#dystopia

[cirilee]

RUDE. so rude, she sent you an application and everything !!

[weirdlookindog]

Brigitte Helm in Metropolis (1927)

[pointless-ai]

[hellsgate-roadhouse]

[free-and-to-none-accountable]

ITT: Rec me your favorite New Vegas quest mods. Preferably horror themed but I'll take whatever u got.

[whereserpentswalk]

You're a content creator. Or perhaps video maker is a better word. Filmaker doesn't sound right, you mostly just film yourself. But either way because you read stuff to a camera for a living everyone is telling you to get a digital voice box. You never thought of yourself as the type to become a cyborg, but it's not something you can see, and it really does get down that narration voice down more than any fleshy voice box does.

You finally cave in and get it. Your new voice is way more steady, a bit more feminine and high, strangely calmly enthusiastic. It's really weird hearing yourself talk with so little imperfections, it's not how you sound in your head at all, and all your freinds are kind of weirded out. But on the bright side your channel grows a lot, you've gained more subscribers in the month since you replaced your voice than you have in all the years when you had your biological voice. Everyone is so very proud of you, for the first time your parents actually support your job, and you have so much more to spend now.

After a few months a big network wants to sign a contract with you, it'll let you get the good sponsors, the ones that people trust, and let you crossover with content creators you only ever thought of yourself as a fan of. It seems so nice, though they do say that they can request any body part they want be replaced, or else you'll break contract, and become nothing once more.

After things go well for awhile, but your growth steadied a bit, your network request you take another mechanical body part. They say your expressions aren't very "on brand" and your face shape is a bit too 2050s for their liking, so they're going to replace some of your facial muscles with much more plyable machines. After the surgery your expressions are entirely manual, or set by an app, it skyrockets your channel, but none of your freinds or family even recognize your face, and it doesn't emote when you aren't actively telling it too, so most of your offline social interactions leave you stuck with an expressionless wide eyed stare. You realize they also added some online upgrades to your mechanical voice box, it sounds even less like you now, and you're not able to say words like 'fuck' or 'sex' or 'unionize'. You didn't realize before how horrifying it would be to try to say a specific words and not be able to, nomatter how hard you try.

Your career keeps going well, you get some upgrades that stop you from sleeping or eating that much but you don't really mind those. You also start having fewer and fewer freinds outside the industry and more and more freinds from within it. But after a minor scandal with an ex, your manager tells you you're going to get a new type of surgery: they say that it's not good for someone as famous as you to have body parts that aren't advertiser freindly, they tell you you need to have your genitals and nipples removed, with such a young audience it would be irresponsible not to. A marketing expert feigns comfort as you try to cry, telling you you'll be just like a cute little doll.

You know you can't resist. The company technically owns your face and your voice, if you tried to resist they could have them ripped out of your skull, leaving you a bloody mess. You enjoy your sex organs for the last few days you have them, trying to make the most out of what you'll probably never have again. When the operation is done you wish your eyes could still cry, your body feels so alien, your anatomy so weird and empty and like your body isn't your own. There's an awful voice in the back of your head (and in every comment section now) telling you're not a real woman anymore. You start to understand what people mean by dysphoria, your body is less and less your own every day.

Eventually they take almost all of your body, it's theirs to control. As the years go by you don't have bones you have metal and plastic, you don't have skin you have rubber that looks a lot like skin. Even your eyes are gone, you have new color changing eyes, with the same restrictive settings that Christian parents put on their children's artificial eyes, that block out things like nudity and gore, they censor away a lot of books and news articles too. You don't feel like yourself at all, you're someone else's now, someone's pretty little doll. Your body doesn't even look human now, more like a hyper feminine anime figurine, with no hair on its legs, and a face that never cries or gets angry.

You can barely look at human bodies now, they don't even read as real to you. You admire other cyborgs if anything, cyborgs who replaced their body parts because they wanted to, and look how they want, people with jailbroken limbs and organs that run on Linux, many limbed insectoids who don't try to look humanoid, and furries whose artificial skin makes them look like wolves or cats, or asymmetrical punks who have art sprawling across their metal chassises. You admire them more because at least you could in theory some day become that, become someone who owns their own body, even if most people consider them the lowest of the low, the most cringe the most unmarketable. You want so badly to become unmarketable.

Mabye you want everything to be torn away. You fantasize about your expensive body being destroyed, and ending up with boxy uncomfortable hospital model parts. Mabye if you're broken nobody will want to play with you. You don't know if anything can save you, anything short of a r*volution, and that's not even a word your eyes can see or your mouth should say, so it's so scary to think of it.

[mysharona1987]

[netscapenavigator-official]

Once the bugs get ironed out, AI Image Generation will forever change propaganda and how easy it is to make and distribute.

[myjetpack]

My latest @guardian books cartoon.

[cant-find-anyone-elseeee]

there was a moment when the people in the movie theatre and the capitol audience in the stands were laughing at the same things, having the same reactions to the games, to the deaths, to flickermans jokes, to the doctor's announcement...i wonder aren't we watching it for entertainment too

suzanne collins' books may exist in popular culture as "dystopian", but they have always been a meticulous and startlingly close social critique of our world. at what point does our own idolization of the movies and the books repeat that story? we watch just as the capitol audience does.

all dystopia eventually crosses a line from realistic futurism to current relevancy. how long will it take us to realize we've already crossed that line with these books? and the very people who need to realize this are the ones in that audience...real or fake, we're the same: consuming and consuming.

[ralfmaximus]

beginning in at least 2014 infotainment systems in the company’s vehicles began downloading and storing a copy of all text messages on smartphones when they were connected to the system. An Annapolis, Maryland-based company, Berla Corporation, provides the technology to some car manufacturers but does not offer it to the general public, the lawsuit said. Once messages are downloaded, Berla’s software makes it impossible for vehicle owners to access their communications and call logs but does provide law enforcement with access, the lawsuit said.

Yikes. Your car is probably keeping all your text messages and sending them to its manufacturer if you connect to your infotainment system.

The manufacturer does two things with this data:

shares it with law enforcement

sells it to advertisers for extra revenue

HOW WONDERFUL

[cirilee]

finally some lore !!

[resisteverything]

One time I heard a dude online compare new and obscure LGBT terminology to newspeak. This I think is one of the biggest examples I have seen of people with their whole chest ignoring the basic themes of 1984.

In 1984 the whole point of newspeak was that it shrinks. Ideas that could once be communicated now cannot. Everything is simplified as much as possible. You cannot explain complicated ideas of freedom or equality because the words no longer exist, or they don’t mean what they once did.

More specifically, there is canonically no word for “gay” in 1984. There are only two words for the entire spectrum of sexuality. “goodsex” and “sexcrime”. If you’re gay it’s the exact same as being a pedophile. And those are is the exact same as cheating on your wife, which is the exact same daring to fuck your wife just because you feel like it. Which is no different than literally any sex act that might offend big brother.

Do you see what’s happening? In 1984 can no longer ask someone of the same sex to fuck you because the word for gay sex is the exact same as the word for pedophile. And you can’t come out as gay because all you can say is that you did a criminal sex act, which means you cannot make a case for your rights either.

Inventing made up words to describe obscure things that previously lacked words would literally be a perfect remedy to newspeak. This language would counter every barrier to communicating the necessary concepts. Because it’s what literally every normal non-dystopian language does.

[hellsgate-roadhouse]

[pixelins]

helloooo? 2005??

[mintytown]

v1 and wall-e hanging out