By Bill “Cyberpunk Apologist” Crowe
I’m sure if you’re reading this, you’ve heard of Cyberpunk 2077 – simultaneously the biggest disappointment in gaming history to some… and yet still the best-selling game of all time to all. Simply put, it’s a controversial topic. People love to love it, people hate to love it, people love to hate it, and people hate to hate it. If that last sentence was confusing, then I’m sure you can envision just how much of a migraine this entire ‘debate’ is.
Interestingly enough, we’re not here to talk about the video game itself. You see, that’s a topic for another time and another not-so-biased writer. While I’d love to write about the shortcomings and the successes of the game, we’re here to look at the world of Cyberpunk (and Cyberpunk-related settings like Blade Runner) and see how it stacks up to ours. We’re not living in a dystopia, are we?
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Well… let’s start with some facts.
We live in a technocracy. Technology has been improving at an absolutely exponential rate. Tech, for the most part, rules our lives. I’ve spent a year in quarantine and would have fully lost my marbles months ago if I didn’t have a computer. Like it or not, our lives are governed by the Net™. If you tell someone from a century ago that our lives would be built around a machine and an invisible force that connects us all, they wouldn’t believe you for a second. You’d probably be labeled various harmful words like “insane” or “silly”. Trust me.
Anyways, let’s get back to the matter at (cyber)hand. Let’s ask ourselves a question:
What defines a ‘cyberpunk’ setting?
Low life, high tech, a superficial, ad-infested, corporation-run society, and finally, wealth gaps.
Starting off, we have to face the music: a huge number of people on planet Terra (that’s a fancy way of saying Earth) are living at or below the poverty line, barely scraping by and struggling to survive. A bit of a grim turn, but it’s a reality that we have to grapple with. People are suffering. There are still some of us who are going hungry, thirsty, living in war-torn countries, in the middle of revolutions, tumultuous times and just generally harmful situations. Low life? Check.
Next, we have high tech. We’ve covered that. I’m sure 30-year-old David from 1924 would look at our world and call it science fiction (or that time’s equivalent). Now, you may be asking: “Hey, Mr. Cynical Writerman! Cyberpunk is about cybernetics and cyborgs and pretty neon lights! Where’s that in our world?”
Well… we can check that off the list, because we’re pretty damn close.
Enter Neuralink: a company (that of COURSE Elon Musk is part of) whose mission statement is “designing the first neural implant that will let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go”. The first NEURAL IMPLANT. Wanna see a terrifying image that is being used on their website right now?
Yeah. Terrifying. Cybernetic implants? (Eerily close to) check! Of course there are more augmentations such as prosthetics that help the disabled. These are much less unnerving and a whole lot more wholesome – but what’s stopping strides in these fields from eventually allowing Mary to get herself a brand spankin’ new chromed-out arm? Nothing but time and money.
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“Pffft. You’re telling me we live in a superficial and ad-ridden society?”
Yeah. I doubt this needs to be discussed. We as a species and society are (mostly) selfish, self-absorbed, and self-interested. Self, self, self! How can I be better? How can I get richer? How can I get everybody to love and respect and treat me as the GOD amongst PEASANTS that I am?? Ahem. Excuse me, got a little ahead of myself. As for ads, I can’t go an hour without seeing a video, image, or block of text showing me a product or service that I really, really, don’t give a crap about. This also factors into the corpo-run society we just so happen to find ourselves living in. Companies rule the world… and there’s no way around that either. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat OWN your information and we all, pretty easily, let them. I’m sure we’ve all seen bizarrely specific ads tailored to us directly. I can’t be the only one to have seen an “Only REAL Garfield girls are born in March” type shirt, right? …right?
Wait, what’s that sound? Oh wow! It’s Bill™ Storytime™! This is going to sound like something way outta left field, but bear with me here. This happened about a year and a half ago and is what spurred my absolutely rational and unbridled hatred for ads. So here’s the thing. I’m a surrogate kid. That means my mother is not my biological mother. I have never, EVER told that to anybody over text, on social media, over chat in a videogame, or on a blog post article for an animation class at LMU (…wait a minute). Exposition over. So, one day I was scrolling through Instagram after I had posted a drawing as a humble offering to the almighty Mark “Herald of R’lyeh” Zuckerberg and what did I see? An ad for a mug, but not just any mug.
“I know you’re not ‘technically’ my mom […]”
Now you get to see this affront to privacy. Orwell would be rolling in his grave.
Three cheers for surveillance capitalism! If that’s not dystopian as all hell, I don’t know what is.
Alright, onto heavy wealth gaps. Elon “TechnoJesus” Musk. Bill “the Despoiler” Gates. Jeff “Literally the Devil” Bezos. What do all of these rich straight white men have in common? Yes.
See, we live in a world where people have such exorbitant amounts of money that the human brain can’t even comprehend the number (https://futurism.com/what-is-a-billion-2). We also live in a world where denizens of “the greatest country in the world” can’t live with a roof over their heads. How do we deal with this on Earth? Spikes on benches in the UK, hostile architecture pretty much everywhere, and virtually nothing to help them get back on their feet (I’m talking about the majority, I know for a fact that there are people and organizations who selflessly help those who are in need). Also, wanna know a fun fact? In some cities in the United States of America, it is illegal to be homeless (https://www.chn.org/voices/fact-week-u-s-cities-made-illegal-homeless/). Messed up, right?
Oh, you can’t afford overpriced living accomodations, lost your job because of Covid-19 and can’t get by while the government does the equivalent of sit back and watch with a bucket of popcorn? Sorry, that’s illegal! Take a hike, freeloader!
All of this is starting to sound pretty dystopian, isn’t it?
Imagine this:
“The year is 2089, and life isn’t free.
We’ve got ads that know unshared private information, overwhelming police brutality, and corporations that run your life and know everything there is to know about you – but hey, kill the pain with mental implants that let you control your phone wherever you go. Whether you like it or not, you’re living in their world.
All we’re trying to do is survive… and that still costs you a pretty penny.”
Want to know the only difference between that campy word-spew from a young adult dystopian novel and our world? The date.
Do yourself a solid and think about what our world would look like to an outsider. It’s not a good look, is it? We’re quickly hurtling towards enacting our best impression of the setting for Dystopian Dreams 2: Revelations Reloaded: Fates. Joking and totally fictitious titles for YA novels aside, that’s not somewhere you want to live. It sucks to live in dystopian settings, but that’s the point.
Alright – we’re almost at the finish line here, so I’ll leave you with some words from renowned tabletop RPG legend Mike Pondsmith, one of my favorite creators of all time (who created the Cyberpunk setting as we know it back in the 80s).
He recently said that “Cyberpunk was a warning, not an aspiration.” I couldn’t agree more. Sure the lights are pretty, the cybernetic upgrades are flashy and something I’d love to have, but the side effects of that drug cause more than it cures.
Why not take a second and ruminate on some of his more unsettling words. Step back and ponder “what it means to look out your window and see too much of the dystopian future […] become the dystopian present.” I mean, the first iteration of his RPG system was called Cyberpunk 2020.
See you in the future, choom.