Why did cyberpunk as a genre just sort of die?

Why did cyberpunk as a genre just sort of die?

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Who wants to read about a world identical to our own?

There were like two big studio cyberpunk movies I can think of off the top of my head this year (BR2049 and Ghost in the Shell) and there's gonna be at least one more next year (Alita: Battle Angel); I'm playing a new Cyberpunk beat'emup-RPG called RUINER off steam rn; Shadowrun and Eclipse Phase* are still big names in the trpg world and have been played among my group.

*technically not totally Cyberpunk but certainly has elements of it

Cyberpunk seems to be alive and well to me, user

It didn't, we living it.

This.
youtube.com/watch?v=sk1NkWl_W2Y

It's crude, to be sure, but it's real. Imagine twenty years from now.

Yeah, pretty much.
We just have less mechanical transplants.

Funny, I haven't run into any Replicants, corporate samurai, or Japanese flags at the local GM factory. The fact is that the future is here, it's just different from what Gibson et al. were expecting, and it isn't evenly distributed. It's called post-cyberpunk for a reason.

Cyberpunk is just today seen through the lense of the 80s.

>Imagine twenty years from now.

But the funniest thing is that the corps, giving us gadgets probably more social-impacting than what they dreamed of in Cyberpunk 2020, won big time and we're not even upset. We're not cyberpunk: we're post-cyberpunk.

At least all in all there hasn't been an ecocalypse still.

Alita is not exactly cybepunk, in the sense that society is too post-apo. GITS is an interesting case, 'cause actually it was TECHNICALLY cyberpunk but runs adverse to what at least we gamers think is the basis of the genre (in GITS the protagonists don't fight the man, they are the man).
BR is because... well, fuck, what else what cyberpunk even be, but I don't think it really has similar themes to C2020.

>actually as a matter of fact last year we did a small nostalgia campaign of C2020. Mexico. South of border. "So why aren't people going up north" "But of course, a wall!" "Pfft, what are we gonna call it? The Trump Wall?" At the end of 2016 it was a little bit more awkward...

But you do live in a world where mega corporations rule everything, governments are becoming less and less effective, and cybercrime is common enough that no one bats an eye when the information of millions of people are compromised.

While it isn't exactly dead, our apathy pretty much reduced it to just a pretty cool aesthetic. We'd like to believe that we'll all rise up, that we'll fight the man, fight the power, that dark and sinister conspiracies brought to light would shake the very core of our civilization and bring the old powers tumbling down. But fuck that! Keep us entertained and our apathy wins out every time. Memory is short, lessons are unlearned frighteningly quickly, if they were ever learned to begin with and I'd rather catch that hot new show 'coming this fall'.

Born too early. Stereotypical cyberpunk is set in an overpopulated society that has completely outstripped the Earth's ability to provide.

Don't worry though, Africa is predicted to have a population four billion by 2100; then we'll really be living in the cyberpunk shithole future nobody wanted.

>haven't run into any...corporate sams
Fucking poorfags

Cyberpunk went from social commentary about a very uncomfortable future to pink mohawks and being a l337 h4xx0r

twenty years from now we may able to simply regenerate lost limbs, as well as reverse aging.

Oddly enough maybe it was more because cyberpunk went off in a way more idealistic period than now. I honestly think that people aren't really that more apathetic, but they believe less in "explicit" fighting, in the democratic process and in the power of the single man or woman.

Hell, in a sense we think that CORPS are more easy to influence, and perhaps that's even true.

Also, terrorism is way less cool and "robinhoodesque" in 2017 than in 1987, I don't need to explain why. And let's be honest, terrorism made half of C2020.

Also computers are anything than semi-mystical objects now.

It's neither. People have become more disillusioned and cynical.
The world grows constantly more complicated and interconnected, so that it seems impossible for many people to be able to affect change, and if they do manage to change something, that this won't have unintende consequences and turn against them.
So some people take refuge in apathy, some in conspiracy, reducing the complexity of the world in a simple good vs bad narrative where the enemy is easily identifiable and they have as much understanding of the world as those who run it, those who want to thrown down everything with a revolution, those who hope that a revolution will happen by technology, and so on.

Even then, I'm guessing some would prefer a mechanical limb better than the original (stronger, sturdier, hidden tools, etc.). Also any treatment that could cause you to regrow a limb would probably take an extra 10 years of clinical trials, I'd be concerned about cancer risks.

They've been literally telling this meme since the First Intermediate Period of Egypt. Let's just say I have my doubts.

Technology isn't there
They exist in terms of pure functionality
I'm certain there is a Japanese guy in some GM factory somewhere

I'd argue it's not "no one bats an eye" and more "people don't understand it."

Both are extremely cyberpunk responses though.

you won't get much choice on what treatment the doctors are allowed to use on you.
And it would probably be longer for mechanical limbs to become as good as biological ones, much less better, except for very specific purposes.

It's dead. No one wants the aesthetic. That's steam"punk"

>it hasn't happened yet therefore it will never happen

It became irrelevant: parts of it became real, the rest laughably outdated.

whaat do you mean?
the "young people have no values"?

This. More people are aware of how grey the world is. Fuck, I feel bad when I play the Shadowrun videogame and shoot corporate security guards while doing a run. Those guys are caught up in the system too.

Cyberpunk as it existed before is a really really really fucked up place.

We live in it, more or less. And as usual, it's no longer exciting when it's real, because we remained drones.

We are talking about 4000 years of human interaction. We haven't seen it and there is no trend towards it.

Honestly I think that's a more compelling reimagining of cyberpunk: confronting the fact that things are "morally" grey but that you do them anyway, either out of necessity or not. I think that's a much deeper commentary on the system and our society in general: that even those who appear to be complacent or active participants in the system aren't necessarily evil, and that those who rebel against the system for whatever reason aren't necessarily good. Sometimes you kill a guy trying to feed his family by putting a gun to your head. You have to decide whether you really needed to go on that run, and you need to make peace with what you did.

In other words, I think the romanticized view of rebellion has died and that isn't necessarily a bad thing for cyberpunk - it's an opportunity.

What do you mean? Of course there hasn't been an apocalyptic extinction event but great civilizations have died throughout human history - and a lot of people died in the resulting chaos. There's no reason to assume our own society is uniquely immortal or that our descendants will be spared the violence. Collapse is inevitable in any system, rebirth is a possibility.

Cyberpunk is not dead, it has evolved.

That Cyberpunk of the 80s has been played out. Concepts like the antihero, the smiling but evil corporations, the dark alleys of oppressive cities, these concepts are found all over other kinds of fiction, to the point where they’ve become clichéd. Classic cyberpunk is cliché, just in the same way that zombie horror is.

However, Zombie horror lives on, because writers know that the danger presented by others survivors is more interesting and dynamic than the danger presented by the undead. Cyberpunk too, lives on in the Post-Cyberpunk genre.

Post-Cyberpunk isn’t about individuals fighting against the system, its about trying to define one’s self living INSIDE the system. No longer are the heroes fighting against absolute totalitarianism in favor of anarchical freedom. Instead, they fight to preserve whatever values they can still preserve in their futuristic, distopian setting.

Games like Mirror’s Edge, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, are perfect examples of Post-Cyberpunk. You’re not trying to bring down the system as a whole, to create a more free system. Hell, in Deus Ex HR and MD, you arguably ARE the system, fighting for the interests of Serif Industries or Interpol. In Mirror’s Edge, Faith is just trying to save her sister; she’s already come to terms with how the world operates.

The best example is probably Blade Runner 2049. K never meets the big bad, Niander Wallace. The main conflict of the story isn’t based around the Tyrell Corperation, but what K does with the knowledge that he might be more than a replicant.

Post-Cyberpunk plays with the assumptions of Cyberpunk, and instead of having the characters try to define the world through their actions, they instead try to define themselves, as much as the world will allow them. Post-Cyberpunk is often less dystopian than classic Cyberpunk as well, but not always.

It became known as China

Also, if you want a look at how Cyberpunk's portrayal has changed over the years, just look at the Shadowrun RPG's different editions. Old Shadowrun is real classic Cyberpunk, but the newer stuff acknowledges that you're just a cog in a wider system. At the same time, the setting isn't as horrific, and instead treats the semi-dystopian future like a new age of piracy, at least as far as runners are concerned.

...

I'm really tired of that argument, we have similar communications technology but we don't actually live in anything like cyberpunk (outside maybe China but who gives a shit about China?).

>no horrific overpopulation with miles of favelas
>megacorporations actually take obsessive care of their employees so that they will go on blithely developing technology without any thoughts of dissent
>we do not actually live in a fascist regime
>people are more concerned about ecological collapse than ever before
>still no brain-computer interfaces or intelligent machines, human condition still largely intact just with a wider audience
>architecture has not significantly changed, if anything brutalism is dying out
>living standards have actually increased for most people
>political landscape completely divorced from standard cyberpunk that has its own set of problems
>multiculturalism more ingrained and obsessive than ever, no weird melding of cultures and slang - and waning Asian influence in favor of Arab and African influence
>no balkanization of world powers or other significant changes to international borders and status quo

I don’t understand that whole “fight the Man thing”. None of my groups fought corporations because they were doing evil stuff. When they were fighting them it was either for money or for vengeance. Ludicrous notions like the greater good were absolutely absent from the groups’ vocabularies. Instead, money and survival guided the groups.

>kill a guy trying to feed his family
Cyberpunk died when we realized we wouldn't be pulling the trigger but likely be the ones staring down the barrel of a gun. Putting ourselves in the shooters shoes after that makes the experience feel kinda hollow.

What the hell are you guys talking about? The characters in Neuromancer were under no illusions about what they really were. Chase doesn’t give a damn about sticking it to the man, he just wants to get his drugs back so he can get both again.

That's Neuromancer in particular, though. Neuromancer helped establish the genre but it definitely grew into some anarchist rebel overtones - i.e. what was considered a "punk" in those days.

>just sort of die

What is Black Mirror?

I have to admit, I liked the version where Japan takes over the world more than the version where Somalia takes over the world.

>However, Zombie horror lives on, because writers know that the danger presented by others survivors is more interesting and dynamic than the danger presented by the undead.

This bothers me terribly. What's the point of zombies being the reason for the scenario if they're not the real threat, that 'man was the real monster'? Might as well be any disaster then, it doesn't matter. It invalidates the unique and utterly nightmarish concept of living in a world gone mad where literal corpses are walking around. I feel like that really ought to affect people more than it seems to in zombie fiction. Is there a decent psychologically-angled zombie story out there? Where the threat from the undead isn't their endless advance, partial invulnerability, disease or cannibalism, but instead all these aspects creating a terror in the human mind of a thing that should not exist?

>This bothers me terribly. What's the point of zombies being the reason for the scenario if they're not the real threat, that 'man was the real monster'?

zombies put pressure on humans. a weak but constant threat that is always there and always waiting to eat you. a lot of the appeal of zombie fiction comes from the low-key nature of the whole scenario (ordinary guys with ordinary skills in ordinary locations, defending themselves with homemade weapons, building makeshift barricades) because zombies aren't so dangerous that any random guy can't kill some. but they're dangerous enough to put pressure on people and make them behave in extreme ways.

you remove the zombies and people just settle down and grow crops and things get boring. or if you up the ante with a more serious threat then only supersoldiers can fight back and ordinary people don't stand a chance. zombies fall into a nice little niche.

Great answer.

Cyberpunk died when we all realized that "Revolution" can also be commodified by the man. Look at Trump; the loudest voices opposed to him are big businesses and publishers who stand to profit from a laughable simulacra of resistance.

Now I understand that, but you could have a number of other low key disaster in place of zombies, an ecological disaster, a virus, mad weather, etc. I feel like the undead as a threat are pretty under-utilized. I would love to see a properly zombie-centric scenario where they're a unique threat from the disease, physical and mental harm they bring. Maybe you can't just kill them with a headshot, maybe you need Dead Space-style dismemberment, or even need to reduce them fully to ash. I think I just want zombies to actually be dangerous again.

But that's because the real world knows about cyberpunk, so the dystopia is self aware and more duplicitous. We don't have Tyrell Corp. We have Google.

>twenty years from now

nigga please, all RnD is in gadgets... more smart phone shit

Also, later Shadowrun editions acknowledge the march of technology we experience in the real world: 4e is when the game acknowledges that the world is wireless now, so now we have commlinks that can connect to the Matrix without having to actually jack into anything. 5e builds on that.

Because it was speculative fiction, and most of the things it was speculating have either already happened, or now seem out of date based on our understanding of how technology and culture actually evolved.

>all in all there hasn't been an ecocalypse still
Just wait until the next time the housing market collapses, and we realize that we can't try to fix it this time because we also bankrupted the federal government.

fpbp

The world hasn't advanced worth a shit in 30 years. Every "new" technology we have now comes from the late 80's. The money doesn't want us to have regenerative limbs, androids and renewable resources. They want us to fight for oil, smartphones and ever diminishing wages.

>corp sec gets uppity and his ego gets upset and tries to pull a gun on me when he realizes I'm a runner undercover
>he was just telling me about his new girlfriend he met down at the local noodle shop
>adrenaline mod kicks in and i break his arm with my hydraulic arm hidden under my synth flesh
>now I gotta kill this guy cause he knows my face and he's making too much noise
>instead of finding myself cool and badass, as an adult in the modern world I realize he's just working a shit job and now he's gonna get offed by some guy working a shit job

Fucking Cyberpunk, makes me feel too much. Thats why I'm more comfortable in Fantasy lands.

>people surprised young men identify with Ryan Gosling in the new Blade Runner

Gee, I wonder why you sycophants.

Were people really surprised about that? I think everyone has felt out of place at some point or wanted to be special and that's all it takes to identify with him.

They don't understand that young men don't feel valuable, they feel disposable like Gosling was, and understand his desire to do something or be something. Plus, they still don't get why they'd identify with someone with literally a waifu.

These days, this thread pops up every day. Probably because of Blade Runner 2049. Which answers your question: it didn't die.

Poorly written twilight zone

...

it attracted too many edgelords. It'll come back though.

I'd hardly say that one film out of thousands made for a genre is a sign of health. Granted I wouldn't say it's dead, but more comatose; BR2049 being but a spike in brain activity.

My thoughts on why the genre is as is would be cliche induced stagnation, every popular genre eventually ends up with a formula which people become afraid to stray from, until a deconstruction appears reinforcing every cliche but being hailed as revolutionary, further cementing it's conventions. Eventually, people become bored of it never changing and move on to the next up and coming genre.

Cyberpunk has lived through this cycle and now it comes time to see whether anyone is willing to take a risk and truly revolutionise it, or whether it will try to return still bland and be forgotten. The latter is unfortuneately seeming to be the case when looking at the GitS and Gunnm adaptations, and even BR2049 is still a sequel.

Holding out hope regardless.

>5e builds on that
5e cannibalizes 4e's Matrix developments, before nuking what they make out of its husk back to the stone age with the retarded resurgence of decks, and has the gall to say that the entire situation is an improvement

What's more the justification is piss poor, and their stupid new 'quasi-Inception' Matrix level is utterly retarded

Women really think maledom is some big brotherhood that thrives on messing with them. Because that's who they are and they can't think outside of what they know.

Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno

where?

The World War Z movie does this. They spread quickly, move fast, and even prepared groups get overrun. It’s up to the CDC and other similar groups to really save the day

Well, in this case, no.

It sounds far-fetched because our steadily building knowledge of molecular and cell biology hasn’t done anything dramatic so far. The question was whether it would eventually spill over all at once with some radically new therapies. Up until a year ago, roughly, I would have bet on “no.” Some neat stuff had come around— CRISPR, IPS cells, bioprinting— but there had been neat stuff before and it didn’t result in anything special. However, a few more recent results have pushed things into “IT’S HAPPENING!” territory. Granted, it’s happening very slowly, which is why I t think the other poster’s estimate of twenty years sounds about right, but I’d say that biogerontology and regenerative medicine are now Going Places.

Of course, you won’t be able to afford any of it. Rich people only. But the capability will probably materialize.

BECAUSE WE JUST FUCKING LOST THE INTERNET

We'd be already there if politicians didn't interfere so staunchly with cloning, mother cell research and neurology in general. It's retarded that we still can't cure BPD because researching a neuropathology that mostly affects women "is sexist".

I wonder if Japan's bubble popping also put the breaks on the genre. They were both a strong influence in the genre and one of the regular producers of cyberpunk media.

Of all things I tought about watching Rogue One.

If there is one fucking thing that people would NOT believe if you told them in the 80s is that in almost 2020 the Rebellion uses terrorist bombing.

And the creator is apparently totally fine with that, Lucas liked the movie (which doesn't speak volumes about his good taste, I guess, but that's not the point).

I don't think I agree, but interesting post.

Well, it's a funny a thing. I'd say about half of real cyberpunk literature IS about that, but it's not a necessary trait for the genre.
>actually being the Man is surprinsingly common in CP, people point out to GITS and they don't realize there the protagonists are already contrary to the usual CP protagonists

But for us gamers C2020 was about fighting the man, in theory. In practice it wasn't, but funnily enough even the Corporate blurb has hints about that.

Ecocalypse as in "ecological". Granted, we still happily estinguish species, the seas are slowly rising against us, but you know, you can walk out of your home and touch a tree and hear birds singing. Which isn't exactly a given in cyberpunk.

Wouldn't say that's the point of K, tough. I mean, I think he would feel pretty bad even if he had a better career, at least.
He was just emotionally constipated, so to speak.

You sure did, government lackey. No more 2016 or GEC for you, traitor! Now fuck the hell off back to where you came from and shit out your propaganda there.

>regular producers

Hrm. Japan continued to do futuristic shit, tough. Also in the ninties the market was waaaaay more limited in what they brought overseas.

I guess it helped make people visualize the future shock, more than anything. Need a societal change? Take hints from a superfically understood culture that was marginal up to then, think only of darker shades of things, tune it up to eleven, and voilà.

We technically could imagine a China (what the fuck, an India, whatever) takes over the world scenario but the trick has gone stale and amusingly enough they're considered less alien cultures.

Because we're living it. And who knew? The threat wasn't mega-corps owning everything and everyone. It was the leeches and mooches that live off the mega-corps.

It's outdated and kind of silly
Japan is everywhere and rules everything.
The environment is completely wrecked but people still survive.
Megacorps are the only threat

It just doesn't fly in today's world

This may be a little /Pol sounding but bare with me, the 2008 resection happened.

Our would be corporate overlords should a degree of weakness that no one really excepted. They go off easyier then the common man, but they still had to get help from the traditional governments everyone though they would be making puppets of. People also turned to the goverment to for help. The state was in a great place to grow its power, its influence. What did it do?

Largely pissed that chance away, showed favoritism along traditional lines, and then later on the political class burned much of its credibility.

A not small part of cyberpunk is fear of a change in the who is in a natural state of authority. That the character of THE MAN will changed for the worst.

Nowadays the most common fear in the public sphere that THE MAN is every bit the clueless fuck that the vast majority of us are on matters of governance . That THE MAN is far more Homer Simpson then Niccolò Machiavelli.

youtube.com/watch?v=p_bOeIreLms

I am not just talking about the current US president either. In much of Europe and the Middle East people have been losing faith in their leaders as well.

>we do not actually live in a fascist regime
Stop assuming my gender.

People in general have slowly begun to realize that no one is actually steering the ship. That there's no god-like, omnicompetent cabal having secret backroom meetings to accurately and expertly steer the course of mankind. It's all just greed, opportunism and incompetence desperately trying to hide ever greater incompetence.

Also, a considerable lack of counterculture and political idealism (in the sense that one has to compromise, go for coalitions and all). This might appear more aesthitics to americans, probably, but here in Europe is terribly evident after... I was gonna say after communism got a natural 1, but probably a little later, in the 2000s. I have the feeling in Japan it happened before that, but interestingly something pretty radical happened between the seventies and the ninties in their political arena in this regard (as in back then they had pretty badass student movements, strikes even, all that jazz).

It's funny that counterculture died in the age of information and the consequent echo chambers, but I dunno. Maybe we just use the net for defining ourselves more.

Actually in cyberpunk the URSS thing was more important than people give it credit to (and kudos to Villeneuve to have at least some russkis around). It showed that another world was perhaps possible.

Want to run Cyberpunk today? Here's how you do it.

Faith in government remains high, but government organizations crumble due to inefficient bureaucracy and politicization leading to massive corruption within agencies, but not government as a whole

Cities haven't become ubiquitous and it's still easy to escape to the country for a weekend or so. What's harder is finding a countryside to escape to. Many natural habitats have been annexed by the various federal governments as a way of preserving the environment and mankind is limited in the ways they can visit. A relaxing day in a cabin in the woods may now cost as much as a weeks stay in a high class hotel in Beijing.

Because of subsidization and immigration from (and occasionally to) third world countries, the global poverty line has decreased substantially (many billions fewer people in poverty). However, the standard of living in old first world countries (a derogatory term, these days) has declined rather sharply as capital flows out of them to various places where it can be better utilized.

Religion has seen a huge revival across the globe. However, this has been separated into two groups - fanatics and moderates. Learning from fanatical Muslims, other religions have followed suit and often use terrorism to make statements. Christianity, Judaism, Paganism, and even Revivalist Shinto have fanatical sects unrepresentative (or semi-representative) of their religions as a whole who regularly engage in terrorism as a means to a political end. Most major cities experience one large (30+ casualties) terrorist attack each year.

Other crimes, however, are at a relative all time low. Murders still happen, as do robberies, rapes, etc... However, criminals are less forcefully punished, and instead treated more often with either drugs, reintegration/citizenship programs, or a combination to help them establish themselves as productive members of society - in most countries.

tbc...

There are still plenty of places where hard time and capital punishment is still the order of the day. Those places have slightly higher crime rates than the rest of the world (but nowhere near the crime wave seen in the 80's and early 90's).

Corporations haven't become overarching mega-entities, however many of them still command vast amounts of wealth and respect. Each of the top 100 corporations in the world are still richer than ~80% of the worlds countries combined. These corporations don't command obedience. Employees regularly move between companies as they seek the next highest rank on the pay ladder. Transportation technologies have made it so that a person can live in LA and make it to work in Seattle each day, vastly increasing work and advancement opportunities for most people.

Meanwhile, the average person wakes up at 5am. They put on their black and white suit, grab their briefcase and head out the door before their wife and kids wake up. She'll get them ready and have them at daycare before she heads off to her own corporate job at 7. The man hops on the bus, surrounded by 90 other people dressed exactly the same. As he rides down the street a Toyota Corrola passes by on his side, and he wistfully yearns for his own vehicle, so that he can sleep in for an extra hour each day. Environmental regulations have put such items out of reach for the average consumer, however.

He arrives at the mag rail station at 6am and watches the station TV until 6:30 when his train arrives. On the TV is a reality show - a rerun of last nights broadcast, most likely, where a woman has auditioned to be a singer. The woman has a good voice, but the judges say that singing isn't in vogue right now. They offer her a substantial contract to do pornography. She accepts.

The train itself is packed. The man has to stand for his 75 minute ride to Boston. It's suffering, but it's worth it to raise his family in Lexington, which still has a small town feel to it.

This is probably going to get lost, but I'm trying to write a Cyberpunk/Military Sci-Fi novel. I wrote a world that I think is basically conceivable, if you take into account certain factors.

>America fucked its environment, leaving the continent a wasteland
>Everybody moved to Asia, Europe and Africa
>As a result traditional national borders became blurred, as everything got even more multicultural
>corporations and criminal syndicates used the confusion to warp public perception with advertising and lobbying, and convinced everyone that traditional government did not work
>while this was happening a few large corporate players pooled their resources and established an organization that would preserve the old world
>they raised genetically modified soldiers from birth in an isolated environment, but by the time they were mature it was too late, the world had changed
>instead of using the soldiers to break down the societal structure, they used them to wipe out the last pockets of resistance
>eventually that organisation was itself superceded by a growing conglomerate of military and manufacturing enterprises
>it was decided that the two entities would merge, but half the soldiers rebelled and started a war
>story follows one of those soldiers who initially rebelled, then became disillusioned and just wanted to live a normal life
>he is of course dragged back into the conflict, where a number of corporate players are trying to fill the power vacuum

I don't consider it traditional cyberpunk, because there's almost no emphasis on the 'resistance' and it's more about someone coming to terms with the world he lives in, and what role he wants to play in it, as opposed to what he was made to do.

Cyberpunk came and went. It's already the past. The music, the fashions, and most of the tech that were imagined for cyberpunk have already come and gone, or in the case of some tech, found to be different and have different effects than what was expected. People who wrote about cyberpunk never truly understood what the internet was or could be.

Cyberpunk already happened and it just wasn't as cool in reality so it didn't last.

Steven King wrote a short story, 'Home Delivery' that focuses pretty well on the horror of the zombie scenario.

Don't forget that Ready Player One is also coming out. A different flavor, sure. But definitely grounded in Cyberpunk.

The interesting thing about GitS is technically they are parallel to "the man" in the context of the entities they interact with. And by the end the protagonist is off-res and disappeared into the the world presumed dead reborn as a new entity.

I do not hold that something must be about the dregs of society to be both technologically advanced and extremely critical of the established power structures of a world.

If you talk to the average person, at what level of interaction with personal computers, etc. does their understanding break down, though? For most people it is still literally smoke and mirror. I work in IT and anyone outside the the actual management pretty much thinks we are wizards. We literally fix peoples computer problems by looking at their computers sternly as far as they are concerned.

That is a lie. Also, Steampunk works just fine so long as you are telling stories of the laborers.

This is why I've been working on my own setting for running Cyberpunk games. One that is designed with an awareness of how classic Cyberpunk is a product of its time. Still more work, though.

I think that everything feels more gray now is the result of too many grognards insisting on tradition before reason. That a story can't be Cyberpunk unless you neon-highlight the 'Punk aspect.

I don't think that the "post-" portion is required. So long as the situations and questions presented are Cyberpunk then it fits. Inherently due to coming directly from the Cyberpunk the precedes it it can't be "post-" as that implies a similar result from a new method or approach. Linguistically from it's use in categorizing art/music.

As the train goes, the man dozes while standing. It's a talent he''s picked up, and he's become quite good at it. Many of the other suited passengers on the train are doing the same. The man doesn't like suits. They're stuffy and claustrophobic. Supposedly corporate culture out west is more laid back, and people can wear polos to work. The man hasn't worn a polo since his 3 day golf vacation 6 months ago. His family had enjoyed their time at the clubhouse, swimming, eating and drinking. He had enjoyed walking along the green chasing his ball. Perhaps he could save up enough for another weekend golf trip by this time next year.

The train arrives at Boston at 7:45, and the man takes another bus to his corporate job. It's a rather liberal job, there are no cubicles, and teams work together on whatever projects need done that they can accomplish. The man doesn't hate his work, but it doesn't give him a sense of accomplishment. Really, if he were to quit, someone would fill his place within the hour. His friends would miss him, but would move on quickly. He arrives at work at 8:30 to begin his 8 hour shift. Nothing unusual happens, and at 4:30 he leaves work.

He arrives at the train station at 6. Boston buses are crowded after 4 and he has to wait for 3 buses to pass before he's able to catch one to the train station. He arrives back in Virginia at 7:15, and catches his bus. His wife would just be picking their children up from daycare and feeding them cheap fast food on the way home, so they could be in bed by 8. It was important to the man and his wife that he have well adjusted children, and so they made sure the children got to bed at a decent time. Some times the man would make it home early enough to read them a bedtime story. Most of the time they would be asleep by the time he got home. Still, the highlight of his day was kissing them goodnight. He cherished the memory of their delight at real ice cream at the club house during his last golf trip.

>If you talk to the average person, at what level of interaction with personal computers, etc. does their understanding break down, though? For most people it is still literally smoke and mirror. I work in IT and anyone outside the the actual management pretty much thinks we are wizards. We literally fix peoples computer problems by looking at their computers sternly as far as they are concerned.

Ah, it is. But people don't think they're a gateway to magic anymore than they think cars are.

>he doesn't know about South America, Mexico, various parts of the US, various portions of Africa (especially Southern and Easter), the Middle East, the United Kingdom, or most of South-Central and Eastern Europe
>He doesn't know how major corporations operate, about Microsoft Villages. The fact that Boeing literally created a whole town to populate with its employees. This isn't limited to two business.
>there are people literally fighting against fascist policies and practices today.
>self awareness, but likely too late to reverse it due to capitalism.
>he doesn't know about existing computer-neural interfaces. He doesn't know that Apple and Google make their money on intelligent machines. "Human Condition" ???? lol
>never living outside the US where 100 miles isn't a long way and the meandering architecture of the midwest.
>living standard averages lie due to exploitation of outliers by a system designed to convince you that the shit they feed you tastes good.
>corporations directly subsidize policy. The only thing missing is outward extraterritoriality and corporate militaries.
>he doesn't live somewhere with an intermix of populations from disparate locations. He says on a Laotian grass cultivating video presentation forum.
>high potential of legitimate collusion of foreign powers, the EU and its modern fracturing due to economic distress and rising tension with fascistic political entities. Modern puppet colonialism. A world power having maintained a war on false pretenses for 16 years to ensure US access to opiates, leading to a national epidemic, and who knows how much further global impact.

So, what you're telling us is you're fuckin' stupid.

The man arrives home at 9:15 - after almost an hour delay due to a bomb threat. Sure enough his children are asleep. He walks softly into their room and kisses each of them on the head. He then goes and finds his wife sitting on the couch and sits with her to watch reality television. After an hour or so, he kisses her and heads to bed. He has to be up at 5 to make it to work on time.


--------------

Take this man, throw him into an extraordinary situation. His company is hit by a cyber-terrorist attack, and he ends up fired. Terrorists kill his children in an attack that destroys their daycare. Or, if you want to get really ephemeral, run a game about the man trying to distinguish himself from all the other men in suits. That game would be easy to start. Simply give the man a name.

Throw in some cyberpunk aesthetics - prothetics and enhancements, namely, and you've got yourself a nice cyberpunk setting that is believable because it's not far removed from reality. Being punk these days isn't about being a rebel - its about trying to be traditional.

>... was about fighting the man, in theory.
That's the thing. The only time "The Man" is being fought against is when sufficient personal pressure or monetary incentive is provided. Just as in the real world, in Cyberpunk literature/games, etc. the ones who literally were against a personification of authority were almost always deemed crazed conspiracy theorist. The Punk side is about survival as more than just breathing and sometimes you have to smash some shit to make sure you have space to be yourself. Show me a story where the protagonist isn't motivated by a personal grudge or money and I'll show you a story that misses the mark.

They're less alien as they have become more integrated. Most major US corporations would rather import fresh blood than hire local because they're more willing to go for lower salaries or with less managerial conflict due to cultural mores. The big thing about Japan is that structurally businesses are often insular. So they are alien, because - especially back then - it was harder for outsiders to get into their companies.

So what you're saying is more related to a representational change. The entities that were umbrellas for all the smaller companies impacted by the recession didn't really bat an eye. Our government officials are still bought with campaign donations (and off record bribes) and so in many regards we are just more acutely aware when a corporation is enacting policy. The recent FCC decision on Net Neutrality, for example.

Also, "The Prince" was satire.

So, exactly what has always driven Cyberpunk? Even if you toss in groups like The Patriots or Majestic 12 you have to account for their influence not being a magically iron grip on society. Just people making backroom deals, which is also something we just take for granted now. It isn't that no one is steering. It is that there are many ships with many different people steering. Which is in many ways more terrifying.

I think it is unfair to say that counterculture died out. I think it is more important to note that with the advent of social media and the broadening scope of reporting that less people are actively exposed to certain aspects of "counter culture." Most people self-curate their social media observations. I know I do. If I don't wanna see shit I remove it from my feeds. I mean, I try to keep an ear out, but when it comes time to interact on a non-informational platform I, like many people, do not value every point of view.

This is both beneficial (protecting people from being re-traumatized, PTSD a bitch) and harmful (limited exposure to new ideas allowing for the isolation-based predation on the disenfranchised into convincing them the world is against them, i.e., fragility in white-male masculinity) as it leads to people getting exploited by portions of the system.

So, it isn't that counterculture died due to echo chambers, it is that the media isn't including them in their narrative because that isn't where the money is and that those who aren't aware of it have closed themselves off from that on the sides of social media. Now, the other aspect is that in many ways actual counter culture doesn't get glorified in the same what that a lot of reflections on 70's anarcho-punk shits get glorified.

See, this is more how I think you do Cyberpunk today. You extrapolate on things the same way it was done in the 80's, but you start with the last decade or so instead. Not that all of these are the ways I would handle things. But they are all fairly reasonable.

>That's the thing. The only time "The Man" is being fought against is when sufficient personal pressure or monetary incentive is provided. Just as in the real world, in Cyberpunk literature/games, etc. the ones who literally were against a personification of authority were almost always deemed crazed conspiracy theorist. The Punk side is about survival as more than just breathing and sometimes you have to smash some shit to make sure you have space to be yourself. Show me a story where the protagonist isn't motivated by a personal grudge or money and I'll show you a story that misses the mark.

The rocker blurb man. Re-read it.

It certainly changed a large element of cyberpunk fiction, but quantifying an effect beyond that is a lot harder.
In Japan proper it actually seems to have had the revers effect (assuming there is any relation).
A large proportion of the iconic works we associate with Japanese cyberpunk came after the bubble burst, or just on the edge of it.

I meant that actually counter-culture died even if we're seeing echo chambers. One thing seems to contradict the other.

Self actualization is punk as fuck, bro.

Anyway, a few queries:

>What happened to South America?
>What was the direct and lasting impact beyond cultural merging of hundreds of millions of refugees?
>How long has it been since the initial event - a lot of this stuff would logically require a large time scale - and are people still alive from when it happened?
>What exactly were the last pockets of resistence? People holding on to the old structures of the world? That would be most of the population unless we're talking multiple generations?

Because the way it sounds is you've got a rather quick turn around. If the genetically modified soldiers age at a regular rate, are indoctrinated from birth, and at a proper level of military readiness to be a major force you're looking at about 32 years from incept date, depending on how the genetic engineering works. neg!5-0 functional development/programming of embryos. 0-1 incubation. 1-5 initial growth and emotional indoctrination. 6-12 psychological indoctrination, basic physical conditioning. 12-16 military history and tactics, intermediate physical conditioning. 16-25 practical military application, weapons and combat training, advanced physical and mental conditioning up to the end of biological development. 25+ Initial live operations as complete trials and validation period. This time frame would vary based on how clandestine this is required, where actions are being taken, and the risk-to-benefit ratio of using "green" soldiers.

As I assume the intent is for these soldiers to be basically Special-Special Forces, your equivalent real world age would be about 30-36 as a baseline age. Obviously you can cut this down a few years because "genetic engineering" but that doesn't beat out experience. And I would assume that they would be in conflict with people with experience. /ramble

I am always happy to hear about more military sci-fi. I got a weakness for it.

The death of the capacity for the monetization of information crippled the ability to sell entertainment for a profit. Publishers, newspapers and cable networks used to enjoy a semi-monopoly that allowed them to turn a tidy profit selling information thanks to the advent of mass literacy, among other things, now we have the internet and can just pirate everything and ad revenue is a hard scrabble. The music industry is stuck in an irreversible death spiral, newspapers (who've mostly migrated online anyway) have tumbled off the cliff but haven't hit the bottom yet, and TV has only been able to sustain itself by streaming and feeding people what is effectively an alternate reality.

I think it is unfair to treat it like anyone thought it was magic ever anymore than they thought cars were.

Sadly I lack a copy of CP2020 to reference for that. However I doubt that it contradicts my statement in any major sense.

And I meant that it didn't die out because people just aren't seeing it due to their echo chambers.

>The music industry is stuck in an irreversible death spiral
Unless you happen to actually be a musician, then you can just sell your shit directly and make several times the profit you would otherwise.