Greentext

The helldivers also have randomized skin colour, so soldiers of all races can become elite troops.

what? no we wouldn't. fuck you for suggesting that.

[i meant that as a joke love you dude]

Basically flat earth society again huh?

Voting Trump for President started as a joke on 4chan, and later on Reddit with r/The_Donald. And look where it got us, the butterfly effect in full force.

The idea of there being no anti-war films is older than Lemmy. The problem is Poe's Law related. You can make a movie or a game that shows the horror of war or the tyranny of distopian totalitarian regimes, but regardless of the intended message, your creation is filtered through your audience's lenses of perception, and some of that audience has been raised to be white supremacists, some have been through schooling that acts more as indoctrination than education, and some of that audience are just seriously fucking stupid.

A lot of Westerners look at dictatorships and authoritarian states and cannot comprehend why the citizens would accept such a fate. The answer is: food, safety, housing, and cultural and religious homogeneity. People don't really care that much what the people in charge are doing as long as their life is good.

I always thought the world in The Sirens of Titan was worst, and most people seemed happy in it. I think that was just a popular religion rather then government mandated.

I have always liked that 1984 and A Brave New World are sort of dystopian companion pieces because they explore opposite sides of the spectrum of societies where free will is being suppressed. It has been a minute since I read both, but to me it's a mistake to compare them in terms of which version is worse to live in because yeah, 1984 would win that competition on the surface.

For me, when it comes to A Brave New World, the scary part is the idea of pleasure being used as a weapon to make people apathetic to the world around them and to thinking. There is something so incredibly sinister about this level of pleasure based compliance because there will be people who look at it on the surface and go: it's not so bad. Could be worse.

And it could. It can always be worse. I'm pretty sure that everybody would agree that 1984 is a better world to live in than the world of The Road. It's all relative.

But it's the idea that someone could read A Brave New World or a similar dystopia that disguises itself as a utopia, and ignore the warning signs and think it's fine. Because that, to me, means that such a world would be easier to implement. If people comply willingly, get lulled into that life and just let it happen because it feels good, is conventient and makes their dopamine go bzzt, then there is no need to use force. It's also why several aspects of A Brave New World has become more real in today's world than 1984 has. We have all walked right into it and we stay there because apathy and the nature of convenience and pleasure is something we don't want to give up. In 1984, they want to change the system, but fail. In A Brave New World they behold the outsider who tries to scream sense into them like he's an exotic animal and they do not care to understand his points because to do so would demand effort and hard work for the reward of a free life.

In my country we recently banned smart phones in all schools because the signs of longterm apathy towards learning has started to show in younger generations. Why should they put effort into their homework and assignments when they can get their dopamine hit on tiktok and snapchat with the snap of a finger? In adults in my country, the sense of community and togetherness has dwindled partially because we spend out free time on the phone and don't get bored enough to get together with our neighbors. There's a bit more to it than that, among other things that we outsourced child and eldercare to the state, so we don't really need each other like we used to.

In the world we currently live in, I think it is very important that we keep in mind that if we make everything easy and we waste our time on distractions that doesn't challenge or build us up, we will become apathetic and easier to control. I'm not talking about the state either. Those who control us are the tech giants and everyone who support them in order to steal our attention and time to waste it on additive, shallow nonsense all so companies can sell you stupid shit through ads.

Most clips from Starship Troopers on YouTube have filled comments' sections with people waxing about how based the society is and it's actually a utopia (to your point).