Evolving Folks Project

The American dystopian is unique to the United States of America. This nation is an innovator of the sci-fi genre known as cyberpunk. For good reason, too, its origins as a nation are violent and grim. Its future seems to be no different. Wikipedia defines cyberpunk it as such:

“Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a combination of “low-life and high tech.” It features futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay. The New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 70s, with writers such as Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer, and Harlan Ellison, established much of cyberpunk’s foundation by exploring the effects of technology, drug culture, and the sexual revolution while rejecting the utopian leanings of earlier science fiction.”

As a younger man, I thought the American Dystopia would be a lot cooler. Movies like The Matrix, Blade Runner, and Akira made the dystopia future dark and gloomy, but cool. I long for those youthful, ignorant days when I thought those movies and books were spot on in predicting our future. Boy, I was totally fucking wrong.

In the West and globally, we have evil megacorporations low-key running the world. But the heads of these companies aren’t cool and swagged-out corporate villains of comic book and movie lore. We aren’t dealing with Dr. Doom or Lex Luthor. Nope, we have doofus tech bros who are losers and spend their fortunes trying to make everyone’s life miserable since they didn’t get to date the prom queen in high school. Yes, the revenge of the nerds is real, but not as funny as the crass 80’s movies.

As a youth, I was a geek, but I was not a hateful nerd. I had actual friends in high school and college. I’m still friends with many of those people today, and I’m at the significant age of 41. But that’s not the case for men like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Peter Theil, to name a few. These assholes have completely embraced right-wing nonsense. Elon Musk will get on Twitter and cry about things being too “woke” or “DEI.” They use those codewords because they really want to say the N-word again, like it’s the 1950s. Zuckerberg and Musk have bankrolled conservatives like Trump, Milei, and other far-right officials to bring about a world of Nazis 2.0. Yeah, the West is collapsing because of evil dweebs. Men like Zuck and Musk had to buy friends because their personalities were so terrible no one liked them.

Remember, before Zuck created Facebook he created Facemash a site to rate all the girls in college who dissed him. He could have improved himself or got some therapy years later. Zuck could afford a good therapist because he’s pretty rich. But nope, he just wants to become a MMA bro and wear gold chains to finally feel tough. That trust fund baby Elon Musk, who invented nothing, just invested. I’d invest too if my dad was a wealthy emerald mine-owning wannabe Nazi too. Musk is wreaking political havoc across the globe to ensure that he becomes the world’s first Trillionaire. He says the West has too much empathy, which is a total lie. But he and his CEO buddies wanted the public to have empathy for him and his fellow CEOs after the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO in December 2024.

I guess they want compassion for the rich and for the poor. Well, fuck the poor, in their opinion. They’ve embraced the sexist and racist fools like Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, and Andrew Tate. Yes, they’ve become bigots to impress other men instead of getting therapy to work out their mommy and daddy issues. Psychopaths seem to stick together, and they have an army of online sycophants to support their insane worldviews.

It’s not a cool future. I believed that our Cyberpunk world would be like the hit video game Cyberpunk 2077. Reality shows us that our killer robots aren’t the T-2000 from Terminator 2 or a rogue AI program like Agent Smith from The Matrix. Our machines are unmanned drones that rain down fire on innocent civilians in Somalia or Gaza because Israel has a right to “defend” themselves or something.

In the U.S., our body mods aren’t as cool as the movies or sci-fi books. I hoped we’d one day have the cool cyber tech to make us true cyborgs like RoboCop. Or be able to download new skills in a blink of the eye like Trinity in The Matrix. Instead, we have shitty smartwatches, BBLs, Mar-a-Lago facelifts, and butt hole bleaching. USA #1!

There are no flying cars either. Just shitty Cybertrucks that catch on fire or have to be recalled because they used the wrong glue. Or the self-driving cars that run over people. No cool flying hoverboards like Back to the Future. Which I loved as a kid. Our current hoverboards don’t fly, and they’ll blow you up, too. Hey, at least we have social media and Zoom calls. Even though everyone hates Zoom because it’s just used for work calls, that could have been an email. Yes, we live in a shit timeline in our dystopia. Our dystopian lives aren’t us riding flying motorcycles under neon-lit cities. It’s watching the worst tech bros in history tell us that the problem in the world is the poor. And that black people and immigrants have ruined everything for red-blooded white guy “alpha males” like Mr. “hair plugs” Elon Musk or Mr. “mid-life crisis” Jeff Bozos. None of these fuckers minded their own business like Tom from Myspace. Myspace now seems like the good old days.  

Our dystopia is goofy as hell and a Trainwreck. I hope folks will fight back, but sometimes I remember the words of the legendary comedian George Carlin: “The world is a Freakshow, and in America, you have a front-row seat.” I just thought the future would be a lot cooler, and its corporate villains wouldn’t be such losers. But reality is always stranger than fiction.