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I don't engage with much cyberpunk media these days. It's not that I've lost interest in it - it's because I felt it having a non-negligible effect on my mental health. Cyberpunk, as a genre, is similar to other dystopian media in that it is a warning - a statement declaring what path should not be taken. Unfortunately, I can't ignore the feeling that the warnings of cyberpunk are not just being ignored, but seemingly being used as guidance.
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus
Suffice to say that reading warnings about this specific flavor of tech-late-capitalism while watching said dystopia come to fruition in real life wasn't great for my general mood. Make no mistake - while some of the aesthetic qualities of cyberpunk might be a few years out, it's rotten dystopian heart yet beats in this world.
It's at this point I'd like to divide off a section of cyberpunk: "Aesthetic Cyberpunk". I feel like this might come off a little gatekeep-y, so I'd like to clarify that this isn't my intention; instead, my intention is to make clear that when I talk about cyberpunk, I'm *not* talking about how cool rainy, neon-lit alleyways look. Even though cyberpunk has a very strong (and admittedly cool) aesthetic, I think that it is easy to reduce cyberpunk to *only* this aesthetic; hence "Aesthetic Cyberpunk".
I see this somewhat often around the internet; sometimes, it isn't even Aesthetic Cyberpunk that is declared "cyberpunk"; other tangentially related aesthetics such as the 80s-esque Outrun might get mixed in too. Perhaps this is a little pedantic, but I feel that such a muddying of the waters might make the warnings of cyberpunk vanish in the appealing aesthetic. Ultimately, I find Aesthetic Cyberpunk to be just as saddening as "real cyberpunk" - except with Aesthetic Cyberpunk, the source of that sadness is seeing an anti-capitalist genre defanged.
The culmination of the erasure of cyberpunk from genre to aesthetic, I feel, is people who enjoy cyberpunk declaring that they would like to live in the dystopia. I get it; it's a great aesthetic; but cyberpunk /is a dystopia/, for good reason. For a person to make this claim, I feel, means either:
I think part of the reason for the reduction of cyberpunk into it's aesthetics is the defanging of it's anti-capitalist themes so that it becomes a palatable, marketable aesthetic rather than any real critique.
I feel as though I have been unnecessarily harsh thus far; not that I feel my frustrations are misplaced. I'm sure that, were I to delve more deeply into cyberpunk, I could produce more nuanced takes on the genre in context wider than my frustrations with it's mainstream perception today. Unfortunately, I think I would be better served with utopian fiction, like solarpunk, for my escapism.
To be clear, cyberpunk also has myriad other issues - Orientalism being one of them - but these critiques are widely available, and my intention here is to write about my personal relationship with the genre. For now, cyberpunk feels less like an escape and more like a grim reminder. Perhaps that is the intention.
last updated: 2022-07-24