I’m constantly torn between “I should make more of an effort to keep this cyberpunk community alive” and “I should give up on this whole Lemmy thing”… so here’s a meme.
I really should find a giant repository of random cyberpunk artwork that I can post regularly since I can’t keep up with a constant stream of discussion topics. Of course, if I did that, this community would turn more into r/cyberpunk with its random “here’s what I drew in class today” posts.
I’m pretty sure this is the original version of this meme. Or at least, it’s the first one I ever saw.
And nothing confirms this more than the suffix -punk becoming short had for aesthetic.
We’re already in a cyberpunk dystopia. I wouldn’t mind some cool gear to distract me from the constant horror of what’s ever increasing and I’m powerless to stop.
🤷
I was saying to my discord group as 2 if them got the 2077 game recently and I got back into after a few years
But the thing that always got was modders making V (player) look like a terminator when the only cybernetics we see are face and eye cosmetics, the totally not a usb in the wrist, and any arm cyberware such as the mantis blades or rocket launcher system. Everything else is pretty much below the skin
But cyber psychosis is a think and I feel like I’m screaming at my screen “DID YOU LEARN NOTHING FROM THAT QUEST LINE” while modders become a machine
my take away from the cyber psycho questline is
Yes there is implant rejection just like real life where patients’ bodies can reject implants, with cyber psychosis being and extreme case of that but not the big idea here
But the big take away is usually it’s a ship of Theseus, where the person who replaced their body with metal is NOT the same person, usually leading to an identity crisis or depression
I think an in game text even say a vast majority of cases are not the hyper violent criminals or ex soldiers with ptsd and military implants on the news. But the majority are people who maybe have a synthetic liver as their own implant but don’t feel it’s theirs
And I kinda get that, im a type 1 diabetic and I don’t see the insulin pump as part of me or my body, just a machine that has a vital function. I couldn’t imagine that ideology applied to my whole body what that would do to my mental health and self image
Idk the who self identity in cyberpunk (as a genre) always sticks out to me, can’t remember where I heard the quote but: you can be anyone, but is that someone you?
So, word of Maximum Mike (Mike Pondsmith, creator of the Cyberpunk TTRPG the game takes its setting from) is that beyond gameplay reasons, V is effectively immune to cyberpsychosis because of Johnny. Johnny splits the load of the implants with V, and most importantly, Johnny pre-death is already a somewhat functioning cyberpsycho. In cannon Johnny has slaughtered through stealth jobs and says the arm made him do it, which is how he refers to his breakdowns.
I love that they brought Mike in as a radio host in-game.
Human extinction is a preferable alternative to transhumanism. The only future that lies down that road is an exponentially deepening divide between the haves and have-nots, in which a slave class with mandatory compliance-enforcement augments is ruled like livestock by a class of sadistic, hyper-wealthy elites who enjoy life-extending luxury cybernetics in a horrific parody of the Morlocks and Eloi. The potential for debasement of the poor and unfortunate will skyrocket and it will not go untapped. Humanity will not exist forever and we do not have the right to prolong that inevitability by creating abominations.
I don’t necessarily agree with all you say, but I think it’s a very good point and something worth thinking about when you look at the topic.
I’m constantly torn between “I should make more of an effort to keep this cyberpunk community alive” and “I should give up on this whole Lemmy thing”
I hear ya, fam. One thing I decided Lemmywise was: only to do things that I find fun, not make it too much of a chore. It can be tough to decide exactly what that level is, tho…
One of the top arcs should have “gauss needlers are fucking cool” in it.
Is the ‘cool’ part NOT supposed to be the fact that you have circuits of raw power embedded in your very being??! Because we are headed towards Capitalism Hell whether we have cyberdecks or not. I would personally much rather have highly useful body mods in the Capitalism Hell…
Do you really look around at the current consumer tech landscape and think the mods available to anyone but the 1% would be useful?
We already have people with artificial eyes that got shut off when the company that made them went out of business. Similar issues with other implantable medical devices.
so true for the average person, but this is why I use linux, you really just need programmable hardware that can interface correctly, the software is were the magic happens…
Sorry, I couldn’t resist :D
The communication protocols will all be proprietary and zealously guarded. Everything will only accept signed firmware.
Musk in the bottom middle there
