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I'm surprised more cyberpunk authors didn't anticipate that wars between corporations wouldn't be fought using hackers or "street samurai", but with teams of pr
by Porthos9K 7y ago
I'm surprised more cyberpunk authors didn't anticipate that wars between corporations wouldn't be fought using hackers or "street samurai", but with teams of propagandists competing to do a better job of bullshitting the general public.
Yes, I'm calling marketers and advertisers propagandists. As far as I'm concerned, marketing and advertising are nothing but private-sector psyops.
- dymk 7y agoBy that logic, my Tinder profile is nothing but self-sanctioned psyops manipulating people into liking me. I can use scary words to describe mundane things too.
- Porthos9K 7y agoYou're like the Devil on the cover of Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast album[1]. You think you've got Eddie dancing to your tune, but you don't see the strings Eddie is using to make you dance to his tune. 1: https://imgur.com/a/XOzzWnZ https://imgur.com/a/XOzzWnZ
- toyg 7y agoIIRC "Distraction" by Bruce Sterling covers that sort of thing.
- Porthos9K 7y agoThanks. I'll have to check that out.
- dredmorbius 7y agoOh, Brave New World, that has such creatures in't! (Ok, not corps, but definitely psyops.) Some Stephenson gets close, most especially the Snowcrash / Diamond Age arc. (Which I'd like to see him continue.)
- reilly3000 7y agoAs a recovering marketer I take no offense to that statement. I started my exit from the field when I was working with a PR firm that was running a "behavior modification" campaign. Psyops presumably has regulations and oversight; marketing has nothing of the sort. Want to convince a billion people to drink an addictive chemical known to cause colon cancer? Classic.
- Liquix 7y agoWas that a hypothetical..? If not, are you at liberty to share which chemical?
- Porthos9K 7y agoI'm thinking high-fructose corn syrup or brominated vegetable oil.
- reilly3000 7y agoI was referring to Coca-cola, consistently among the top advertisers in the world. Often things that are so large and commonplace, its difficult for us to see them as anything but 'normal'.
- mabbo 7y agoI thought to myself "that's a bit much, like advertising could trick me into drinking a dangerous beverage" then read your follow-up comment and realized I'm holding a coke in my other hand.
- Porthos9K 7y agoInsidious, isn't it? It's moments like this that I wish to all the devils ever worshiped by man that the left had jumped on the "red pill" metaphor from The Matrix instead of leaving it for misogynists and reactionaries to appropriate. Because until the Wachowski sisters brought in the "Neo is the One" plotline with the attendant messianic tropes, the relationship between Morpheus and Thomas Anderson/Neo was one of a union organizer showing a worker blinded by false consciousness exactly how he allowed himself to be conned by his bosses.
- navaati 7y agoFramed that way, it actually appears quite logical, because hacking and killing is illegal, whereas bullshitting is not, so it's the path of least resistance. Sueing is legal too, so propagandists and lawyers it is…
- Porthos9K 7y agoIt bears mentioning that SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation) can extremely effective if you want to create a chilling effect against opposition. Case in point: how much negative media coverage of Peter Thiel do you see after he sued Gawker into the ground for dragging him out of the closet? Thiel claimed that being exposed as gay "ruined lives", but involuntary public exposure prominent closeted individuals has long been an effective tactic in non-violent combat against conservative public officials and religious leaders who use their position to infringe on the rights of LGBT individuals. A man of Thiel's wealth and influence is surely fair game for similar treatment.
- wongarsu 7y agoThis world truly is a boring dystopia.
- seph-reed 7y agoAmazing quote. I love the concept of "Boring Dystopia." Might have to name a song that.
- Porthos9K 7y agoHow about "Beige Tyranny"?
- toofy 7y agoThere’s a good subreddit which focuses on the boring dystopian subject. Highly recommended if it’s your type of subject matter.
- dredmorbius 7y agoEchos of "banality of evil".
- Porthos9K 7y agoYeah, I know. I mean, what kind of half-assed dystopia can be described by lyrics from a thirty-year-old rock opera like Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime (EMI, 1988)?
- CodeMage 7y agoI would recommend "The Space Merchants" by Cyril Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl, and also the sequel, "The Merchants' War" by Frederik Pohl. They predate the cyberpunk era, but you'll find what you're looking for in them.
- Porthos9K 7y agoThanks. Adding them to my TBR list now. Frederick Pohl is one of those classic sf authors that I know I should read but have yet to get around to.
- guerrilla 7y agoHow is that not what Nineteen Eighty Four is partly about?
- wongarsu 7y ago1984 has newspeak, doublethink and a protagonist who's job is falsifying the newspaper archive. But everything is state owned, so it's "us vs the system" not the cyberpunk "Walmart vs Amazon" happening here.
- guerrilla 7y agoMakes sense, competing vs. centralized fascisms.
- Porthos9K 7y agoEvery corporation is a fascist regime. Every startup wants to be a fascist regime when it grows up. That's why anarcho-capitalists aren't real anarchists. They don't want to end tyranny; they just want to privatize it.
- guerrilla 7y agoPreaching to the choir.
- Apocryphon 7y agoI suppose the second columnist was more right: https://www.theonion.com/the-future-will-be-a-totalitarian-government-dystopia-v-1819594281 https://www.theonion.com/the-future-will-be-a-totalitarian-g...
- Porthos9K 7y agoI was trying to stick to the topic, rather than going off on a tangent about corporate newspeak. Not to mention the doublethink we all engage in just to remain employable in the tech industry.
- groby_b 7y agoI recommend "Jennifer Government". Still plenty of violence, but all in the name of PR. And a darn good read.
- Porthos9K 7y agoI've read that. But I don't think that's what many people think of when they think of cyberpunk. I was thinking more along the lines of works like Neuromancer and Snow Crash, and all of the writers who rode William Gibson's coattails (or parodied the genre as Neal Stephenson did). Not to mention cyberpunk RPGs like Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020.
- groby_b 7y agoHm. Maybe it's taking the "punk" part to literal that prevents getting better stories. I mean, the point (as far as there is one) of punk is anti-corporatism, anti-fascism, combined with direct action. That'll end up in street warfare one way or another. I'm honestly not sure how an actual punk story involving psy-ops would even look like. (Sure, the setup might be different, but sooner or later, heads are going to be knocked)
- Porthos9K 7y agoI think that a "-punk" story with direct action and psy-ops would probably incorporate culture jamming. Are you familiar with the term? https://www.thoughtco.com/culture-jamming-3026194 https://www.thoughtco.com/culture-jamming-3026194