3 ms·

Are you sure you didn't just describe RimWorld? Someone doing that in real life is truly disturbing

bandrami 2y ago
Remember that the universally recognized setting for a grim cyberpunk dystopia is not a theoretical prediction but a memory of an actual city just north of Hong Kong that was demolished 30 years ago
- thenthenthen 2y ago
  Which city? Are you talking about Kowloon Walled city?
  - bandrami 2y ago
    I am. The memory of it somehow became the universally-accepted built environment of the future.
    - tim333 2y ago
      It wasn't that bad. I wandered in a bit. Crowded but none of the evil stuff mentioned above. I tend to think of cyberpunk as more Blade Runner which is kind of spread out with room for flying cars.
- wrfrmers 2y ago
  Cyberpunk has always been, "What if what happens to those people happened to us?" "Us" being the relatively affluent and stable first world, "those people" being the put-upon urban poor and working class (which I usually summarize as "black Americans" for American readers - to shake them out of their myopia regarding the social and racial politics of the genre - but, as you point out, should include people in Asia and elsewhere). Its power has never been in its predictive ability, because so much of what defines cyberpunk is already happening. Instead, the consideration of, "That horrible thing can happen to me, too," opens the intellectual doorway (or third eye) to questions of self, cognizance, experience. The computers are just a light show, or a lens.
  - bandrami 2y ago
    Great points
- xg15 2y ago
  If you're talking about Kowloon Walled City, I found Gibson's essay "Disneyland with the death penalty" (and the fact that the essay blew up like it did) pretty revealing about how the actual preferences in (western) SciFi are. In the essay, Kowloon is not the dystopia - that is Singapore - it is the utopia: https://lateralthinkingtechnology.wordpress.com/2021/06/27/cyberpunk-is-dead-william-gibson-the-walled-city-of-kowloon-and-the-future-of-asia/ https://lateralthinkingtechnology.wordpress.com/2021/06/27/c... Gibson writes about Singapore's artificial "squeaky-clean authoritarian", style with almost physical revulsion, while Kowloon comes off as the plucky antihero that is overtly kind of a dick but that we all are secretly rooting for. I also don't think that Singapore would really qualify as an utopia. The death penalty is real and the democracy there seems to exist mostly on paper. But at least the state actively tries to solve problems in society and improve the standard of living for everyone. In contrast, Kowloon was a place literally built and run by the mafia, and by all records must have been hell to actually live in (as opposed to read stories about it). I feel a lot of cyberpunk comes over like this: Pretending to be a cautionary tale on the surface but at the same time, presenting it with such a kind of longing, wistful outlook that it's pretty clear the authors would love to be in that place in some way. Makes me kind of understand how we got to the "at last, we built the Torment Nexus" territory in the end.
v3ss0n 2y ago
It is getting darker than what OP said. I would say 10x more. There are many kids getting kidnapped and bodies turn up in rivers with organ missing on daily basis. Missing person cases sky rocketing all over social media , last month is worse.

Remember that the universally recognized setting for a grim cyberpunk dystopia is not a theoretical prediction but a memory of an actual city just north of Hong Kong that was demolished 30 years ago

thenthenthen 2y ago
Which city? Are you talking about Kowloon Walled city?
- bandrami 2y ago
  I am. The memory of it somehow became the universally-accepted built environment of the future.
  - tim333 2y ago
    It wasn't that bad. I wandered in a bit. Crowded but none of the evil stuff mentioned above. I tend to think of cyberpunk as more Blade Runner which is kind of spread out with room for flying cars.
wrfrmers 2y ago
Cyberpunk has always been, "What if what happens to those people happened to us?" "Us" being the relatively affluent and stable first world, "those people" being the put-upon urban poor and working class (which I usually summarize as "black Americans" for American readers - to shake them out of their myopia regarding the social and racial politics of the genre - but, as you point out, should include people in Asia and elsewhere). Its power has never been in its predictive ability, because so much of what defines cyberpunk is already happening. Instead, the consideration of, "That horrible thing can happen to me, too," opens the intellectual doorway (or third eye) to questions of self, cognizance, experience. The computers are just a light show, or a lens.
- bandrami 2y ago
  Great points
xg15 2y ago
If you're talking about Kowloon Walled City, I found Gibson's essay "Disneyland with the death penalty" (and the fact that the essay blew up like it did) pretty revealing about how the actual preferences in (western) SciFi are. In the essay, Kowloon is not the dystopia - that is Singapore - it is the utopia: https://lateralthinkingtechnology.wordpress.com/2021/06/27/cyberpunk-is-dead-william-gibson-the-walled-city-of-kowloon-and-the-future-of-asia/ https://lateralthinkingtechnology.wordpress.com/2021/06/27/c... Gibson writes about Singapore's artificial "squeaky-clean authoritarian", style with almost physical revulsion, while Kowloon comes off as the plucky antihero that is overtly kind of a dick but that we all are secretly rooting for. I also don't think that Singapore would really qualify as an utopia. The death penalty is real and the democracy there seems to exist mostly on paper. But at least the state actively tries to solve problems in society and improve the standard of living for everyone. In contrast, Kowloon was a place literally built and run by the mafia, and by all records must have been hell to actually live in (as opposed to read stories about it). I feel a lot of cyberpunk comes over like this: Pretending to be a cautionary tale on the surface but at the same time, presenting it with such a kind of longing, wistful outlook that it's pretty clear the authors would love to be in that place in some way. Makes me kind of understand how we got to the "at last, we built the Torment Nexus" territory in the end.

v3ss0n 2y ago

It is getting darker than what OP said. I would say 10x more. There are many kids getting kidnapped and bodies turn up in rivers with organ missing on daily basis. Missing person cases sky rocketing all over social media , last month is worse.