As an American I’d absolutely say Idiocracy, but that’s just my little corner of humanity.
As a fellow American I do agree, but I think it also lets us off the hook too easily. It shows plenty of society being dumb, but not enough of it being mean.
Lots of good suggestions so far, Brave New World and Don’t Look Up would be right up there for me. But my #1 is this…
The Machine Stops (PDF) Written in 1909 so out of copyright, this book is so ahead of its time it makes remarkable reading today. The amount of things predicted that describe the modern day is incredible. It’s also not that long, so well worth a read.
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.
Bell Riots never happened, that timeline is broken.
Idiocracy.
Birth rates are down everywhere and the majority of the people left making lots of babies are not the ones you wish would be having them. Being virtuous and on the “right side of history” means nothing if those values die with you and are not passed to the next generation.
the majority of the people left making lots of babies are not the ones you wish would be having them
Found the eugenicist
Being virtuous and on the “right side of history” means nothing if those values die with you and are not passed to the next generation.
Why not?
People more or less adopt their values from their parents and the people they grow up with. The christian right and redneck hillbillys are making kids and thus their beliefs will carry over to the next generation but this is much less the case with the liberal left where not having children is much more common. Basically, the more educated you are the less likely you’re to have kids. This is true all over the world.
I understand how it isn’t passed on to the next generation. But I don’t see how that implies that being virtuous means nothing.
I’ll admit I was exaggerating a bit. I don’t think it literally means nothing, but I’m sure you get the point I’m trying to make: for a long-term beneficial impact, good ideas need to spread from person to person faster than the bad ones do.
This is not the first time i’ve seen sentiments similar to this around here. Just know this is an extremely elitist and racist viewpoint, and is one of the core arguments in favor of eugenics.
I don’t see what’s elitist or racist about it. It’s just an observation of how things are. I’m not advocating for anything here.
Fair enough, apologies, didn’t mean to imply you were advocating for the viewpoint of others i have seen making similar statements, that we need to “do something about it”, which is generally rooted in white privilege and the belief that declining birth rates are leading to the collapse of civilization.
It depends on an individual’s scope of experience.
Black and Latino families are historically much larger than white Anglo families.
But then poor white conservative families also tend to pump more out than centrist or left-leaning families.
But looking purely at the numbers It does put more marks on minority families.
If I recall correctly, White will become the minority in somewhere around 2035. But it’ll take a lot longer for the rural whites to be in the minority in their rural areas.
While I might wish for growing population in those with similar political leanings, we need to move more of the growth toward those who can/will take care of kids. We need more growth in people with good moral character who value education and hard work
The funny thing is
- conservatives think this is mythological white society from 1950s
- most of the rest of us talk about the missing middle class
- realistically this myth was probably based on the best of immigration. Those with the motivation and drive to uproot their lives and move to another country, work hard to take advantage of every opportunity, and build a better future for themselves and their children.
This immigration story works for my ancestors a century ago as well as people I currently know following the same pattern in the modern world
A eugenist pov would defend selecting human individuals based on their genetic makeup, something people have no control over and is effectively a prejudice. Idiocracy shows the degeneracy of society based on societal factors such as disinformation, wealth, etc. and is an accurate prediction of western society’s current state (specifically US, but is also valid in part for US-aligned nationstates such as France). My guess as a layman is there is some inverse statistical correlation between political knowledge and babymaking, but as we know, correlation isn’t causation, and if there is anyone to blame, it’s the bourgeoisie. Cut some heads in time for spring, they’ll regrow better
100% no doubt The parable of the sower and subsequent book. I read that book - started reading it - in June this year and read it over about a month. It was very creepy to be reading a sci fy book set in the future that is now my present and while it is not as bad right now as Octavia Butler makes it out to be, we are definitely heading there if drastic action is not taken immediately.
Edit: the books in order: (Only two, sadly she died while writing the third but still both worth reading, there isn’t a clif hanger at the end) https://www.octaviabutler.com/parableseries
100% its cyberpunk. corpo takeover with having to use technology to get by even when it is bad for you.
We don’t even get cool neon signs, everything is sad beige now… :(
Makes me think of
LOL! Aerodynamic efficiency is great and all but I’m also already SO tired of every compact and crossover looking like a friggin’ jellybean.
honestly the neon all over like tokyo is one of the more unrelistic aspects to me. same with the private link. all the ads will be straight to the optic nerve and it will be so dreary when looking at it plainly.
Yeah, but where the hell are my leg implants that allow me to double jump and air dash already?
air dash is a skill. your just being lazy.
That would be cool…but I tell ya what, we have Ray Bans that you can talk to which require an account and act as a personal body cam to use your every waking moment for spying, registering shadow-accounts for everyone you interact with, and ai training.
How’s that sound?
(Man, we’re in the stupidest timeline aren’t we…)
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.
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.
Damnit, I managed to trip into a Shadowrun campaign and I didn’t even roll a Dwarf.
Horizon Zero Dawn: Total extinction by the 2060s because some mad, narcissistic Elon Musk guy overestimates himself and fucks it up for the whole world? Doesn’t sound too far-fetched to me right now.
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.
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1984
Parable of the Sower
It was written as near future fiction anyway. In fact the dates mentioned in the book start out in our past. Just the catalyst events haven’t quite happened yet. Add a few years to the dates and I could see us heading towards that kind of societal break down.
This book is haunting. It made me seriously consider buying a gun. If I could convince my wife to read it, we’d probably have an armory by now.
Idiocracy but mixed with the Neuromancer series and 1984.
Add a dash of « The Handmaid’s Tale »
More of a glug.
V for Vendetta
I like your optimism
L for Luigi?
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.
I do believe that a lot of aspects of The Ministry for the Future by K.S. Robinson have chances of becoming true.
The deadly heatwave in south Asia, governments going rogue and playing with geo engineering on their own, climate refugee camps and the general sense of too little too late.
But the book is fairly optimistic, so hopefully, people of the world getting together and accepting a new paradigm will come to be true.
