Cyberpunk Survival Guide

Seeing that we’re heading towards a techno feudalistic surveillance capitalistic dystopia where a handful of corporations own everything sitting on top of countless copyrights and they force you to rent everything as a fuarrrking service, where everything is styled with soulless demoralizing grey (see picture), and where people constantly try to undermine each other for selfish gain, what strategies/skills/technologies should be developed to prepare for that kind of future? I’m staying optimistic. That seems to be one obvious strategy to overcome that looming corpo greyness: to maintain small colorful bubbles of life. But what’s your thought /sec/? What’s the “survival guide to a cyberpunk future”?

>a handful of corporations own everything sitting on top of countless copyrights Pirate everything. >they force you to rent everything as a fuarrrking service Host it (reverse engineer it) or an alternative yourself. >where everything is styled with soulless demoralizing grey Stop using social media. >where people constantly try to undermine each other for selfish gain Stop associating with these people >what strategies/skills/technologies should be developed to prepare for that kind of future? We're already in this future. DIY, being selective about friends, and not engaging in activity that assists usury are all helpful.

Piracy, civil disobedience, self reliance, sabotage of government and corporate property, working on alternatives that can even leave yourself behind if you try to milk it too much for your own gain. Basically put work into providing goods and services that those entities rely on for income or dependency. But watch out, such people tend to have short life spans or a life of trouble.

Find the little tech-savvy cyberpunk and anarchist and activist sites, become active in those communities, support endangered projects that push against the grain, like the Internet Archive, research what you can do to maintain your own online privacy, and this is the important part, disseminate the information, share the skill, network the people who care and can do something, don't treat specialist knowledge like some kind of treasure that requires gatekeeping, let people know what's at stake and what can be done.

>>22566 I'd suggest learning to practice self-reliance in as many areas as possible. Try to consume as little as possible, put the rest of whatever wage/NEETbux/stolen goods you get towards revolutionary activity. Speaking of that, do join and support any revolutionary organisation you can find. Communist and anarchist groups are best.

>>22599 >communist Why in God's name would anyone wanting to preserve their privacy, anonymity, and freedom of speech support the one ideology that is 100% guaranteed to remove them, and the possibility of ever getting them back?

>>22567 >>22597 >>22598 This. The only option is to undermine the capitalist institutions at all costs. Do not just pirate their media, do not consume or propagate it, it is always laced with, if not entirely composed of, hegemonic propaganda. They produce it for the express purpose of self-preservation. Instead, direct your focus towards building infrastructure to network and spread information amongst your peers and teach people. Education is one of the most effective and essential forms of praxis. >>22652 >communism = authoritarianism It is very dishonest to conflate these concepts. We're already moving rapidly towards authoritarianism while on the complete opposite side of the economic spectrum. If you have a ruling class, you have immediately failed the first criteria of a communist society, which is that it must be classless, the only practical way to achieve classlessness is through democracy. Real socialism, must put democratic values above all else. That means freedom of speech must be a first class right, but speech cannot truly be free without the choice of anonymity, and anonymity cannot exist without privacy. Do not fall into the trap of capitalist realism.

>>22657 The masses, or at least the current left, are communist in every way except economics. I.e pro-degeneracy, anti-family, anti-beauty, anti-straight-white-people.

>>22657 >complete opposite side of the economic spectrum Not to go completely off-topic here, but that's really only an opinion an ignorant communist or ignorant capitalist can have. They're grounded in the same materialist worldview with only marginal disagreements on how the capital is meant to function. >If you have a ruling class, you failed the first criteria of a communist society What a funny way to say "That's not real communism". But seriously, even Stalin recognized hierarchy (without offiicially acknowledging it.) Communism, at its core, is merely an economic platform where the state controls the economic outcome. If you do not employ authoritarian measures, how do you prevent capitalists from subverting it? That was a rhetorical question, I don't expect (or want) you to attempt to answer it. >suddenly socialism Now you're conflating socialism, democracy, and communism? I don't think you understand anything about politics. Socialism, in it's purest form, is about improving conditions of the impoverished. This has nothing to do with democracy. >>22652 It is because they don't know any better. If they were intellectually honest, they wouldn't support this. >>22599 >are best How are they the best? They never do anything. No one cleans, works on anything unless its "fun", etc. If you really want to do anything re-read my post >>22567 -- If you want a group to support you, consider Uncle Remus' guide to autismbux and let the nanny state clean up after you.

>>22660 >The masses, or at least the current left, are communist in every way except economics That's a stretch and a half. If by "the current left" you mean the US center left, they're only left of the overton window. In actual practice, they're just the same as the center right with a thin rainbow veneer. They don't actually give a soykaf about minority groups or women's rights beyond what gets them votes or affects them personally. >>22663 >Everyone who supports the economic model I don't like is ignorant >because uh... uhm.. uh, erm.. We get it, you don't like socialism. >They're grounded in the same materialist worldview with only marginal disagreements on how the capital is meant to function. ??? The abolishment of individual capital wealth and all class distinctions and is a little more than just a "marginal disagreement". >Stalin is communist jesus No. >Communism, at its core (if you ignore all the parts that contradict with my concept of it), is merely(?) an economic platform where the state controls the economic outcome If we follow your questionable definition of communism, the US has been a communist nation since at least the 1920's, given our trillions of dollars spent of various forms of subsidies, job programs (not even counting the US military as a jobs program), grants, and bailouts for purportedly capitalist institutions such as banks and for-profit businesses. Before you come back trying to say some soykaf like "well those are bad and we need to try real capitalism", we literally did, and it caused the great depression, which is why we were forced to make so many economic changes in the first place. Like it or not, the invisible hand hypothesis has been disproven for a century at this point, despite what the upper and ruling class interests would have you believe to justify their subsidized wealth. >If you do not employ authoritarian measures, how do you prevent capitalists from subverting it? Democratic rule and freedom of information, next question. >I don't expect you to attempt to answer it. Surprise! >or want Oops. Sorry to throw cold water on your flaming turd of a take. >Socialism, in it's purest form, is about improving conditions of the impoverished. This has nothing to do with democracy. You must be smoking crack rock. >My opinion is honest because of my unfounded claim that others are being dishonest No. >No one [communist and anarchist groups] cleans Most absurd take yet, I didn't realize it was the job of political activists to... clean?

>>22667 >If we follow your questionable definition of communism, the US has been a communist nation since at least the 1920's, given our trillions of dollars spent of various forms of subsidies, job programs (not even counting the US military as a jobs program), grants, and bailouts for purportedly capitalist institutions such as banks and for-profit businesses. You have a point here. It's obvious nonsense to insist the US somehow wasn't capitalist after FDR but was after Wilson, but somehow counterveilers still keep starting their mythology then. I wonder why?

>What’s the “survival guide to a cyberpunk future”? Move to the woods and watch it fall apart at a safe distance *coolguyshades* P.S. fuarrrk your gay isms

>>22660 >anti straight white male has anyone told you you're full of soykaf?

>>22667 I don't know if it's that you're illiterate or just being dishonest. Oh well, it can't be helped. Cheers :)

>>22671 Do you think the left likes straight white people?

>>22667 This was super bad faith and disappointment. If you can't even repeat someone's points without adding to them, how can you argue against them?

>>22566 IMO this is more essential and evolving an area than ever. Technology is more and more being used to impose policy, and resistance is being made technological impossible (cf. The War on General Purpose Computing). Currently, a lot of the public square is being hosted by governments or for profit companies who have no real incentive to enable your discourse or interests. There has been some technological resistance, like say Cryptography, Ad-Block, and Alternative Operating Systems, but this fight is on-going. Cryptowars v2 are starting, Youtube is blocking Ad-Block, and the next generation and most popular computing devices have locked boot loaders, no (user) administrative access, and uninstallable spyware. More people need to embrace these technologies, understand the problems they solve, and demand their rights and interests. Custom freedom phones, video hosting, and chat applications will not be made or legal for an increasingly small minority.

This is a typical problem I see online. Yes, we're going into a cyberpunk world. How do you survive? How do you not get caught up in everything? By leaving it. It's not all that complex. If you just try to avoid all the consumer crap, only buy FOSS stuff, and host it yourself (like >>22567 suggests), then you should be fine. Hell, if you do that, then you become a cyberpunk! Avoiding all this soykaf is what the inform is. But, if you want a more in depth guide, then why not go looking for stuff and compile it yourself? How to avoid in-person surveillance (like Amazon's 1984 ring army and the like) would be cool. You want a guide? Make one.

>>22697 Wanna add that if you truly wanna go all in without sacrificing modern conveniences, look into open source ecology. It’s still the early days but pretty neat to follow

>>22698 Damn this stuff is cool. However I don't get why they didn't slap on a 2D printer there. A car can't be harder than a 2D printer. I especially don't get the addition of a 3D printer, even though there are an INSANE amount of already made 3D printers with a big ecosystem (e.g. Voron). But I digress, it's VERY cool.

>>22699 > However I don't get why they didn't slap on a 2D printer there. I'm just guessing here, but I don't think the team sees a 2D printer as an essential device for the Global Village Construction Set. > I especially don't get the addition of a 3D printer The 3D printer probably needs to be extremely versatile in terms of the materials used for printing, ranging from plastic to metal to ceramic, and so on. Here’s a list: https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Open_Source_Digital_Fabrication_Construction_Set

As someone who owns the entirety of all commercial media industries, I wouldn't really even bother with most of it. I'm not sure what you really even need from it aside from shows or albums or games, which are easily downloaded. I don't really care if you do personally.

>>22716 >As someone who owns the entirety of all commercial media industries wat give us some interesting insider info

>where everything is styled with soulless demoralizing grey Only give money and support to people who you believe genuinely deserve it. >where people constantly try to undermine each other for selfish gain It's the wild west again, the era of misinformation, soykafloads of dumb rhetoric and brainwashing. Just play it smart and appeal to reason.

How about downloading and archiving source code of software you rely on. If it gets banished from the web or made inaccesible, you won't be starting from scratch.

a few years ago I wrote a guide that attempted to answer some of that. https://odysee.com/@runick:1/Cyberpunk_Dystopia_Almanac:d Although to be honest I sort of lost interest in privacy and personal security and all that since then. Someday I'll probably go back through it for my own benefit lol. I remember attempting to do another one, focusing on social and economic stuff. But it just couldn't come out as easily as this one. Might give it another crack sometime as I think I've learned quite a bit since even then.