If the cyberpunk style was meant to warn us away from a capitalistic, dystopian future hellscape, what function does it serve when that hellscape is already right here? Cyberpunk 2077 is arguably one of the mainstream modern examples of the style from which it takes its identify, and I bear in mind quite a lot of dialogue and writing in regards to the recreation when it launched in 2020, arguing that the dystopia it depicts had already arrived. When the sport first launched, I lived in a Bible Belt podunk and my time in huge cities had been fairly restricted, however though I now dwell in New York Metropolis, I don’t even must look out my window to see indicators that the world CD Projekt Pink and R. Talsorian Video games created is already right here. It’s normally everywhere in the information cycle, inescapable in on-line headlines and my social media feeds.
Cyberpunk 2077 swings forwards and backwards on the pendulum from “considerate meditation on what it means to be human in a depersonalizing company hellscape” to “satire that often feels so comically exaggerated, it’s like a Borderlands gag.” However the information is someway getting stupider by the day, as C-suite executives and tech megalomaniacs with cult followings are doing all the things of their energy to depersonalize the human expertise. We’re just about there, proper?
We’ve AI avatar robots strolling the streets of cities like Austin and West Hollywood spouting memes at passersby, commercials for the meals we put in our our bodies that spend extra space boldly claiming that it’s AI-curated than they do on photographs of the product itself, and social media platforms that have been ostensibly constructed to convey folks collectively however at the moment are flooded with misinformation and attractive waifu companions.
Every of those sounds just like the innocuous starting of a Cyberpunk sidequest that winds up having some darkish, twisty revelations earlier than all is claimed and finished, however the dystopian menace of all of this nonsense is actual, and it’s already having dire penalties. A pilotable robotic on the streets of West Hollywood begins out as a strolling shitpost, then finally ends up being tailored right into a cell surveillance device by a police division working below a corrupt administration. The wine we drink is being curated by one thing that may’t style it, and ultimately, the meals we eat is “optimized” by a program, and we simply devour it like gas. Artwork is already handled this manner with manufactured AI films, music, video video games, and books all being churned out as capital C “Content material” to be simply produced and force-fed to an viewers in want of a distraction, and corporations like Netflix see this as an absolute win. We’re already seeing the devastating results of individuals utilizing applications as a substitute for human connection. Individuals who have develop into obsessive about utilizing ChatGPT as an alternative to friendship and romance with human beings have been dedicated for paranoia and delusions in what individuals are calling “ChatGPT psychosis.” There’s actually a complete quest line in Cyberpunk about folks shedding their minds as a result of damaging results of the world’s cybernetic implants.
If Cyberpunk 2077 have been hopeless about life in such a panorama, if it weren’t stuffed to the brim with tales of individuals holding onto their humanity and connections with others with a vise-like grip highly effective sufficient to interrupt the chains of company oppression, taking part in it nowadays would possibly hit too near dwelling. The world is getting dumber, and for the reason that perpetuators of all this silly shit are those in energy, it’s rising more durable to chortle at any of it, regardless of how comically silly it could be, as a result of it’s inconceivable to disregard the way it might all usher us right into a slop-filled world the place each expression of humanity is coded into an algorithm and become a program for another person’s profit. The dystopia of Evening Metropolis has gone from speculative fiction to actuality, and we didn’t even have to attend till 2077 to get there.