this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Also a significant lack of hot ass murder babes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

They can be whatever you like 😎

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

nah, there's too many people LARPing their lives away as it is

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

I would argue there aren't enough

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I don't get everyone's obsession with cybernetic implants. If I needed a replacement, sure. But could you imagine today's enshittified corporate structure making a cyberlimb? 100% a massive up front purchase and a hefty subscription, especially if it's not a functional replacement.

Personally I want a functional metaverse. Full dive computing.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Gee, almost like that’s a key facet of most cyberpunk stories…

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yep cyberpunk still perpetuates the idea that corporations are highly competent and innovators, which just doesn't seem to be true in our current reality. The MBA/financial people have taken over and people that actually want to make cool stuff are no longer in control

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But the excel spreadsheet says we saved .35 cents!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I had lunch with a co-worker that spoke with a stupid grin about shaving a couple of cents off of their production units in the manufacturing process. Our products costed hundreds to even thousands of dollars.

I can't believe there are people alive that are proud of this kind of stuff. He didn't even have a stock compensated position, or work in manufacturing. He was just a capitalist creep that loved the very concept of being a cheap dumpster fire.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Its to the point they have cut the corners so much that the table is round and now they are eyeing up the legs. "Surely we don't need all those legs, right?"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

If you want the neon aesthetic, you have to go to Hong Kong.

And also technically speaking, we do have cool cybernetic implants. I mean we also have uncool cybernetic implants, too, but, like, have you seen modern prosthetic limbs? Shits practically sci-fi levels of usefulness; it just doesn't have a sense of touch like they do in the fiction. Shit even cochlear implants are kinda cool, in so far as they can make someone who is deaf or close to deaf able to hear again.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I was looking forward to someday having some nice Cannon or Panasonic or Fujifilm hi-res eyes to replace mine but my insurance won't even land me decent glasses.

I miss being able to read six-point font or see more than ten meters in front of me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Equivalent eyes would have to be way better than any camera we have today.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Relevant XKCD

What's frightening to me is our semi-autonomous drones and robots, including police attack bots.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

The entire reason the cyberpunk genre was invented was to reflect what modern society looks like, and the inevitable outcome if technology improves, but government policy and power dynamics stayed the same.

The counter genres to cyberpunk are solarpunk (merging society and nature together) and sci-fi (Star Trek being the main example here, being a socialist, post-scarcity society)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is actually kind of funny when you consider a lot of infrastructure refuses to use newer or better technology in the goal of maximizing profit, which the government also supports via lack of legislation.

Cyberpunk always shows some cool stuff around public transport, yet here we still are in 10 lane highway congested traffic with inefficient SUVs and Trucks since they even killed off sedans.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Cyberpunk public transport usually only exists because most people can't afford cars though, and the routes pretty much exclusively go to the general locations of major employers, sometimes only being available to employees of those companies (they still have pay a fare too of course)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Uh, cyberpunk is a sub-genre of sci-fi or, as it’s also known, Science Fiction.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Science fiction usually carries with it a desire to rationalize and explain the technology it's built upon, to try and paint a world plausible from a scientific standpoint. You see this a lot with the technobabble in Star Trek.

Cyberpunk has a lot of overlap with science fiction, but usually dives more into the social commentary on society and capitalism, using the technology within as a vehicle to amplify those criticisms. Some cyberpunk works seek to explain their technology and make it seem grounded in the same way sci-fi does, but that is usually secondary to the social and political themes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Cyberpunk is not separate from Science Fiction. It is literally a genre of science fiction. citing the DEFINITION of it, available from a simple google search: 1. a genre of science fiction set in a lawless subculture of an oppressive society dominated by computer technology.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You're being prescriptive and not descriptive with the definitions. Superficially it is the case, and people have created a neat little categorical hierarchy you can keep pointing back to, but I'm telling you that a lot of cyberpunk creative work is sci-fi in the same way that people say Star Wars is sci-fi (it's a space opera, at least the movies are)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

and I am telling you you are wrong because the genre of cyberpunk is literally science fiction. Stories, it turns out, can cross genres. That doesn’t change the definition of said genres.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Cyberpunk is considered a sub genre of sci-fi because a bunch of people got together and said that's what it is. Doesn't make it a 100% hard set rule. You just like putting things in boxes. A piece of creative work is what it contains, not whatever categories you shove it into.

I accept that the intersubjective framework of literary genres exists, but have my disagreements with it. You can do that. It doesn't make you wrong, just unpopular.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Suck my peanits.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

Then whatever that specific subgenre of sci-fi that Star Trek falls into is called.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Nah, people would never be stupid enough, to let such a thing ever happen.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

You can buy them already, but they're at least 10 times as expensive as regular cars and you need a piloting license too. Meanwhile regular cars and the normal driving license are already getting pretty expensive for people.

Flying cars also need a runway, a heliport or a wide open space. eVTOLs and other flying cars are usually not small and need more space than a car for taking off or landing, especially in non-ideal weather.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

Any day now. This time for sure!

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

img

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I guess it depends where, and when, you look? :-P

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Times Square is tiny though, in relation to the rest of Manhattan.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah, but most places (within city limits) there tends to be at least one neon signage visible from somewhere - a nail salon, a barber shop, etc. Regardless, it's a fair point that most places look more like the right than the left images (in the OP)... but not exclusively!

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But it mostly comes out at night

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

We got lotsa neon lights in the PNW

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago

You better start believing in Cyberpunk dystopias, Miss Turner. You're in one!