Thoughts on living in an IRL cyberpunk dystopia?

no_mad

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It's a cyber dystopia alright. But MorphedSnowman is right on the money, there's nothing "punk" about it.
The rapidly accelerating convergence of Big Tech, government, media, and the entertainment industry is creating a new global "culture" which feels disturbingly artificial and monotone. We are constantly being advertised a sinister vision of our future which presents itself as inevitable.
There are a lot of reasons to be pessimistic about the coming years. I think all of us here understand we are not magically going back to a "normal" state of affairs. There is a global power grab in progress which shows no signs of slowing down.
However, I'm not entirely hopeless. The powers that be are desperately trying to censor and silence all dissent, because they are afraid of a real counter culture forming. They are intelligent enough to understand that despite all their propaganda, the future they are presenting to us is...lame. The velvet fantasy is slipping off the iron fist.
More and more people are waking up to this reality. Will it be enough? Who knows. I believe we will have to go through some really hard times before any kind of meaningful opposition can emerge. It may take several years or several decades. I just hope that I live to see the pendulum begin to shift.

You are right. But also this. This grand project was never designed to last. Only to be drawn out as long as it can.
 
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SolidStateSurvivor

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Covid has accelerated the spiral into a cyberpunk dystopia so quickly that it's been hard to keep up with all the bullshit that's being pulled. While the infrastructure for this was being laid out in the late 90's and the "Patriot" Act codified it, Covid has and will continue to change developed society more than multiple 9/11 style attacks could have ever done. The rubble of the Twin Towers eventually stopped smoldering, but with an ever evolving virus you can keep those emergency powers going perpetually. Worst comes to worst, there's always another crisis right around the corner...

Again, the culture/aesthetic aspect is disappointing. It's dystopian in the sense that any sort of traditional beauty, wonder, or awe is being substituted for shock value degeneracy and minimalism. It's not natural, the Ancient Greeks did not perfect the art of marble carving just to immortalize and depict ugliness. And for some reason, the masses cheer it on. Are they so full of resentment with their inability to create anything of worthwhile that they instead take pride in subversion? I'm not sure, it could be simple virtue signaling or something else entirely.

While the aesthetics disappoint at least the government corruption and corporate meddling are living up to expectations, and Covid truly exposed it to the masses. Just look at what's happening in Canada right now, in a state of emergency freezing assets and ruining lives because people are protesting against it all. Donors to the freedom convoy have been exposed as a result of hacks, and even crypto currency, which many regarded as a means of economic freedom and security, is being hindered. It is very well possible they start limiting internet access and going after online dissent as well. Who knows what will happen next. But to go back the events of 9/11, the west then had boogeymen in the middle east to rally people against, but with those conflicts winding down and the elites looking to tighten their grip domestically it is the hyped up threat of your neighbor being whatever the government labels an "insurrectionist."

But that's all big picture stuff. You can tune out the shocking ads looking for outrage clicks, there's a massive and readily accessible backlog of entertainment from the past, and some countries/US states are starting to ease off with Covid as a means of control. Mainstream internet is being censored/manipulated but there's still niche communities where that isn't the case. What has bothered me most about the current state of the world is how I've seen it affect friends and family.

I have family members (vaccinated + boosted) who have hardly left their homes since covid began as they've been glued to TV news fear porn. I've seen acquaintances willingly share MSM propaganda/talking points on social media as they've become openly hostile to other points of view, even if they are tame disagreements. I've never cut off friendships because of petty political differences, I like differing perspectives, but the same group advocating for the side leading the charge for a truly cyberpunk dystopia are doing just that. I don't think they fully realize they're pushing society towards a cyberpunk dystopia, I think they're just doing what they have been conditioned to believe is right. But it's their unwillingness to even acknowledge a skeptical perspective that is most frustrating. Everyone is drifting apart from each other with how polarized these types of issues are becoming.

I don't think critical thinking has decreased, I think that's a skill that many have consistently lacked throughout the generations. The big difference now is simply how readily accessible, fast paced, and intrusive the propaganda has become because of smartphones. I really do miss when the internet was a separate entity from reality, but now it's a "serious business" as social media has changed everything in that regard.

I could go on, but I feel that I'm just doing a general rant about the current state of affairs outside of just cyberpunk themed issues.
 
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mydadiscar

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Dystopia, leading to cyberpunk dystopia. When smart homes stop being something for the elite and start being mainstream that is when it starts. This is already happening to an extent with Alexa.
 
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Don't forget the whole censorship red guard of cancel culture. For those who don't know, allegations are made about what someone said or did and the internet outrage mob targets them and tries to remove them from their internet. The victim can apologize but it often doesn't work since internet harasses dont care about apologies and only want to be in an internet mob. Those at the heart of censorship, only have power within their limited confines. Generally if you arent listable online, you are basically untargettable. Don't forget to make fake accounts to make yourself ultra untargettable and lead them down a wrong path. Maybe the reason you are a vault dweller is because you don't find fulfillment in our current dystopia. I can fully agree, there isnt much there, and thats by design. Its all vapid horseshit.

On the topic of vapid horseshit a lot of the popular culture is disposable and meant to be thrown away. Its not particularly bad, since a lot of the popular shit is garbage to begin with. To become popular it must be easily graspable by even the dimmest bulb, so this is not an indictment against popular culture. If anything I am glad that pop culture generally stays away from the things I like. Unfortunately a side effect of this is increasingly isolated echo chambers where people surround themselves with their ideological peers. It takes effort to challenge your own beliefs and grow as a person, and it takes a mutual understanding and a mutual goal of enlightenment from all parties. Far too many people are comfortable remaining in their echo chambers, and every so often these mole people will venture out of their hovels and become triggered by everything in the real world.

An example of where discussion doesn't work is plebbit. If you are trying to discuss anything on plebbit, you have already fucked up by creating an account there and expecting the other party to behave like an intelligent entity.

I think there is still room to fall further in the cyber dystopia. For example, for the ongoing pandemic there is a clear push by techocrats and foolish politicians to force people to obtain a covid passport to prove vaccination. Instead of the state doing verification, the public is forced to become the covid police. An example of this misguided and deeply troubling authoritarian trend is the current vaccine mandates via OSHA. The little person loses in either situation. Either OSHA will be made toothless, or they lose their job, or they take a vaccine they otherwise don't want to avoid job loss. The current regimes approval rating speaks volumes of how popular the mandates are.

It is deeply troubling that the way the current regime seeks to mandate uptake is via threatening the jobs of the people by forcing them to take medication they otherwise dont want. It is a serious problem that the executive branch can sidestep the legislative branch and force private entities to goosestep via the threat of fines from regulatory agencies. You absolutely cannot force people, you MUST convince them. Doing otherwise leads the country down an exceptionally dangerous path for our democracy.
Provoke + prove u r right (by doing so)
 
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NSoph

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Selected from the /g/ - /de3/ - DALL-E 3 General

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Voicedrew

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GENOSAD

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It's cyber and it is pretty bad, but there's no punk.
At the risk of sounding corny as fuck, I feel like making things "punk" is the only way to fix this -- and the burden is on us, the people, to actually make that a reality. But of course, we've all been far too sedated to try to fix the problem, let alone see what it actually is. Even if we did, we already know that taking over with the intent to fix something is how you end up being the villain in the end. The old cycle of "counter-culture becoming the dominant culture" is enough for people to shrug and say "why bother?"
It would take an activist movement of immense proportion to pull this off, and that's simply not feasible, not as long as the show keeps running as it is.
 
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Digital Cheese

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This is the gayest version of a "cyberpunk dystopia" we could ever live in. Instead of being badasses avoiding the government making tools and shit from scraps, people are just consoooooooming social-media. Bruh fuck this shit they're probably already censoring people without us knowing it, I wish it just looked cool while we did it. I'm going to have to just make my own hacker-larp outfit at this point
 
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There is still the core hacker subculture out there but its been consumed by the larger soy-hacker culture. Computers are more complex and secure than ever before but they make idiots more idiotic than ever before.
 
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imnotdeadyet

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Selected from the /g/ - /de3/ - DALL-E 3 General

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I'm surprised there isn't an active thread talking about and documenting the insane progress AI has made in such a short period of time. Images from Dalle mini (2022) and dall-e 3 (2023) are so different you'd think there's been at least a decade apart, and that's just image generation.

There is still the core hacker subculture out there but its been consumed by the larger soy-hacker culture.
I miss when there was an aura of mystery around hackers and when they did cool pro regular person/consumer shit. Now they're all programmer socks wearing devs working for massive corpos getting paid obscene amounts of money and occasionally on the side "gray hat" hacking for fun. A small percentage is also scumbags ransomware-ing hospitals and small business for a quick buck, it's all about the money now. Might seem like this wouldn't have much tangible effect but it does, at least in the piracy and cracking sphere where the scene is basically dead because it's no longer cool to crack for kudos from the average person and clout in scene chats. It's so bad that people crowdfund cracks.
 
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endless_self

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to put it simply, i don't like the idea of living in one.
i don't have much expirience with cyberpunk dystopias, but concidering in what direction the life and technology has been going i can see why this became a relevant topic of discussion.
my personal "favourite" representation of our possible future is by LeonardoDeBiz on youtube. his view of cyberpunk dystopia is so close to the world we live in, it actually terrifies me!
will we live in one? with each day we are getting closer to almost obvious answer.
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(stupid picture doesn't prove my point, i just felt that it fits the topic =P)
 

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index.php

(stupid picture doesn't prove my point, i just felt that it fits the topic =P)
american corporatism > WEF, corpo owning states/countries...
 
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PraxHeadroom

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What do I think about living in a cyberpunk distopia? It sucks. What else do you expect me to say? We're all here for the same reason, to find a place that doesn't suck as much. One of the things that I hate most is that even cyberpunk as a concept has been corporatized and made lame as fuck at this point. The message in modern cyberpunk seems to have shifted from "Society is trying to enslave me with technology, so I will use technology instead of being used by it." to "Yeah corporations are bad and stuff, but at least I have these cool gadgets".

That being said I think the better question to ask is "How do we find our way out of an IRL cyberpunk distopia?"
Unfortunately I don't have a good answer for this.
 
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I want to specify that the classical cyberpunk dystopia is one where specified like in Cyberpunk 2077 where you have the futuristic world but deeply flawed and broken.

I think that we both aren't at that technological level to enable a lot of that world, and also that we don't really want to be in that world, and that we are probably in a better dystopia. For one, you don't have computer hardware in your literal head. Yeah I get that there are a lot of benefits from the hardware, but that is a deep violation of the core sanctity of your mind. In your mind is where you have ultimate and final say. Your reality is the one you define and the thoughts in your mind are entirely yours or at least you allow them to exist.

But computer hardware in your head? Meaning hardware that can read/write to your memory and edit your processes? How can you be sure of anything after that? How can you trust a manufacturer to not abuse the massive privileges they've been granted. Let alone trust them to keep any semblance of computer security. We already see nowadays that mega-corps can barely keep their internal corp-nets free of infiltration. Just recently at my pang-job they had an incident where nobody could really identify the origin of an event but yet there was still an event present.

You should feel thankful that the current augmentations are currently only external.

There are a lot of users that look back at X, Y, or Z years with rose tinted glasses on how the previous time was so much better than the current time with our technology. I want to argue that we live in the correct technological times (barring a few things) and that in a few years time people will be seriously regretting they didn't spend more time enjoying the now. We have enough computational power to basically do anything we want. Heck, most of the computational power sold nowadays is really only wasted on things like video games and entertainment.

and finally, my point of view is that we will not get to experience the world of cyberpunk 2077 and we should feel thankful about it. Instead of a cyber dystopia you can instead trade that in for a mediaeval 2 world. We will all become farmers again and trade locally and only consume what we earn via physical labor. No more fake monopoly money encouraging the creation of fake currency. If you want things you better make them or you should trade for them. Pre-collapse items will become exceptionally rare, expensive, and highly cherished. The technologies of now will be spoken of in a mystical tone as if remembering an age that may not have existed. And lastly, we will trade the problems of now for entirely new problems. Ha. There is no escaping.
 
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I do think we are living in a cyberpunk world from the perspective of computer hacking and computational ability. I have gotten a glimpse of it myself and it is freaking incredible. The rush of power as you discover how to abuse something in a way that it was not intended or modify something that you previously thought it wasn't. It makes you feel big. I am only chasing that high.
 
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I do think we are living in a cyberpunk world from the perspective of computer hacking and computational ability. I have gotten a glimpse of it myself and it is freaking incredible. The rush of power as you discover how to abuse something in a way that it was not intended or modify something that you previously thought it wasn't. It makes you feel big. I am only chasing that high.
well, but are in the 90s/80s vision of "glorious 2000", where IP will be abolished and (we will go kumbaya) people will live in some (vision of, at least) GVC where world is interconnected, crap is over and we will just (topple patriarchy) eat the rich or whatever - basically GVC + solarpunk, cyber- and cyberneticpunk (yes, those 2 are different things - and they got crappy names, so; so)

also, miss this aesth. and style:
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NSoph

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№56

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Saying things like "we live in a cyberpunk dystopia but it's not like Blade Runner" is the modern day equivalent of saying things like "we've sent a man to the moon but it's not like Buck Rogers" in the 60s. The science fiction authors of the past were wrong, and now their successors are going to have to either adjust to reality or keep writing about escapist "lost futures."
I already wrote a post about this in an older thread that I'll just link here instead of repeating myself.
 
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