For that matter, even when you're living in a cyberpunk dystopia it's still in a sense a matter of perspective (if you go by the textbook definition of a dystop

For that matter, even when you're living in a cyberpunk dystopia it's still in a sense a matter of perspective (if you go by the textbook definition of a dystopia as a terrible place to live). This was really driven home to me when visiting Shanghai. Americans of course hear about the sweatshops, industrial espionage, oppression of ethnic minorities, and conflicts over disputed territory. But if you're a welcomed moderately upper-middle-class visitor in Shanghai and thus don't really see any of that, it's a really nice place to visit (except for the heat and smog, and probably not during a global pandemic). Not unlike how San Francisco is a lovely city as long as you avoid certain areas. On the other hand, I think you can still overall call such places dystopias due to high disparity in available opportunity which goes hand in hand with all kinds of problems in society at large.