By Bill “Cyberpunk Apologist” Crowe
I’m sure if you’re reading this, you’ve heard of Cyberpunk 2077 – simultaneously the biggest disappointment in gaming history to some… and yet still the best-selling game of all time to all. Simply put, it’s a controversial topic. People love to love it, people hate to love it, people love to hate it, and people hate to hate it. If that last sentence was confusing, then I’m sure you can envision just how much of a migraine this entire ‘debate’ is.
Interestingly enough, we’re not here to talk about the video game itself. You see, that’s a topic for another time and another not-so-biased writer. While I’d love to write about the shortcomings and the successes of the game, we’re here to look at the world of Cyberpunk (and Cyberpunk-related settings like Blade Runner) and see how it stacks up to ours. We’re not living in a dystopia, are we?
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Well… let’s start with some facts.
We live in a technocracy. Technology has been improving at an absolutely exponential rate. Tech, for the most part, rules our lives. I’ve spent a year in quarantine and would have fully lost my marbles months ago if I didn’t have a computer. Like it or not, our lives are governed by the Net™. If you tell someone from a century ago that our lives would be built around a machine and an invisible force that connects us all, they wouldn’t believe you for a second. You’d probably be labeled various harmful words like “insane” or “silly”. Trust me.
Anyways, let’s get back to the matter at (cyber)hand. Let’s ask ourselves a question:
What defines a ‘cyberpunk’ setting?
Low life, high tech, a superficial, ad-infested, corporation-run society, and finally, wealth gaps.
Starting off, we have to face the music: a huge number of people on planet Terra (that’s a fancy way of saying Earth) are living at or below the poverty line, barely scraping by and struggling to survive. A bit of a grim turn, but it’s a reality that we have to grapple with. People are suffering. There are still some of us who are going hungry, thirsty, living in war-torn countries, in the middle of revolutions, tumultuous times and just generally harmful situations. Low life? Check.
Next, we have high tech. We’ve covered that. I’m sure 30-year-old David from 1924 would look at our world and call it science fiction (or that time’s equivalent). Now, you may be asking: “Hey, Mr. Cynical Writerman! Cyberpunk is about cybernetics and cyborgs and pretty neon lights! Where’s that in our world?”
Well… we can check that off the list, because we’re pretty damn close.
Enter Neuralink: a company (that of COURSE Elon Musk is part of) whose mission statement is “designing the first neural implant that will let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go”. The first NEURAL IMPLANT. Wanna see a terrifying image that is being used on their website right now?
Yeah. Terrifying. Cybernetic implants? (Eerily close to) check! Of course there are more augmentations such as prosthetics that help the disabled. These are much less unnerving and a whole lot more wholesome – but what’s stopping strides in these fields from eventually allowing Mary to get herself a brand spankin’ new chromed-out arm? Nothing but time and money.
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“Pffft. You’re telling me we live in a superficial and ad-ridden society?”
Yeah. I doubt this needs to be discussed. We as a species and society are (mostly) selfish, self-absorbed, and self-interested. Self, self, self! How can I be better? How can I get richer? How can I get everybody to love and respect and treat me as the GOD amongst PEASANTS that I am?? Ahem. Excuse me, got a little ahead of myself. As for ads, I can’t go an hour without seeing a video, image, or block of text showing me a product or service that I really, really, don’t give a crap about. This also factors into the corpo-run society we just so happen to find ourselves living in. Companies rule the world… and there’s no way around that either. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat OWN your information and we all, pretty easily, let them. I’m sure we’ve all seen bizarrely specific ads tailored to us directly. I can’t be the only one to have seen an “Only REAL Garfield girls are born in March” type shirt, right? …right?
Wait, what’s that sound? Oh wow! It’s Bill™ Storytime™! This is going to sound like something way outta left field, but bear with me here. This happened about a year and a half ago and is what spurred my absolutely rational and unbridled hatred for ads. So here’s the thing. I’m a surrogate kid. That means my mother is not my biological mother. I have never, EVER told that to anybody over text, on social media, over chat in a videogame, or on a blog post article for an animation class at LMU (…wait a minute). Exposition over. So, one day I was scrolling through Instagram after I had posted a drawing as a humble offering to the almighty Mark “Herald of R’lyeh” Zuckerberg and what did I see? An ad for a mug, but not just any mug.
“I know you’re not ‘technically’ my mom […]”
Now you get to see this affront to privacy. Orwell would be rolling in his grave.
Three cheers for surveillance capitalism! If that’s not dystopian as all hell, I don’t know what is.
Alright, onto heavy wealth gaps. Elon “TechnoJesus” Musk. Bill “the Despoiler” Gates. Jeff “Literally the Devil” Bezos. What do all of these rich straight white men have in common? Yes.
See, we live in a world where people have such exorbitant amounts of money that the human brain can’t even comprehend the number (https://futurism.com/what-is-a-billion-2). We also live in a world where denizens of “the greatest country in the world” can’t live with a roof over their heads. How do we deal with this on Earth? Spikes on benches in the UK, hostile architecture pretty much everywhere, and virtually nothing to help them get back on their feet (I’m talking about the majority, I know for a fact that there are people and organizations who selflessly help those who are in need). Also, wanna know a fun fact? In some cities in the United States of America, it is illegal to be homeless (https://www.chn.org/voices/fact-week-u-s-cities-made-illegal-homeless/). Messed up, right?
Oh, you can’t afford overpriced living accomodations, lost your job because of Covid-19 and can’t get by while the government does the equivalent of sit back and watch with a bucket of popcorn? Sorry, that’s illegal! Take a hike, freeloader!
All of this is starting to sound pretty dystopian, isn’t it?
Imagine this:
“The year is 2089, and life isn’t free.
We’ve got ads that know unshared private information, overwhelming police brutality, and corporations that run your life and know everything there is to know about you – but hey, kill the pain with mental implants that let you control your phone wherever you go. Whether you like it or not, you’re living in their world.
All we’re trying to do is survive… and that still costs you a pretty penny.”
Want to know the only difference between that campy word-spew from a young adult dystopian novel and our world? The date.
Do yourself a solid and think about what our world would look like to an outsider. It’s not a good look, is it? We’re quickly hurtling towards enacting our best impression of the setting for Dystopian Dreams 2: Revelations Reloaded: Fates. Joking and totally fictitious titles for YA novels aside, that’s not somewhere you want to live. It sucks to live in dystopian settings, but that’s the point.
Alright – we’re almost at the finish line here, so I’ll leave you with some words from renowned tabletop RPG legend Mike Pondsmith, one of my favorite creators of all time (who created the Cyberpunk setting as we know it back in the 80s).
He recently said that “Cyberpunk was a warning, not an aspiration.” I couldn’t agree more. Sure the lights are pretty, the cybernetic upgrades are flashy and something I’d love to have, but the side effects of that drug cause more than it cures.
Why not take a second and ruminate on some of his more unsettling words. Step back and ponder “what it means to look out your window and see too much of the dystopian future […] become the dystopian present.” I mean, the first iteration of his RPG system was called Cyberpunk 2020.
See you in the future, choom.
Uh….Okay, that was really funny, but the facts were disturbing at the same time. Yeah, a lot of bad and sketchy things have been going on in the world. Do I think we’re in a dystopia, no because many places still have their will and rights. The implants sound scary, ads based on our personal lives and information is sketchy, and the homeless are treated like the scum of our world. I just don’t think we’re living in a scenario like “Brave New World,” “THX 1138”, or “1984.” There are bad things that have happened in our world for an extremely long time and there is always going to be a digression. Many authors/ artists like Mary Shelly have questioned technological revolution/ innovation, but science fiction for the most part remains in its own world. Will situations get way worse? Yes, if we let it and I think it’s in our future because that’s what happens due to human nature. As long as people think and resist evil and injustice, then we’ll do our best to step away from shattering our Earth and society.
I agree with Andreas, this post is very funny yet the facts and ads listed in the post are downright bone-chilling. I personally understand how the ‘cyberpunk’ future can be perceived as a potential reality to those who look beyond the mainstream media given our current climate. Not to be pessimistic, but I don’t think the majority of technological advancements that may serve to infringe a person’s ‘natural-born’ rights would be as blatant as the ads shown in this post. Rather, I think that more multimillionaire companies would make more subtle transitions in creating such inventions. Also, I think there has been many scholarly articles that argue how the rich are currently getting richer and the poor getting poorer during the pandemic. I personally think topics regarding dystopia should be considered when making preparations for the future. Just for laughs and giggles, this post could also be used as a tool for moving into the transitional phase of “Breaking Out Of The Matrix”.
I appreciate this post so much because I’ve been saying this for so long! It’s honestly scary how accurate it is that we’re essentially living in a dystopian society. The implants are a couple years away so I’m glad about that, but if you take that small detail away then everything else is pretty much right. One step below that is that we put google homes and other systems like that that we allow to know way too much about us, since it collects our personal information for improved ads revenue. We have an illusion of rights, but in reality large corporations make our laws with ALEC and the things we vote on are carefully crafted to appear progressive but in reality only make little changes. Pretty much as soon as Reagan joined office everything we know as now was allowed to happen. If you look up all the laws that were rolled back under his administration to allow corporations to make the world as we know it because before then billionaires weren’t allowed to exist as well as ALEC and all of that, you’ll see what this post is saying about how little control we actually have individually. Good job dude.
As entertaining as this was to read, it was also terrifying as it made me realize that yes, our lives aren’t far from a dystopian YA novel. Whether it be the advanced technology of Cyberpunk or the extreme class divide and corrupt government in something like The Hunger Games, it’s actually quite realistic. I have also experienced ads that show me Frito lays chips after mentioning I want to buy some with a friend, or getting an ad for a movie after watching it. It’s terrifying, but we are slowly getting numb to it. It’ll be interesting to see how far our society comes just in our lifetimes.
I get ads all the time for things I SWEAR I only thought about in my head! It’s always very scary when it happens. There are times when I get completely used to it and forget what its like to not have so many ads catered to you. Now I find it weird when I see an ad that doesn’t even match me at all! This was a fun read and I definitely feel very futuristic now. I love to think back to the times when youtube had no ads. Great times… When I tell my young Gen Alpha cousins about this time, they can’t believe it! I feel so old when I’m not. I’m only 22 *sniff sniff*. Things are just moving too fast.
Yeah, you get it. People rave about how dystopian/sci-fi novels are crazy and farfetched, yet forget just how much of it is either ripped directly from real life politics or has already come true. I personally attribute the mindset that many of us (including me, I have to say) have towards inequality and living through traumatic historical events as being mostly “American” to our recent news media funneling certain events to the front, leaving behind just how crazy, unfair, and poor the REST of the world truly is. The statistic I found the other day that states around only 0.2% of the rest of the world (aka not the US) have been vaccinated has really opened my eyes to just how privileged I and other Americans are. As shitty as many of us think it is here, it simply doesn’t compare to some other countries. Knowing all this, I’m begging for the US to do the right thing and give out information for or just be the frontrunner in handing out FREE vaccines… (leaving the re-colonization and white savior complex behind if possible!)
I totally agree that we are on the very path that almost every sci-if novel, film, and TV show has warned us about. Mega-corps that own everything, constant exposure to undesired adverts. It’s low key scary how casually we are exposed to pressure to buy things and often times we don’t even notice exactly how prevalent it is in our lives. This was an great read, but also pretty terrifying.
“Cyberpunk was a warning, not an aspiration.” That quote is so telling. It’s insane to see the increase of capitalism fused with technology. I feel like this issue spans the globe, but is particularly connected to American society. COVID-19’s affect on the nation has only shown how deeply messed up our living and work situations are, and our increased reliance on technology. Given that many recent technological advances, specifically within the realm of social media, are more based on profit rather than people, it’s scary to think how that’ll manifest in the future. Furthermore, it’s ironic to see some people glorify the worlds and aesthetics of cyberpunk, when it reflects a possible negative, dystopian future. Maybe it’s a similar appeal to the dystopian fiction trend of the early 2010s?