7
points
boopity2025
Joined 47 karma
- boopity2025Because class is an actual construct where as age is not? I think your point is somewhat disingenuous
- appreciate it thanks
- 2 points
- yeah fair take on the vibe shift. to a lot of younger folks tech isn’t mystic anymore, it’s HVAC. the shiny stuff from old cyberpunk reads like “engineering backlog,” so the romance bleeds out
my point is a bit orthogonal: even if cyberpunk-as-aesthetic ages out, why doesn’t the replacement look like neo-shanghai when the built world clearly does. three boring forces:
canon lock-in. art teams reuse the same visual grammar because it ships on time: rain, stacked kanji, noodle carts, neon. low risk, instantly legible etc etc
incentive gradient. being specific about china is a liability if you want the big market, so productions either go “pan-asia blur” or retreat to retro-japan nostalgia that feels safely fictional
reality tax. the current dystopia is LEDs, QR rails, access gates, payments, logistics. it’s structural, not cinematic. the camera loves neon, spreadsheets and turnstiles not so much
on the korean point, agreed that look is ascendant. it’s globally cool, politically safer, and has a whole export machine behind it. that actually supports the claim: we swap in the aesthetics that are both fashionable and low-friction to sell
so yeah, “tech is normal now” explains the cooling. the essay’s angle is just that economics and politics still decide what tomorrow is allowed to look like on screen, even after the vibe moved on
- Yea while i dont disagree with you, i think the japanification of the future as scene in the 80s and 90s is actually the core issue at play. We used japan because it was booming until it wasnt, and we dont use china as the future because its a real threat, unlike allied japan was.