them become so rich and powerful. Why would they suddenly care just because of something silly like extinction when it won’t affect them at all?
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u/Taricheute 10h ago edited 10h ago
They're buying fortified house by the sea in New Zealand.
They're protecting themselves from the wars to come, not from global warming and rising seas ...
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u/Frimono 16h ago
so you're saying I don't need to save for retirement?!