The Modern Dystopia

Go out and hit the street in my urban seaside town, not the groovy place it used to be in the 90s. Its become over crowded, edgy. Its overcast and all around everyones faces look grim and strung out. Street scum are plenty. On the road there is this simmering aggression you can just feel coming from everywhere. Seagulls tear trash out of the bins and fling it everywhere, its turned into a soykafhole but still everyone wants to come here. Too many people, too much traffic, not enough chill anymore. What's your town like?

>>16272 I know that feel, spent almost a decade after leaving home for uni in a non-capital city with a low rent bohemian vibe. Then it got gentrified to the gills and rents tripled. Looking at the old streetview of the crafts district almost makes me cry. It used to be cheap dives, street art that doesn't try too hard and just the right amount of blight. These days it's all artisan burger/beer/cake/buttplug shops and hipsters from the capital. Ended up moving to the capital. Landed in a posh area too. Supercars and diplomatic plates everywhere. I like to summarize the population of my 'hood as "Gucci and North Face". Around my hackerspace it's more trashy, or authentic if you're into that kind of thing. Surprisingly large amount of tourists besides the migrants and their local counterparts. Must be AirBnB. Besides that you've got a historical center and large fields of commieblocks in the periphery. General attitude is content, "the world may be burning, but me and my friends are doing fine".

>be me >moved to a 3rd world because money reasons >cyberpunk dystopia >everybody with authority is corrupt >cameras everywhere (who even watches them?) >riots in the streets are a thing >everybody uses cell phones, but aside from that, no hi-tech, plenty of lo-life I know a few lains live here from previous posts, but I have no way of meeting them IRL

>>16280 Are you willing to share what country?

>>16284 China

>be me >drifter roam from town to town >lived in baltimore, cleveland, des moines, tulsa, dallas, austin, albaquerqe, phoenix, tuscon, las vegas, davis, san diego, >Find self in Atlanta >discover racial and identity politics are things >discover that atlanta is most LGBTQ concertrated city in America >Observe distinct lack of urban planning that has the fortunate side effect of deterring gentrification but promoting real estate speculation >enjoy poorly serviced and under extended public transit system >city is super hilly and spread out, ride bike and get lots of excercise >Car culture is brutal here. >a constant battle for space and position between everyone everwhere >weird sense of chill in some places, tourism steadily reducing the quality of many places >lots of outdoorsy activities all around the city causing prices in outlying areas to rise faster than inner city housing costs >every county is vehemently against being part of the city, but finds itself gerrymandered nearly to death and unable to resist the rising tide of urban sprawl >random neighborhoods of various quality built into wooded areas between patches of skyscrapers >WTF Atlanta, what are you?

>what >is >this >a >4chan >thread >?

Suburban limbo. Or rather, suburban military-town limbo. If it were smaller, it'd be closer to the wilderness where there's stuff to do. If it were bigger, then it'd be more likely to have bars, hobby clubs, and maybe even a hackerspace where, again, there's stuff to do. Everyone half-interesting leaves by the time they're 25, as they're the ones who finish college and now have to find some job with their newfound degree. Which they sure as hell can't do here. So all that's left are old people, soccermoms, white trash, every other color of trash, and of course soldiers. The first and last of which outnumber the rest. For (the closest thing we have to) places to do things, we've got restaurants, nightclubs, a mall kept on life support by its clothing stores, restaurants, whatever chain stores are in vogue, a bog-standard cinema (which killed our local theater that sometimes hosted plays), and restaurants. There are hobby clubs, but they're part of the local college and are meant for the students there, so they meet during regular college hours, i.e. when most of us are at work. Then there's just the fact that it's been hot as hell these past few years. Can't even go to the park anymore without sweating like a pig. And when it's not hot, it's pouring. Only time it's really tolerable is in the winter, but I guess that's the southern US for you.

>>16272 exactly like that actually. do you live in santa cruz?

>>16272 Shout out to any puerto rico lains?

twin cities with a crisis of identity. an oasis of old-time small town values getting swallowed up by the changing times. university kids pushing the old-timers farther out into the woods each year. tv money spent on new scoreboards. apartment buildings sprawl upward far above the browning loblolly trees as the decrepit structures of a by-gone era house things no one needs but everyone wants. people walk around with a vacant kind of contentedness on their face. the kids are so docile, and the old-timers have been beaten down by decades of wage labor. the air reeks of false hospitality. a synthetic sense of home. the churches are filled, but the people are empty. this could be anywhere, and really it's a big nowhere.

>>16298 UK South Coast to be honest BRIGHTON

It's a redneck town. Everybody either moves out to run the hell out of here, or they stay and intensify the redneckery. I'm the only one with an education who stayed, I tried to do something by becoming a teacher. Big mistake, even worse failure. I never thought the parents would be so against their kids getting a good education.

>>16315 wow dude leave. You can go anywhere and be a teacher. I got a teaching gig in Hong Kong with no qualifications, and many more based off having one teaching job already.

Banal and rural. Nothing has happened since its founding and that's exactly how the people here like it. I'm mostly fine with that, except I wish there was more to do here. Also, too many ticks.

there is a soykaf ton of old people where i live and the schools are mediocre. there are zero places to go with friends so if i want to entertain myself while out of my house i gotta go out of the way. the people here are nice i guess.

>>16287 Would you leave China if you could? I was thinking of moving to Shanghai by my own will, but I'm afraid it's not as good as I think it would be.

>>16316 how is hong kong with all of the political stuff going on? what did people think of you for being western?

>>16308 ! I live in twin cities too, but in South America. The soul of the city is truly dying while a very shallow wave of new trends take over every place. Even folkloric groups are not something organic and true anymore. Everything was swallowed by hyped trends and empty gestures. Youth is depressed, crime is rising along with criminal mentality boosted by rap music, suicide is rising too. I can't recognize the city anymore, but I still like here.

kinda like tokyo in the 80s but with more drugs, more culturally diverse, crazy parties, dangerous crime

>>16272 If I had to describe it, my town feels like the biggest little city in the world if that makes any sense, despite being barely notable and having less than 50K people living in it and many people being absolutely dirt poor, we are home to one of the most influential corporations in the world at the moment and it has divided our population in a pretty spectacular way, you can find pretty much anything or anybody around here if you want, it always feels like our suburban (we have a negligible amount of urban citizens) and rural populations are always clashing and fighting, I can only imagine it is going to get worse over time.

overpopulation + climate change + decades of relentless agitation propaganda from variius sources = dystopia

I edited things out halfway because sharing some of this makes me nervous so thats why some things are censored. I live in [city], many of my friends are in [neighboring city we will call city2]. Its hard to describe, my whole life I wished I could be in a city, and I have no plans to go anywhere besides maybe other cities in the ****. Il just give some thoughts and observations. [city] and even parts of [city2], the corporations here, do so much bizarre overly friendly and cutesy advertising. And when I look at say the ********* or its little complex I just always wonder, almost know for a fact, that something awful goes on somewhere in these skyscrapers. I was siting with a partner they were admiring the beautiful view of the skyline and all I could think about was this image of drug fueled parties involving human trafficking on the top floors with the blinds shut. Also of note that its very hard to figure out what some of these corporations even do. ********* supposedly does *******, but thats never expressed in their advertisements and billboards, they also do 15 other vague things, and I dont see how they have so much money and employ so many people just from ********. It doesnt add up. Im very poor, in the process of getting food stamps, studying design and fine arts. There's a weird division here where people like me all have this rage at the people working at these sorts of corporations and there is an identity that seems to come with them working there that makes them easy to spot. The way they talk and the things they talk about too. Drugs are everywhere, and I am an addict. Id rather not go into this too much. What I can go into is there is whole blocks, ******* often refer to it as the "drug bazaar", you walk through its packed with people and tents and everyone is yelling at you "crystal, ******? ". One time I handed over ten dollars I was in such a rush I said just dump it in my wallet. I recall pulling out my keycard to open my door and it was poor quality meth a lot of it was loose powder, and it just falling out on the ground and being paranoid they would find it and test it or something. I dont have an opiate problem and id prefer not to add more addictions. In [city2] some parts literally feel lawless. Ive heard automatic weapons go off, and again not something il go into deeply but I am aware of (but dont know personally or even names) the presence of people selling them in [city2]. Ive been a sort of passive observer in cars and houses to some very sketchy deals going on in a much more relaxed manner than they would in [city] because nobody really seems to care. I often when im on the bus or in a car driving through the downtown I just think like how long can we keep this up even. It feels like a bad experiment sometimes. There is so much built on capitalism so many systems and moving parts and this is so clear and tangible in the city, yet we all know it isnt sustainable and its as if we are just fuarrrking around for a bit till it all falls apart. And I think about how fuarrrked it will be when it does, sure there are civilizations that lasted way longer and collapsed, but in a couple hundred years we built and put a fuarrrk ton in place thanks to rapidly improving technology. We know as humans everything has an end and so normally a healthy person works towards things that have a beneficial end, that set them or others up well for whats next. But this dystopia as you call it that we live in there is no real thing that we are working towards, the purpose that birthed it has kind of lost meaning, thats why I say it feels like often we just are sort of fuarrrking around and pissing the time away till we reach our death. What has been productive, and I cant deny there is much one could say is productive, is practically side effects of the system. And some of it is so ephemeral almost, I wonder if it will function or be of any use without capitalism and the current political system. Thats all I have to ponder for this one today.

I live in a somewhat standard 1000 year old town/city in the middle of Europe. A historical old town with a market square, city hall, churches etc is right in the center of the city. It's surrounded by a dense mixture of older buildings from mostly 19th century and newer architecture. Further away you have high rise commie-block apartment buildings. The commie-block residential areas are interesting in that they're generally very close to the center of the city (20-30 minutes on foot, 10-15 minutes using mass transit/car) but they're still designed like their own little towns with schools, healthcare facilities, stores, services, farmers markets and a lot of green spaces. Obviously, the entire city is extremely walkable with a very extensive public transport network. Crime is not an issue, it's not really a thing here. All in all, it's a pretty good place to live, I can't complain.

Semi-rural town in the south. Meth and heroin everywhere.

North Hollywood, California. Homeless everwhere. I can't walk to the end of the block without passing two or three. And this is a relatively upscale area. I'll occasionally feed one if he looks desperate. They just walk around aimlessly or sit and stare.

>>16298 not that lain but I live in SC too. The tendrils of The Bay are slowly moving in to this shabby lil town, it's a huge shame. I want to move somewhere in the middle of nowhere like Crescent City.

I live in a big city in southern-ish europe, there's an extremely posh and glittery city centre, but nowadays all the chinese tourists and african unemployed people strolling make for a pretty weird picture, next to the luxury art galleries in historical buildings and business skyscrapers. The neighbourhoods around are different though, ranging from reasonably comfy to fairly slummy. I really felt the difference when I passed to high school to university: everyone in my highschool was the son of a yuppie couple of lawyers, doctors or entrepreneurs, and you could feel that were set for a good life already, doing all the rich-people sports and activities and going out in expensive bars in amazing clothes (high society girls are really beautiful). In university I found many of that type again, but there were also a lot of commuting students from out in the countryside, or from the south living in soykafty rented apartments, that made the ambience seem a bit more human.

>>16308 Former MN resident here, calling the twin cities a big nowhere really hits. It felt strangely like a small town trying to be a big city. Now it's empty, eerily so in the way that it accepted being tranquilized by the motions. >>16315 What constitutes a "good education" varies in some places, that's a rough strait to be in. Look at getting out of there, it's great that you're still trying to do things. Do your best to go someplace where you can, it's okay. >>17503 Oddly comfy, interesting to see what shape the urban sprawl takes in different places. >>17543 It isn't the south, but the midwest is about the same.

Northern New Jersey. A suburb of New York City. We got three highways going in and around our town. There's only two roads getting in and out and they're always crowded as hell, making it difficult to make it out. Like they don't want you to leave. There's a clear class divide on opposite ends of my town. The closer you get to the river, the poorer it gets, and on the other side of the river is an impoverished city. People moved from that town into mine and settled down in that section of the town. A lot of yuppie types moved in in the last five or so years. Lots of Range Rovers and Mercedes' drive around. People love to flaunt their money around here, at least in the part of town I live in. It's all so shameless. We got a couple of good restaurants and that's it. Dry town too. No bars at all, just a lot of liquor stores to compensate. Everybody leaves my town to go hang out somewhere else. Aside from the obvious class divide, the town's boring as hell. Nothing has ever happened here, except an armed robbery that ended in the guy getting killed by the police down the street from me. Really the only saving grace for me is that it's beautiful and serene to walk around the main drag at night. My preferred time is after midnight. The streets are literally empty save for a patrol car here and there. It's so surreal, seeing a town that's pretty busy during the day completely drop dead by nightfall.

>>16320 Hong Kong is very westernised in many ways, kind of east meets west jewel of ther orient. My brother went not so long ago and managed to avoid any riots. I think they are probably in isolated areas, there's many other places in HK to go. They even have a tropical island called Lamma you can go bum around on if the city isnt your thing.

>>16272 Industrial city with lots of "accidental" fires that force you to stay indoors with the windows shut and AC on in cold months to avoid the toxic clouds. Massive drug ring near my block making noise in the middle of the night to advertise a new cargo is ready, police station even closer yet the cops look the other way. Corruption and nepotism everywhere, no jobs, no social mobility, extremely tough to go freelance or start a business unless you do everything off the books, terrible laws that punish the honest and the victims, terrible tax policy that taxes the poor and rewards those who lie on their income and the rich. But the worst is that people are hollow shells without curiosity, identity or interests except money by the time they're adults. Tech is a fashion accessory rather than a tool, lots of flagship phones used for nothing but Facebook. High rates of functional illiteracy and tech illiteracy, no interest in world news, no interest in culture except the soykaf on TV. Thankfully the place is not violent or openly degraded but it is like kicking dead whales down the beach and I hate every bit of it. I should move to better parts of this country but apart from people being a little more human it's the same situation.

>>16272 I live in the suburbs of a relatively large midwestern city in the USA. It's quiet here, but only at night since the neighbors mostly have small children, old school 9 - 5 jobs and are quite well off financially. Day time is filled with the noise of lawnmowers and leafblowers or snowblowers depending on the season. Everyone has a dog. You see people walking around outside, mostly older, but moving very quickly, walking to get their daily exercise.

OP Here A mate's home recently got raided by masked youths with knives and stole an xbox and his 5 year old sons xmas presents. Today I had a large thermal bag stolen from my delivery scooter, something no one could even need. Urban UK is a den of theives.

>>18333 Do you have steel gates and reinforced doors? It's a standard here where we live. Burglaries usually happen in the summer while people are on vacation, or to elderly people who open their doors to criminals pretending they're cops/state authorities.

>>18334 My bike is out on the street its the only place for it. I had to move it from the normal bay to this one (where a different bike was stolen and recovered once) Bike crime is rife here, if I didnt have a chain on the wheel theyd break the steering lock and wheel it away. I think they had a go already. Stuff like this plunges me deeper into mysanthropy.

>>18337 That is like kicking dead whales down the beach. I'd get a used folding bike if your current one gets stolen, at least you can bring it indoors when you're done. The peripheries are getting worse and worse, it's like a cancer.

>>18337 try walking or using roller skates/pogo stilts. Its better exercise, about as fast, can travel over more diverse terrain and takes up much less space/can be stored indoors easily without evoking questions from your neighbors/co-workers..

>>16287 Did Corona-chan get you yet?

>>18341 So your answer to someone trying to steal your stuff is to just let them and move onward with other means? What kind of demoralized weak person are you? Please, stop giving other people advice, you're in no shape to give anyone advice about anything

>>18341 pogo stilts?? what the fuarrrk...

We're not living in anything remotely like a dystopia... yet. The problems OP lists are basically the problems of city life. People living in cities a hundred years ago equally dealt with being strung out and depressed, but for differing reasons. What is a major problem is wages are at an all time low relative to the costs of living, and thus forcing people to work exceedingly hard (or steal). There's never been "chill" in major cities, they've always been fast and speeding up constantly. >>16287 China is the closest thing to a dystopia in the world (with the limited exception of perhaps the hermit kingdom and friends): limited freedoms, monitored internet/individuals, communist dictatorship, and so on. However, they're the exception. >>17487 >I don't understand companies >I'm an addict >Law enforcement in my city is poor >It's capitalism's fault Take responsibility for yourself and forget the problems of everybody else. Blaming a system of economics for your problems and the societies issues is delusional and self destructive. You need to have responsibility for the things you can control. Don't conflate politics with economics, they're wholly different things in most places.

>>21734 >Don't conflate politics with economics, they're wholly different things in most places. I agree with the rest of this post, but this is just wrong. Economics is political and politics is economical. Separating them is unhelpful for analysis.

>>21734 Cities are inherently dystopic and more people are living in cities now than ever before. Suburbs are pretty dystopic too, with mandatory driving and samey sprawl destroying nature while seperating people. And rural living for many people means coal mining industry vs. fracking industry and/or development turning areas into suburbs. >Take responsibility for yourself and forget the problems of everybody else. Agreed. Unless you've started/will start a family. Then take responsibility for them too.

>>21740 This is extremely wrong-headed. Economics can and does operate separately from politics. Politics can and does operate independently of economics. Usually the two are conflated (like you're doing) when a politician wants to score brownie points by tempering the big bad markets for the populous. You'll note this never acts the opposite way: economics don't act upon politics; there's no big corporation promoting themselves as an antidote for politics run amok.

>>16314 >BRIGHTON At least you have this nutter

>>16317 It’s a typical college town (city more accurately) with typical suburban sprawl and typical city problems. Part of me longs to live in a small town like one an hour away where it’s out of the way but not far from the city (since I want to work in a mathematics department when I graduate from grad school). I also kinda want to start farming and have the most anti-(sub)urban life possible. I feel like I’m in hell everytime I realize I’m in here. I don’t get how people can not only stand it, but actually like it (inb4 no one actually likes this lifestyle. I’ve met people that do and I’ve told them that living in the city doesn’t make sense just based on how humans operate. I wasn’t even being mean about I just don’t get it.)

>>21753 Maybe with modern identity politics and such, but proper political analysis is fundamentally about the endless struggle for resources between the classes. It's inherently economic in nature.

>Guys can we not talk about politics >But everything is politics literally the worst conversation in the world next to debates about what is punk

I live in a city in the middle of England. It's not a very happy place, it's quite dirty and it seems like everyone is depressed. Not much goes on, and I honestly have no idea how to make friends since there's literally no social activities. I've lived here my entire life, and after 22 years I think it's safe to say that I've outgrown it, and I need to move somewhere else. Hopefully I can make a new post here when that happens.

>>21773 They might say like and mean prefer for practical reasons. Most people dont vacation in the city. The problem is daily life binds you to it.The commute alone kills living remote for most.

>>21734 yeah it's important for them to take ownership of stuff like drug problems but you're just not thinking if you aren't considering how capitalism affects companies, how cities function, etc. You have to make every decision in the metric of capitalism of course it's going to play a part. The people who don't have capitalism hinder their life choices are usually just rich people. "the major problem is wages are at an all time low..." wonder why? because companies will extract as much excess as they can from employees, and as the world gets more connected and more sedated, that becomes easier. People can "chill" in major cities, but it means not worrying about insane rent prices at the risk of going homeless while trying to feed your family etc, the rich kid whose dad bought them a flat in a major city is living just fine. Cities would be 10x better if you had good affordable public transport and no cars allowed, less population, less noise, less environmental damage, but none of this benefits huge car/transport companies who can heavily influence decisions. But where are the jobs? In cities, so you either pay the insane rent prices for some landlord who owns half the properties in the city, or you get a cheaper place and drive into the city, costing you time and money and polluting the planet. All these systems benefit the capitalists so that's why cities suck.

Check out this thread https://lainchan.org/vis/res/4038.html

My city is kinda fine, it houses a big university so it has always been a place known for youth movements of all types so it might be too hipstery at the time but I guess thats just a momentary thing, it wasn't long ago when it had a "skater" fase, and a "trashy rocker/punk" fase, and a "hippie" fase before that and a "high class" fase way before that, it's also full of those "artisan whatevers" you all seem to love so much but i don't really hate it, the streets are full of trees and it's full of parks so the wooden furniture they pull out mixes prety well, it's also pretty crowded at daytime because it's the province's capital so it's full of unique goverment facilities and the whole city is campus, it is still alive at nighttime, when specific stores close at 8pm, marketplaces at like 10pm and bars, drugstores and restos might go up to 1am. But I live in a soykafty suburb, my house is behind a low budget neighborhood football team field and in front of a block full of trashed cars and even more trashed - badly made - houses in wich everyone moves by horse or bike, little kids always come to my house to ask for donations, it's not rare to hear about people getting robed or to get waken up by sirens of every type or music at high volume comming from a beaten down car passing by, the football team has a really violent following, that type that gets drunk with cheap wine and then shoots the rivals kind, also a recurring theme that already claimed some lives, two that i know of. But I have become a mix of both worlds, I have my love for cheap boxed wine and shady marihuana and expensive "craft" beer/coffee and hippstery bookstores so i can't say i hate it, you might think the part where I live is soykaft but lets be honest, if we where in that situation we would also resolve to stealing, also I kind of won a "do not steal" mark because I'm the son of that guy that gives free money, though I also have to fistfight some of it and talked and footballplayed some other, I think my dad giving money might have seemd like a "weakness" sign at first so the "hey, lets get this dumbasses son" idea had to come at some point, but then it seemed to turn into a "this guy is more one of us that what we have tought, and his father is more generous than dumb".

>>16272 you might find this interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDxeKd_iR28

>What's your town like? A place with rich historic background turned to trash by bad socialism. Occidental modern dream at isfinest.

>cameras everywhere spying on you >shotspoter spying on you >homeless and drug addicts everywhere >niggers shooting each other and mugging people I want out.

B R I N G B A CK B E A U T Y

After witnessing my parents stare for 8hrs+ every day and every free moment they get into their brightly lit smartphones reflecting their ego and developing a dopamine circuit in their brains akin to that of a rat chasing cheese on a stick.. I can say you could write an equally depressing story of the present time, worse actually. The zombification of humans is not in the future, it's here and its already everywhere.

>>25208 I think you can use that descrption for most of europe.

As someone who's been living in the same place all his life I've experienced the shift into a depressing, dystopian soykafhole. My country is a relatively poor one, even then I am lucky enough to live in one of its more developed states My city in particular has seen a rather diverse population explosion and has been steered into the same doom as the developed world. The current virus panic has escalated the already prevalent rate violence, poverty has decimated most of my surrounding neighborhoods and it's only going to worsen. I keep a journal documenting such changes in my site, I'll post a link if anyone's interested.

>>16272 The place I live is great. The people here are really friendly, it feels like everyone has each other's back. There's a ton of really good cheap food and small businesses around here. There's trees and greenery everywhere. I really love this time of year because everything turns this very vivid shade of green.

>>25436 I'm interested. What country?