Reposting the kitschy Cyberpunk
I want to ask Leftypol's thoughts on this, just some things rattling around my head
I think we live in a Cyberpunk dystopia; like, I think we're already there, in the very early stages of one
Not just dystopia, specifically a cyberpunk one
We have the start of advanced mind control prosthetic limbs
Mass poverty only getting worse
Ecological collapse
Autonomous weaponry
Drones doing most of the military death squad actions
The bloody internet, its culture, and the parasocial relationships within it
Highly advanced automation
Genetic engineering
World ending superweapons
That's all just off the top of my head
And yet…strangely…things all look almost the same?
They look roughly the same as how I remember the 2000s
Which look roughly the same as the 1990s
And yet things also look nothing like all those 80s cyberpunk dystopias
More and more the mask goes off, the bourgeoisie reveals the naked class struggle, exploitation and death at the core of this society
And yet they won't go all the way
I keep watching these cutesy, kitschy ads
Ads with "sincerity"
That try to connect to our "human sides"
That took about helping one another and caring for each other
I watch porkies being in support of mass protests and unrest, at least PR wise
I don't even know
Just some mind thoughts I guess
But I keep thinking
It's almost like Black Mirror, I feel Black Mirror is the best modern cyberpunk update
Because I think it really captures the true terror of it all
In the past cyberpunk imagined the bourgeois casting aside the mask and making our brutal exploitation open and explicit again as it once was in the Gilded Age
Instead however the horror is still somewhat out of view
It's hidden, back behind the corner of your eye
Something you see just in the periphery, that you notice if you stare hard enough
But it's like it's still always hiding
And little by little you see it, you see autonomous drones monitoring protests, you see constant disinformation wars and blatant war propaganda, you see constant surveillance, eugenics by incompetent bureaucracy (my heart goes to those in the various national and private healthcare systems during the pandemic)
Slowly you see the full horror of it all, the nightmare of our modern existence
Despair, despair that grips an entire generation, the whole world
You see the full horror of a dying planet, and the absurdity of its killers telling you they can save it by accelerating their exploitation of it
The horror of "progressive empires" that claim they are starting wars to finally defeat reactionary governments, which entails bombing houses full of innocent
The horror of ads of smiling foreign peoples in nations where armies of the impoverished work night and day in factories to produce commodities that are killing their own land and further impoverishing them
The horror of a ruling class who has lost all sanity, who laughs and smiles and gives warm assuring phrases as it pushes the entire human race off a cliff
I mentioned cyberpunk, I mentioned Black Mirror
The horror of our cutesy, kitschy dystopia is
This is even worse than Cyberpunk, this is even worse than Black Mirror
The horror of both is the thought of a world ruled by Capital eternally, in this both failed to see the reality of Capital's transience
However there is an even greater horror
In sight of its imminent end, Capital prepares for nothing less than the apocalypse
The ultimate dystopia
And the terror mounts
The terror of nightmarish war, the terror of a dead and baked planet, the terrifying realization that is Socialism or Extinction
What is most frightening to me is the way that those authors of Cyberpunk failed to grasp how, far all their dystopic and apocalyptic predictions, the future would be even worse than they imagined
And the worst part? The aesthetic of the now, rot and decay marking the streets, massive swathes of even the mighty world Empire of America looking like the Third World, and all of it papered over with cutesy ads, warm smiles, and false sincerity
The most disturbing thing of all, is the way the bourgeoisie has struggled to maintain its human face in all this
Like witnessing the Thing starting its violent spasms, trying to hold onto a human mask before shifting into some horrific monstrosity and devouring everything in the room
The most terrifying monster of all, is the one that seeks to convince you of its warmth, friendliness, and safety as it prepares to tear your head off
Our cutesy, kitschy dystopia, what a fucking nightmare
This is our present and if we allow it, our future
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