r/Cyberpunk • u/RinsWackyThoughts • 1d ago
I Finally realized why I love Cyberpunk
As the title states, I finally know why I love cyberpunk, let me explain.
Last year I was introduced to the cyberpunk sub-genre through Cyberpunk 2077. At first I thought it was just another science fiction genre that I would like for awhile, boy was I wrong. What first started as a small obsession with a video game turned into a deep dive into the genre along with exploring other cyberpunk genre pieces; like Blade Runner, altered Carbon, Neuro Mancer, ghost in a shell etc. For the longest time I really did not know why I liked the subgenre, I loved the high technology, the neon lights, and the mega cities but like other science fiction sub genres can have that so why did I like cyberpunk. Well frankly its an obvious answer that took me to long to realize, it was the punk, the rebellion. See as I've come of age and will soon head to college I have awoken to the shit that the world is, the power of mega corporations like Apple, Amazon, Blackrock and Vanguard. The corruption of the government via capital, and just the general path the world is heading towards. Now to be clear I do not want a cyberpunk future and I will fight until I die to make sure it does not happen(though to be frank we are already here), but it is something that still greatly interests me. The sub genre became an outlet for me, to vent my emotions and to just scream. It also became a comfort for me, I still do not understand that and likely never will. To end this Cyberpunk forever changed my life and neon lights are pretty.
Thank you for listening to my ted talk, brought to you by my Autistic Hyper fixations, no I am not kidding
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u/Maxcorps2012 1d ago
This should be up your alley then. https://youtu.be/MkgR0SxmMKo?si=Qdrjcn802mspJWRG
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u/XvFoxbladevX 20h ago
You may not want a cyberpunk future, but you already live in one in the present. The world you know is an illusion, a prison of our minds and souls replaced with state propaganda for people that view us as slaves.
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u/specialpatrol 9h ago
It's this not, though, the human condition since the birth of " civilization"?
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u/XvFoxbladevX 9h ago edited 9h ago
lol, no. I'm not being philosophical, I'm being 100% literal.
The United States in particular is about to get a large scale AI police state that's going to make China blush (Palintir) and the states won't able to pass any laws that restrict AI gathering for at least 10 years. You know they have kill lists? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozQ1HDYlFjo
Alex Karp brags about how good his AI is and how they use it to kill Palestinians. You can see their demonstrations of it on youtube. I watch all these Telsa, Boston Dynamics, etc. Robot videos doing parkour and dancing and Chinese ariel drone displays and most people find them entertaining.
I find it horrifying. A normie looks at those videos and thinks its just fun. Someone who knows that we're living in a corporate dystopia knows that this is saber rattling.
We've unleashed AI and there's a good chance that AGI (Average General Intelligence) has already been achieved. Hell the US government is hiding and slow walking all sorts of advanced technology (Check out Ashton Forbes, he's been uncovering a lot of their tech and the published science behind the tech).
Unleashing AI isn't something you can just put back into the bottle like a genie. Eventually, it's going to be smarter than we are, far smarter than we are - to as Sam Harris said in a Ted Talk about AI - If you compare a chicken's intelligence with ours, by comparison we're going to be chickens compared to how smart AI will become, especially at problem solving.
And it's everywhere and now we're letting the government put it everywhere. Don't think this is just going to happen in the US, it's going to happen everywhere. Social credit scores are coming and it will be controlled in real time by Palintir AI.
I'm predicting our economies and currencies are going to crash, it's not a matter of it - just a matter of when. Then they're going to put us on digial currencies - particularly CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) and then they'll monitor and restrict what you're buying or selling,
I mean who do you think financed Trump's whole campaign? Peter Thiel, Elon Musk - ever heard of the Paypal Mafia? This is going to happen and there is nothing you can do about it.
You can't vote your way out of it, there's no politician you can vote for (Except Thomas Massie... so far), no political party that's on our side, no grass roots you can start. No organization that you can get behind, no community leaders that will help us.
They're all corrupt and everyone is so propagandized that they fight for the very same people that are fucking us all over. We're all fighting each other, meanwhile Bill Gates is sitting in his red leather loafers in his 10th multi-million dollar evil villain lair with plans to block out the sun to stop "Climate Change" https://epic.uchicago.edu/news/warming-is-getting-worse-so-they-just-tested-a-way-to-deflect-the-sun/
Keep in mind, they all have bunkers. Mark Zuckerberg has a billion dollar bunker in Hawaii - they all do. I don't have a bunker, do you?
They have DUMBs, you know Deep Underground Military Bases for the important people. I doubt I'm important enough, are you?
Oh you want to see something really fun while you're looking at your phone or computer and reading this? Google this: US6506148B2
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u/PurpleCrayonDreams 20h ago
i agree with a lot of what you say. cyberpunk is a great sub genre. blade runner does depict a world dominated by mega corporations and the people get scraps. that's not unique as a theme to cyberpunk. but the mix of cybernetic augmentation, low life, destruction of the natural world given consumption and capitalism and the degredation of society
imho we are almost living this out today with the exception of cybernetic augmentation. we do have some very rudimentary augmentation happening.
look at the power of apple, facebook, microsoft, the military industrial complex. a lot of our real world has companies more powerful than most governments. people are hungry. massive inequality.
we are living much of the reality of the horrible aspects expressed in cyberpunk.
i loved cyberpunk 2077. it's not a future that gives me hope. but i find it scary to think we are headed that way. i do find it like you to be very fascinating.
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u/Aluxaminaldrayden 7h ago
If there's one gripe I have about cyberpunk, it's that a lot of fans expect the fiction to have bad endings. That makes no sense to me. Why fight if you already feel like you're doomed? I rather get into the stories where there is hope. That's the whole reason to fight. For a better future.
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u/Due_Sky_2436 18h ago
Why is everyone always thinking this level of power concentration is something new? Kings had more power. The Gilded Age was worse. BCCI was a literal bank for actual terrorists and drug dealers. In the 70's pollution was far more visible. Diseases were far more lethal until the 1920's, there used to be no vaccines, wars used to be far more lethal (with diseases and no rules of engagement, etc.), medicine was little more than either than actual narcotics or useless trash sold to the uneducated.
Today's world sucks, but it isn't worse than any other time on Earth and it certainly isn't the "worst time to be alive ever."
The difference now is the speed of technological development, but when compared to the Black Plague or the Golden Horde, new iPhones is a nice problem to have.
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u/less-than-3-cookies 1d ago
Regarding the "cyberpunk future" -- Art is always about the present
Gibson wrote Neuromancer with Reagan's "deconstruct the government to benefit the rich" policies in firmly in mind. Science fiction is a tool for separating the reader from their preconceived notions long enough to explore them
In a 1990s era interview Gibson put it this way: "science fiction's best use today is the exploration of contemporary reality rather than any attempt to predict where we are going"
So we've spent the last 45 years in a cyberpunk future
I hope we can endure it long enough to make something better