6 ms·

Do you have any theories as to why it petered out? Like you I feel it's more relevant today than ever before but also can't find a growing or healthy community

Do you have any theories as to why it petered out? Like you I feel it's more relevant today than ever before but also can't find a growing or healthy community with that mindset anymore.

x220 8y ago
Aside from conspiracy-theorizing about current events (and I don't use that term pejoratively), people tended to discuss the same topics. New cyberpunk media doesn't come out very often, so people tended to talk about the same books, movies, manga, anime, videogames, and fashion. Some of the alt-chans with dedicated cyberpunk boards would run out of ideas to talk about pretty quickly, since there weren't enough posts that the website had to prune old threads like 4chan did. Another hypothesis I have is that cyberpunk media is not as captivating as it used to be since we arguably live in a cyberpunk world. In America there is unimaginable wealth inequality, with some cities having insane costs of rent for cramped apartments, with access to the best technology and medicine in the world but only if you can afford it. We also don't have to use media to imagine a world where digital corporations have a huge amount of power over daily life and the government spies on everyone all the time since both of those things are happening right now. I think we live in a cyberpunk world, it just doesn't have huge buildings, neon lights, and widespread punk fashion. I came in contact with a few guys who wanted to make another alt-chan with a different model (see what other users are typing in real-time, and all posts get deleted early in the morning) but it never materialized as far as I can tell. Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community?
- n-exploit 8y ago
  Maybe it's time to create anew.
- starbeast 8y ago
  Not an online one. If it was a BBS running on a cube sat, then maybe.
- eindiran 8y ago
  Are you considering making it materialize now?
  - x220 8y ago
    I'm considering making an alt-chan that cyclically purges content.
    - miss_classified 8y ago
      By now, it should be obvious that your efforts to attenuate the duration of long-running content won't prove to cultivate an increase in the quality of participation. There are (at least) three aspects of online community participation, that seasoned users are pretty well-versed in: 1. Archiving, mirroring and back-ups. 2. Leaked screen captures and scrapes of private direct messaging. 3. Back-end aggregation of logs and messages, even for supposedly private SMS interactions. Forget it dude. We all know that whatever signals get placed onto the wire turn out to be spliced through passive beam splitters and land in an open S3 bucket. The ones that don't? Your girlfriend just screenshots it, and and tweets it out in the open for the world to see anyway. Whoops! There are no more online subcultures. Only distortions of perception enforced by impulsive, would-be moderators.
      - jniedrauer 8y ago
        There is still one place left on the internet where conversations more or less fade away forever after they end: IRC Sure, there are probably logs somewhere. User logs and server logs. But in all the decades I've been using IRC, I've never seen my chatlogs show up on a search engine before. It's just obscure enough and just low value enough to slip under the radar.
        executesorder66 8y ago
        What about bash.org?
      - claudiawerner 8y ago
- ip26 8y ago
  Another challenge is when your alt culture goes mainstream, now it's just culture. The alt community has to tack deeper to the extremes to stay alt. You don't need an alt board to talk about current events (aside from conspiracy theories)
  - ebullientocelot 8y ago
    While this is true, I still experience a little of that early-exposure-to-the-Internet sense of wonder when I stumble across a community that's off the beaten path technologically. sdf.org's Gopher service was such an experience in the past couple years.
- ebullientocelot 8y ago
  I don't think your two points are mutually exclusive, and suspect they are both correct to one degree or another. I live in a second-tier city working for a second-tier company and my daily life is already fairly cyberpunk! During the day I actively work on the advertising economy surveillance state, and at home I do things like install the Pi-Hole for my family and try to help anybody who will listen reduce their target profile for the eye in the sky. I mention this, particularly that my city and company are second-tier, because you don't have to work at FAANGM in SV to experience these things. There is definitely a sense in which I would be interested in at least checking out a cyberpunk community, but as other have mentioned, it's more or less culture now.
- StanislavPetrov 8y ago
  >Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community? I will when Cyberpunk 2077 comes out next year. That game has been in development for more than 7 years and looks absolutely insane. They have released 48 minutes of gameplay for anyone who is interested (I have no connection or monetary interest in this game). https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/22523/gameplay-reveal-48-minute-walkthrough https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/22523/gameplay-reveal-48-m...
  - erikb 8y ago
    If you can't recognize that this game will be mediocre at best, I'm already sorry for the amount of disappointment you will have on release date.
- celticninja 8y ago
  I think you nailed it there. We live in the cyberpunk world envisioned by so much if great cyberpunk media. Sure it's not as gritty and bleak, at least not in the West but I'm pretty sure that there are less fortunate places, where hi tech resides alongside low-tech in the cyberpunk aesthetic. Wikileaks, Anonymous, bitcoin, data heists, billionaires going to mars, VR, AR, stuxnet and cyberwarfare. The real world has it all. Edit: yes to joining a cyberpunk community.
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  >Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community? I'd be interested in that, but I stopped browsing Lainchan a while ago, for instance.
beloch 8y ago
You might consider asking why so many of the greatest cyberpunk authors abandoned the genre. Many science fiction authors idealistically try to produce stories they feel society needs to hear at a given point rather than just retreading genres that have been well-mined and which they feel aren't contributing to progress. Google Neal Stephenson and "getting big stuff done". Stephenson wrote some of the best books late in Cyperpunk's sci-fi reign, but later came to feel that portraying technological advance as leading to decay, inequality, and corruption was contributing to the stifling of technological ambition in the U.S.. When huge technological leaps are necessary to get past pressing problems like clean energy, space exploration, etc., does it make sense for pop culture to portray technological progress as a negative force that will lead to dystopias? William Gibson gradually moved away from Cyberpunk for a long period of time, writing novels that were set closer and closer to the present day. "The Peripheral", released in 2014, was the first book by Gibson set in what could be considered "Cyberpunk" for quite a while, but it's not really cyberpunk. (Note: Mild spoilers ahead) Technology does indeed create a calamity that negatively impacts world society in this book, but "cleptocrats" are just as much to blame for creating a dystopia. However, the book also shows some "big stuff" being done, even in the dystopia, and some pretty far-out tech ultimately prevents the calamity it created in the book's prime timeline. A fairly idealistic group of heroes actually change the world for the better using technology in this book, which is rather more optimistic view of both people and technology than is consistent with standard cyberpunk. While Ernest Cline was not an established author before writing "Ready Player One", it's interesting to note that this book doesn't really represent a return to cyberpunk for serious science fiction. The plot can certainly be considered cyberpunk. (Note: I have read the book, but not seen the movie yet). However, it's basically one long dose of 80's nostalgia, so the cyberpunk setting makes perfect sense for that book. Thus, it's not really science fiction in this respect. It's not trying to predict or shape the future. It's an exercise in wallowing in the past, and the form of this novel matches that function. I'm still a fan of cyberpunk, but I recognize that science fiction has moved on. It responds to the needs of society, and nightmarish technocratic dystopias are not what is needed today.
- the_af 8y ago
  I think a worthy and more relevant successor to classic cyberpunk may be bio/ecopunk or whatever it's called, like The Windup Girl and much of what Paolo Bacigalupi writes. It describes struggling or weird futures without the somewhat outdated trappings of cyberpunk, but with some of the same attitude.
SuoDuanDao 8y ago
I have a couple theories. I think there's a genuine attempt to subvert the countercultures and it's easier to do so now than ever before, the decline of 4chan didn't feel organic to me at all, more like the members of the community got crowded out by automated accounts. Then there's the fact that the /punk communities have kind of splintered, I try to get involved in a lot of ecopunk or solarpunk for example, and there are various aesthetics that people gravitate to depending on what they think the solution is. And on a positive note, I think that this might just be a year where a lot of people are building - groups like 4 thieves, the Odin, Blockcon are actually getting after it. People are fairly busy, but this year in particular it's the kind of busy that doesn't make much noise.
jMyles 8y ago
PyCon? DefCon? Ethereum? MAGFest? Speedrunning?
INTPenis 8y ago
I don't think it did. I was just like OP here, getting involved in the anonymous boards around 2004 because they were spreading funny images and links. But I was 19 at the time. And around the age of 26-27 I stopped spending time in that culture. So I think you just outgrow it. But those cultures are still alive out there. New people come in, some old people stay. There are always going to be kids who refuse the "normal" trends like snapchat. Who seek out alternative places and those alternative places are imo still websites. Apps will never breach this space because apps are too easy to adopt by large groups of your peers. The alt.kids want something tougher, a challenge. And most of all they want to get away from the throng. I'm just waiting to see persistent community forums in darknets. Of course I don't make an effort to track these things anymore but I'd love to know that it has become a reality. Anonymity is important because just like games lead to programming and hacking, anonymous forums lead to free expression and sub-cultures. It might look like they're just goofing around but look at what 4chan became. We were just goofing around but enough people came to goof around to make it a potential movement.
ataturk 8y ago
Um, probably because it was a thing back in the '80s and whatever resurgence it has had is more of a second or even third coming. Cyberpunk does seem to some staying power, but I taught a course on Cyberpunk literature back in '99. "High tech, low culture"--seems to describe our contemporary status quo just fine by these eyes. I would love to code with the Dixie Flatline.

Do you have any theories as to why it petered out? Like you I feel it's more relevant today than ever before but also can't find a growing or healthy community with that mindset anymore.

x220 8y ago

Aside from conspiracy-theorizing about current events (and I don't use that term pejoratively), people tended to discuss the same topics. New cyberpunk media doesn't come out very often, so people tended to talk about the same books, movies, manga, anime, videogames, and fashion. Some of the alt-chans with dedicated cyberpunk boards would run out of ideas to talk about pretty quickly, since there weren't enough posts that the website had to prune old threads like 4chan did. Another hypothesis I have is that cyberpunk media is not as captivating as it used to be since we arguably live in a cyberpunk world. In America there is unimaginable wealth inequality, with some cities having insane costs of rent for cramped apartments, with access to the best technology and medicine in the world but only if you can afford it. We also don't have to use media to imagine a world where digital corporations have a huge amount of power over daily life and the government spies on everyone all the time since both of those things are happening right now. I think we live in a cyberpunk world, it just doesn't have huge buildings, neon lights, and widespread punk fashion. I came in contact with a few guys who wanted to make another alt-chan with a different model (see what other users are typing in real-time, and all posts get deleted early in the morning) but it never materialized as far as I can tell. Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community?

n-exploit 8y ago
Maybe it's time to create anew.
starbeast 8y ago
Not an online one. If it was a BBS running on a cube sat, then maybe.
eindiran 8y ago
Are you considering making it materialize now?
- x220 8y ago
  I'm considering making an alt-chan that cyclically purges content.
  - miss_classified 8y ago
    By now, it should be obvious that your efforts to attenuate the duration of long-running content won't prove to cultivate an increase in the quality of participation. There are (at least) three aspects of online community participation, that seasoned users are pretty well-versed in: 1. Archiving, mirroring and back-ups. 2. Leaked screen captures and scrapes of private direct messaging. 3. Back-end aggregation of logs and messages, even for supposedly private SMS interactions. Forget it dude. We all know that whatever signals get placed onto the wire turn out to be spliced through passive beam splitters and land in an open S3 bucket. The ones that don't? Your girlfriend just screenshots it, and and tweets it out in the open for the world to see anyway. Whoops! There are no more online subcultures. Only distortions of perception enforced by impulsive, would-be moderators.
    - jniedrauer 8y ago
      There is still one place left on the internet where conversations more or less fade away forever after they end: IRC Sure, there are probably logs somewhere. User logs and server logs. But in all the decades I've been using IRC, I've never seen my chatlogs show up on a search engine before. It's just obscure enough and just low value enough to slip under the radar.
      - executesorder66 8y ago
        What about bash.org?
    - claudiawerner 8y ago
ip26 8y ago
Another challenge is when your alt culture goes mainstream, now it's just culture. The alt community has to tack deeper to the extremes to stay alt. You don't need an alt board to talk about current events (aside from conspiracy theories)
- ebullientocelot 8y ago
  While this is true, I still experience a little of that early-exposure-to-the-Internet sense of wonder when I stumble across a community that's off the beaten path technologically. sdf.org's Gopher service was such an experience in the past couple years.
ebullientocelot 8y ago
I don't think your two points are mutually exclusive, and suspect they are both correct to one degree or another. I live in a second-tier city working for a second-tier company and my daily life is already fairly cyberpunk! During the day I actively work on the advertising economy surveillance state, and at home I do things like install the Pi-Hole for my family and try to help anybody who will listen reduce their target profile for the eye in the sky. I mention this, particularly that my city and company are second-tier, because you don't have to work at FAANGM in SV to experience these things. There is definitely a sense in which I would be interested in at least checking out a cyberpunk community, but as other have mentioned, it's more or less culture now.
StanislavPetrov 8y ago
>Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community? I will when Cyberpunk 2077 comes out next year. That game has been in development for more than 7 years and looks absolutely insane. They have released 48 minutes of gameplay for anyone who is interested (I have no connection or monetary interest in this game). https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/22523/gameplay-reveal-48-minute-walkthrough https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/22523/gameplay-reveal-48-m...
- erikb 8y ago
  If you can't recognize that this game will be mediocre at best, I'm already sorry for the amount of disappointment you will have on release date.
celticninja 8y ago
I think you nailed it there. We live in the cyberpunk world envisioned by so much if great cyberpunk media. Sure it's not as gritty and bleak, at least not in the West but I'm pretty sure that there are less fortunate places, where hi tech resides alongside low-tech in the cyberpunk aesthetic. Wikileaks, Anonymous, bitcoin, data heists, billionaires going to mars, VR, AR, stuxnet and cyberwarfare. The real world has it all. Edit: yes to joining a cyberpunk community.
claudiawerner 8y ago
>Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community? I'd be interested in that, but I stopped browsing Lainchan a while ago, for instance.

beloch 8y ago

You might consider asking why so many of the greatest cyberpunk authors abandoned the genre. Many science fiction authors idealistically try to produce stories they feel society needs to hear at a given point rather than just retreading genres that have been well-mined and which they feel aren't contributing to progress. Google Neal Stephenson and "getting big stuff done". Stephenson wrote some of the best books late in Cyperpunk's sci-fi reign, but later came to feel that portraying technological advance as leading to decay, inequality, and corruption was contributing to the stifling of technological ambition in the U.S.. When huge technological leaps are necessary to get past pressing problems like clean energy, space exploration, etc., does it make sense for pop culture to portray technological progress as a negative force that will lead to dystopias? William Gibson gradually moved away from Cyberpunk for a long period of time, writing novels that were set closer and closer to the present day. "The Peripheral", released in 2014, was the first book by Gibson set in what could be considered "Cyberpunk" for quite a while, but it's not really cyberpunk. (Note: Mild spoilers ahead) Technology does indeed create a calamity that negatively impacts world society in this book, but "cleptocrats" are just as much to blame for creating a dystopia. However, the book also shows some "big stuff" being done, even in the dystopia, and some pretty far-out tech ultimately prevents the calamity it created in the book's prime timeline. A fairly idealistic group of heroes actually change the world for the better using technology in this book, which is rather more optimistic view of both people and technology than is consistent with standard cyberpunk. While Ernest Cline was not an established author before writing "Ready Player One", it's interesting to note that this book doesn't really represent a return to cyberpunk for serious science fiction. The plot can certainly be considered cyberpunk. (Note: I have read the book, but not seen the movie yet). However, it's basically one long dose of 80's nostalgia, so the cyberpunk setting makes perfect sense for that book. Thus, it's not really science fiction in this respect. It's not trying to predict or shape the future. It's an exercise in wallowing in the past, and the form of this novel matches that function. I'm still a fan of cyberpunk, but I recognize that science fiction has moved on. It responds to the needs of society, and nightmarish technocratic dystopias are not what is needed today.

the_af 8y ago
I think a worthy and more relevant successor to classic cyberpunk may be bio/ecopunk or whatever it's called, like The Windup Girl and much of what Paolo Bacigalupi writes. It describes struggling or weird futures without the somewhat outdated trappings of cyberpunk, but with some of the same attitude.

SuoDuanDao 8y ago

I have a couple theories. I think there's a genuine attempt to subvert the countercultures and it's easier to do so now than ever before, the decline of 4chan didn't feel organic to me at all, more like the members of the community got crowded out by automated accounts. Then there's the fact that the /punk communities have kind of splintered, I try to get involved in a lot of ecopunk or solarpunk for example, and there are various aesthetics that people gravitate to depending on what they think the solution is. And on a positive note, I think that this might just be a year where a lot of people are building - groups like 4 thieves, the Odin, Blockcon are actually getting after it. People are fairly busy, but this year in particular it's the kind of busy that doesn't make much noise.

jMyles 8y ago

PyCon? DefCon? Ethereum? MAGFest? Speedrunning?

INTPenis 8y ago

I don't think it did. I was just like OP here, getting involved in the anonymous boards around 2004 because they were spreading funny images and links. But I was 19 at the time. And around the age of 26-27 I stopped spending time in that culture. So I think you just outgrow it. But those cultures are still alive out there. New people come in, some old people stay. There are always going to be kids who refuse the "normal" trends like snapchat. Who seek out alternative places and those alternative places are imo still websites. Apps will never breach this space because apps are too easy to adopt by large groups of your peers. The alt.kids want something tougher, a challenge. And most of all they want to get away from the throng. I'm just waiting to see persistent community forums in darknets. Of course I don't make an effort to track these things anymore but I'd love to know that it has become a reality. Anonymity is important because just like games lead to programming and hacking, anonymous forums lead to free expression and sub-cultures. It might look like they're just goofing around but look at what 4chan became. We were just goofing around but enough people came to goof around to make it a potential movement.

ataturk 8y ago

Um, probably because it was a thing back in the '80s and whatever resurgence it has had is more of a second or even third coming. Cyberpunk does seem to some staying power, but I taught a course on Cyberpunk literature back in '99. "High tech, low culture"--seems to describe our contemporary status quo just fine by these eyes. I would love to code with the Dixie Flatline.