Honestly at this point Cyberpunk comes off to me like 50s retro-futurism trying to depict today. like there's nothing about cyberpunk that's more advanced than modern technology and neither is the political situation much different at all. It's actually often more lo-fi than ours

Our modern technology is so much more elegant, compact, and efficient that we don't even see the kinda excessive tech you see in cyberpunk aesthetics. We've eliminated moving parts and visible wires. Our phones have no fans, no wires, one screen, everything we could need

You want corporate oligarchy? Kid we've had corporate oligarchy already when this genre was invented and it's only gotten worse. We've GOT megacorps we've got amazon we've got Facebook controlling the Oculus virtual reality world advertised on giant vertical video billboards

The fantasy of cyberpunk to me just has no appeal it seems goofy. You wanna be a cool anarchist cyberhacker fucking up the bad guys? Get an SDR and sit on your roof relaying police signals to political uprisings. Bam. There you go. You can even have the cool haircut and the mask

Wanna dive deep into Cyberspace and fuck up the fash? Get into OSINT and do antifa doxxing shit. All the opsec infosec stuff will make you astutely aware of how constantly surveiled we are far far more than in any cyberpunk story. Congratulations. You're a cyberpunk protagonist

Want the colorful lights and stuff? Go visit Reno or like, any major city. You can just go live in Hong Kong or Shengzhen or New York or Los Angeles or something cities already look like that... Most of Cyberpunk Cities is just what Tokyo already looks like now.

Like. Cyberpunk is just too close to home for me to care about some AAA cyberpunk game. I look at it and it's what someone from the 80s thought today would be with their limited imagination of how advanced our tech could actually get. How sleek and discreet and hidden

Sometimes in cyberpunk stories I'm just like man I fucking wish it was that easy to evade corporate and state surveillance these days. I wish it was that easy to bypass a piece of tech trying to limit your freedom.

A lot of trans and queer people create some really cool cyberpunk stories don't get me wrong. The Better Cyberpunk bundle has some incredible stuff in it.

But the mainstream AAA stuff is just boring to me like this aesthetic is retro nonsense. what's cool about it

If you aren't afraid to write a story that takes place in the world we truly live in, and I mean TRULY the world we actually live in with all the complicated obscure stuff, it'll be more cyberpunk than any cyberpunk story

The media representation of the "normal real world" has replaced the actual world in our minds as what counts for normal. Deviations too far from that feel goofy and unrealistic and weird and forced. Cowardice. Write your actual damn life. You know our world is weird as fuck

You maintain several names and identities because you are constantly being watched. You share a collective constant stream of consciousness with your friends you're always looking at taking in information nonstop. You have cool ass haircuts. You fuck up the state.

Amazon makes workers wear ankle bracelets. Hackers leak documents revealing ties been the state police and fascist militias.

We live in the cyberpunk world right now. It might just be that you're an extra. But all those stories are happening right now already.

Have you seen prosthetic limbs lately? We attach them to your nerves and to it can move them with your mind. Cyborg arms and automail are A Thing now it's just completely normal for disabled people to have these. My boss at work literally has a cybernetic leg and it's Normal

This dude has a cybernetic prosthetic leg he controls with his kind and he doesn't know how to use email. I'm helping teach him how to copy a file from one folder to another and he has an actual cyborg leg. We live in a cyberpunk future and it's oh so mundane to us

So yeah whatever boohoo the expensive game sucks and has no imagination. Oh no it's buggy. Whatever.. It's a less imaginative depiction of our own present day world. Just put down your phone and look around you and the world you're living in. You're in it. It's real

I mean especially with literally half of our society happening over Video Calls (remember like, 2004, when that felt like the Peak of Futuristic Tech when it showed up in media?) It's more cyberpunk now than ever

Anyway VRChat is literally free so have fun kids

I wrote this at 1am last night and neglected to mention how much of Cyberpunk aesthetics is basically "oh wouldn't it be scary if East Asia had economic and cultural influence over North America" but like...

Looking at the world right now I'd be less afraid with them in charge

And also people from East Asia aren't scary fuck off. They are literally just people. Why are you so afraid of not being able to read a language that you see it as dystopian for a language other than English to be written on signs and billboards for once.

Also again have you been to A City. I see other languages on signs in Philadelphia all the time and they light up independence hall with bisexual lighting at night time to boot