queenwhiskey:

mitigatedchaos:

queenwhiskey:

We need a name for when something is cool as hell in sci-fi/cyberpunk but lame as hell in reality.

Electronic cigarettes in a neonoir setting?? Cool as shit. 

Cryptocurrency in a futuristic cashless society? A pretty fuckin stellar concept.

In reality? we have both these things and theyre lame as fuck and in the case of crypto currency theyre straight up harmful.

Hey, OP, honey darling san,

You’re in denial about the fact that you live in cyberpunk.

Aside from the fact that real life is harder to predict because six billion humans are weirder and more clever than one,

All those ecigs and cryptocurrencies belonged to the underdogs, remember?

Who are the underdogs?

Well, Progressive Capitalist Liberal Democracy is the dominant ideology in the major cultural power centers in the most powerful polity on Earth. Its messages run on advertisements during the Superbowl.

On some level the underdog is beneath notice by the larger society or else subject to scorn.

You might say that the Socialists are the underdogs, but they have more cultural power than they appear to. What they lack is economic power – a twist worthy of the genre.

Remember how the masses were supposed to be distracted or coopted or unaware? What do you think all the factional boomerposting on Twitter is about? Or here?

The ruling ideology justifies itself through moral logic in many times and places in history – did you think you would be immune?

And remember how the megacorporations were supposed to cynically exploit the appearance of good to the masses? Is that not exactly what their token public wokeness does now?

Hell, look at all the media distraction by using a fucking meme President to avoid talking not only about war under this administration but the one before it.

So the underdogs are weird, or follow ideologies that will never make a comeback as we knew them (like Monarchism), or follow actual terrible ideologies, or ideologies yet to emerge.

Some of them are the economically displaced as well.

I’m an obscure artist / civic nationalist political theorist, relying on the changes in what style of art is considered legitimate expression due to Internet culture. I shitpost about bringing national enlightenment to the nation as wave/organism by teaching Americans geography.

I proposed a legislature composed of party think tank hybrids that are funded in significant part through virtual bets on the outcomes of their legislation.

I post using a developed persona relying on a drawn fictional character.

When I want news on Syria, I read the blog of someone who appears to be some kind of ‘channer lesbian furry animator shitposting about furbies in between descriptions of what all the various competing factions are up to, the fate of the Kurds, etc.

Much of my ‘sphere comes from a community that formed around a website founded almost years ago that had a heavy focus on AI existential risk to humanity while simultaneously thinking Transhumanism is both obvious and good.

So yeah, it’s the future, but don’t be so surprised that low-class signifiers are actually low-class.