I’ve gotta go with Mad Max here. Between the words oil obsession, rising aggression and dumbing down of society I can’t see it going any other way.
A combination of all the worst bits of the worst ones
A combination of Snow Crash and Idiocracy
Ah I love Snow Crash.
We’re already at the point of bizarre self-parody, cringe-irony, ultra-capitalism, but instead of pizza delivering street-samurai and a fascinating metaverse…
…we got grub/dash/food/rabbit/whatever and…“meta.” Ugh.
I hate so much that Idiocracy was so on the mark. Knowledge being lost, culture being 100% based on consumption, corporate warmonger leadership. The entertainment is basically there if you look at YouTube’s front page it’s like:
"OW! MuH bAwLz! (For $48,000,000?!?!?!) - 2 hrs. ago | 3 million views"
"Slappin buttz n’ moar munee - UpGrAyD (ft. GoonOhioSkebedeezyFR) - 1 day ago | 7.5 million views"
Might as well throw some Terminator and ‘The Machine Stops’ in there.
If we don’t dodge that bullet, Years and Years. Or Neuromancer.
Neuromancer would be an improvement at this point. Gibson underestimated just how bad corporations could get.
Penultimate Truth. Predicted containing the cattle using fear of something that doesn’t even exist in reality.
Her.
Given that we’ve already had a few suicides caused by (or at least exacerbated by) LLM chatbots, I think we’re already there.
You better start believing in cyberpunk dystopia, Miss Turner. You’re in one!
Not sure which one. But we already pretty much check all the boxes of cyberpunk.
I think we’re in the boring version of Shadowrun’s cyberpunk universe. Take out the magic, take out the idea that people perform runs doing vigilante tasks and take out the goblinifcation (so no orks/trolls) and no other races. But the idea of megacorps getting bigger and bigger while everything decays around us with escalating costs, yeah that part is real.
Damnit, I managed to trip into a Shadowrun campaign and I didn’t even roll a Dwarf.
It’s the shittiest form of cyberpunk.
We have cybernetic implants! But they’re only for people who need them or are being headed up by a dipshit (Elon’s Neuralink)…
We have AI! But it’s just a glorified chat bot and it’s not even necessarily good at even that…
We keep having gnarly pandemics of new diseases.
The mega corporations are exactly what you expect.
The quality of life is exactly as you expect, except even the best possible quality you could get if you were rich also kinda fucking sucks compared to fiction (can’t even live on Mars forever in a Matrix connected blow job machine IRL)…
The dystopia would be more bearable if I could become a cybernetic superman on Mars. Just sayin’.
You expected to be the main character, but you’ve just realized you’re just one of many NPCs in a cyberpunk reality, just trying yo get by, but getting screwed at every turn by corporations, governments and fate.
Well said! I’m looking forward to the solarpunk/biopunk future nowadays because of… all that
I always thought CEOs being greedy mythical dragons that compulsively hoard riches because it’s their nature, to be a brilliantly plausible fantasy element.
At this point it almost feels like a rational explanation for their inhuman behavior.
On this track that’s probably the only fantasy element we’d get LOL.
The Simpsons
Idiocracy but mixed with the Neuromancer series and 1984.
Add a dash of « The Handmaid’s Tale »
More of a glug.
WALL-E. We just don’t have a way to escape yet, but the rest is happening regardless.
That’s a very optimistic view of our future.
I’m sure Bezass and Muskpoo got us covered, just most of us can’t afford to leave with them.
The Road.
Price of obsidian gonna skyrocket.
Beat me to it!
Idiocracy/Dont look up/1984/Judge Dredd
My bets on Robocop style corporate dictatorship until terminator style annihilation occurs.
Star Trek was never on the cards.
Actually, star trek might be. In their lore, things got a lot worse before they got better.
World War 3 began in 2026 according to TNG, we’re close!
In the aftermath, the world became an irradiated apocalyptic hellhole for almost a century, most cities destroyed and governments collapsed. I’d say we’re well on our way to that state, question is whether or not we emerge better on the other side. I’d almost be okay with that if there was some assurance that humanity would come out as Star Trek afterwards.
I could see the Golgafrinchan telephone sanitizer situation coming to pass.
The Water Knife by Paolo Baccigalupi is pretty on the nose for the near future of the southern US
It thought that Vegas was an abomination, a testament to the vanity of mankind but that book made me understand that Phoenix has twice as many people, is bigger though sure, is a little wetter on average and should hold that title.
How is this one of the cheapest cities to live in in the US? Why are we moving the micro chip industry there?
All of the negatives from Metropolis 2001
Metropolis (2001): How Capitalism Produces Fascism
The Temporal Messages of Metropolis
Elon Musk = Duke Red
