Cyberpunk totally did. And we are literally in a cyberpunk dystopia. Just… A shitty, boring one.
Yes definitely. I find it very uncanny how bad everything in this country is, but there is summer car sales commercials and ads for dish soap and movies like nothing is wrong.
Cyberpunk was created by extrapolating and exaggerating trends happening between 60s and 80s so they makes sense.
This is a terrible take. Every dystopian novel I’ve ever read features people working in one way or another except sometimes when the characters are teenagers like in Feed or Little Brother. You can probably argue the children in Brave New World didn’t have to work but they were being conditioned and low key tortured in subtle ways until reaching adulthood to fulfill their expected job roles.
What? Blade runner is exactly that. Alien too. Others sure too.
It’s at least implied in cyberpunk novels. We live in a cyberpunk world, we just have a bit of a neon lights shortage in most places.
Winston had a job. Talk about erasure of the working class.
We’re almost in the Brazil timeline
June/Offred had a job in the handmaids tale…
So did homie from 1984, it was for the government but still.
You have to remember that 99% of people talking about “dystopian” novels mean the Hunger Games and Divergent books, maybe also Harry Potter. Dystopian YA novels were best sellers in the US for like a decade, so most peoples’ image of a dystopian protagonist is a teenager with limited responsibilities outside “growing up” and “overcoming the system.” And after your “youthful rebellion” against the oppressive nightmare system, you can become a cop protecting it!
If you wonder why Americans are so bad at all this stuff, it’s because generations of us were raised on fake revolution stories.
This is why people should actually read 1984. It’s a short book and an easy read.
