We are Already in the Dystopia

[SammEater]

I think the worst part is when you try to explain this to someone and they just go: "It just your nostalgia talking. Things are better than in your era"

[RobertLutece]

That "Happiest Childless Millennial On Earth" picture is nightmare fuel.

[apolloparker]

I'm 24 and everyone around me is simply just clocked out. Ever since COVID it's like we got shifted into this grey area of the old world. No one can find good jobs. No one can find someone decent to be in a relationship with. No one can find somewhere to live. No one knows what to do anymore.

[malsypright]

Utopia sounds like a place I'd crawl under barbed wire to get away from

[whitemagus]

I work in Portland Oregon so I have lots of lefty friends and coworkers. I've asked many, "weren't things better in the 90s? Weren't things chill and you could do and say whatever you wanted?" They all say, yes, those were better times. ALL OF THEM. They all say yes. They I ask, "well maybe we should return to 90s policies and laws..." They then respond, "oh no, that wouldn't be progressive at all". Again. ALL OF THEM. Every single one responds basically the same way.

They all know that America was greater in the 90s, but none can say it. They all must say that America was never great and the emperor's clothes are magnificent. It's sad to see them ALL living a lie and every day speaking what they know to be false.

[pizzatopsy]

The future was supposed to be shinny and chrome….and instead we got Gray blocks and Desaturated colors. We live in Demolition Man

[rogueraven]

The Nobel prize is a good example. Originally intended to reward people for their contributions to humanity now it’s used to guide humanity as it were. The subtle shifts that add up.

[carlkermode]

The irony of ending such an eloquent speech with another advertisement for another product is not lost on me.

[cleverduck]

In regards to why McDonalds and Pizza Huts, and other fast food restaurants changed the branded, themed architectural styles of their buildings to something more brutalist and generic is more to do with technical reasons of how these businesses operate. McDonalds is not a restaurant company. It is a real estate company, that makes the majority of its money by leasing the properties that it owns to small business franchise holders, and enforcing brand standards and corporate directives through those leasing agreements. What McDonalds and Pizza Hut found during the 90s, when many of these franchisees were closing down their locations, either because they weren't profitable anymore, or the owners had reached retirement age, and didn't have anyone to hand the reigns over to, is that the themed buildings with distinctive architecture were not easy to unload in the real estate markets. Those buildings sat vacant and unused for most of the 90s and 2000s, until the price dropped on them enough that someone wanting to open a chiropractic clinic, or insurance office could afford to buy the property and renovate it to their needs.
The new style McDonalds and Pizza Huts, or whatever other of your favorite franchise are depressing, generic, and brutalist, but they're easier to offload when the market changes, and the franchise shuts down.
And I'm not saying that's a good thing, or desirable to society as a whole, just that that is the actual, technical reason why buildings are trending this way.

[henryasselin]

I was thinking this the other day. We're already in it folks

[SomeGuy-hrog]

I'm early so I'll post a cliche: Utopia, Dystopia, same thing.

[binaryflat]

I have been an avid naturalist all of my life, and I notice nature is not what it used to be. Years ago I could observe a single Milkweed plant, and it had a microcosm of insects on it. It had bees, wasps, beetles, true bugs, and butterflies, all doing their thing. Now I can walk by a whole colony of Milkweed, and see only one bee, or butterfly. I mention this to folks and get no response. The pests like ticks, chiggers, and mosquitoes seem to be legion, however.

[kaybeiz]

Thank you for calling out therapy for what is. 🙏 The purpose of therapy: "to train people who know that they are living an unhealthy and unnatural lifestyle, to accept this fate, and not fight against it."

[johndoh]

All the good dystopias start out with the protagonist seeing everything as normal.

But yeah... Been in them for a while.

[RaeNeil]

Nobody can claim that life is better now than the 80s, 90s, 00s. Yes technology may be, but every day life isn’t. Pubs are dead, high streets are graveyards, socialising is dying. Life was better when things were simpler.

[MuhammedMuhammed-xdqo]

It's not that the yearning for dystopian fiction has dried up, it's that corporations have totally seized control of media, and the gatekeepers they employ at the basic level of, say, book publishers are mostly privileged women who not only willingly enforce corporate ideals but also have a natural disinclination toward themes like dystopia...unless it's filtered through a lens of sex among the privileged class, like the handmaid's tale.

[arandompasserby]

Regarding the point you mentioned about therapy - as someone who had therapy and it was useless, I always struggled to competently express why it was I hated it and why it was so useless. But then one day, I came across an article talking about why the people of Rwanda threw out Western therapists after the Rwandan Genocide.

*"When in Rwanda, interviewing women raising children born of r*pe for another book, Solomon mentioned his experience in Senegal to a Rwandan man who ran an organisation helping these women. The Rwandan told Solomon they had similar ceremonies in his country and that the disconnect between the western and traditional approaches to treating mental health had caused problems in the immediate aftermath of the genocide. 'Westerners were optimistically hoping they could heal what had gone wrong, ' says Solomon. 'But people who hadn’t been through the genocide couldn’t understand how bad it was and their attempts to reframe everything were somewhere between offensive and ludicrous. The Rwandan felt that the aid workers were intrusive and re-traumatising people by dragging them back through their stories.'

"As the Rwandan, paraphrased by Solomon, puts it: 'Their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better. There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. Instead they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave.' "*

Those two paragraphs really opened my eyes. Thank you, unnamed Rwandan man running an organization to help women who have been subjected to something so horrible - though our worlds may be very different, I thank you for helping me make sense of what is wrong with mine.

[DjDeadpig]

We truly have fallen. We lost the islands and at this rate, we may as well just expect Labour gives the Falklands to Argentina. At least Milei would care for them more after we sold away our sovereignty and our land.

The sun now truly sets on the once empire now commonwealth.

[dereklamb]

I honestly feel like the internet and cell phones have to be banished completely for society to begin to heal.

[gavinvick]

We’ve always asked “can we do it” and never “should we do it”