𝕹𝖞𝖝 妛彁 :xf_nyxsigil: :labrys-45-sickle: :xf_nyxdisapproving: on Nostr: I just don't think it's accurate to call any city in the US 'cyberpunk' honestly. ...

I just don't think it's accurate to call any city in the US 'cyberpunk' honestly. it's true that the material conditions in US cities fit a lot of the themes of cyberpunk media but the US kind of has its own problems that don't have anything to do with technocapital acceleration creating semi-autonomous super metropolises, which is kind of an important part of what makes something definitively cyberpunk and not just dystopian where the state has started to become irrelevant and there's a massive divide between the rich and poor that is being driven by big tech. like, cyberpunk settings tend to resemble something like neocameralism/neoreaction and the US is just a failing state with a lot of systemic infrastructure rot because in the 20th century a bunch of assholes had the brilliant idea to let mediocre lobbyist failsons run rampant destroying the whole fabric of how our newest cities were built or developed. so instead of having like hyper-dense borderline lawless cities you just have overdosing on fent or sitting in traffic for five hours and working in a gig economy and sharing a suburban home with a dozen other precarious gig economy and retail workers.

the US is really its own sort of unique dystopia that should be called burgerpunk