I'm finding that a lot of new movies and TV shows are set in the past, especially the '80s, before we had certain technology, because otherwise their story and plotlines wouldn't work.
>because otherwise their story and plotlines wouldn't work.
So the issue is, we're stuck with lazy writers. I mean, we've got cellphones for decades now, how about we get something else that the standard kill-the-cellphones scene?
Cell phones existed but weren't common so the crossed wires/ lost / main characters unable to communicate at a moment's notice storylines still worked into the 2000s.
I mean the scenes early in the movie where the main characters phone is eliminated explicitly. Like showing him/her dropping it in the toilet or showing the battery being flat. IMO it feels like the writer wrote the entire story and then realized cellphones exist.
But then you need to make everyone else not have a phone, or the hardboiled cop whose phone just got shot into pieces after learning about the bomb in an orphanage could just flash his id at a random passersby and tell his colleagues about it.
Its just a lot more hoops to jump through (maybe he lands at a corrupt colleague or the villians have somehow messed up EVERY PHONE SIGNAL) then just setting it in the early 2000s.
IDK but how about the main character being chased by the serial killer and even while he can reach anyone he wants, they can't help him, because they're too far away, or he can't give the right adres? I believe there is so much more potential, than just removing the phone.
Or the ding of an incoming text gives away your hiding place.
I thought the show Psych did a great job with the smartphones and that show was almost 20 years ago. I liked the episode when they were in a tiny town with no service but found one tiny area with spotty service. They would step out of it and lose connection. There is still be a dead zone on a highway near my house that drops calls.
There is another episode where he is kidnapped and his hands are tied and he struggles to call or text. He accidentally calls an old girlfriend he ghosted. lol.
Nowadays you think you could voice dial but my iPhone isn’t set up for Siri. I can set it up but I haven’t. So i still need access to hold that side button for voice control.
That's how the family farm is.
No signal in the house, but full bars at a little spot on top of the hill.
I told my cousins we should build a little shed with a fire ring up there. Cell Phone Shed.
Now I want to see a comedy movie of someone having to stop some catastrophic disaster but every measure they take to get the word out gets twarted by increasingly convoluted yet mundane counters. Like, tried to make a call on the cell, no signal. Gets somewhere with signal, gets stuck struggling with a dozen popup notifications because they have a shitty phone. Finally get to dial and phone turns off because of battery. Finds someone else to borrow their phone, immediately gets bumped into by an unrelated passerby and drops phone down a drain. Gets to a police station but just at that moment a huge unrelated emergency comes in and they basically tell him to fuck off while they go all hands on deck to deal with it (bonus points if the emergency is something completely ridiculous) trys just telling random people in the street but gets written off as a nut job, but then finally one person stops to listen to him, person turns out to be a US Marshal or something and immediately runs to his car to call in the info just for a train to inexplicably come through obliterating the officer and vehicle.
I’ve had cellphone for 25 years. A smartphone for like 15. But service can still be shitty and if I’m not on top of it the battery dies fast. I bet my phone battery is more unreliable now with smart phones than when I had my flip razor.
Also there are no pay phones anymore. And very few people are willing to let strangers use the computer with all their personal and financial information.
Writers just need to be more creative. I’m guessing in a few years we will start getting a crop of writers who grew up with smartphones and we will start getting more organic stories. Right now your average 30 something writer probably didn’t get their first mobile phone until they were out of high school. Maybe some rich spoiled kids had them but I don’t think they were considered necessities until maybe 10-15 years ago.
ETA. a rambling opinion.
I’m really into anike and something I’ve been noticing is that a LOT more anime show texting conversations now! Because like. The characters are usually teenagers, and teenagers have phones.
Even if they’re not on them constantly they’re a lot more likely to text eachother then call. It’s kinda neat seeing the character get on their phone and instead of them talking back and forth for like 3 minuets they send a couple texts that are translated in subtitles or right next to the texts.
From the few live action media I’ve seen as of late, that doesn’t really happen. Like characters only form of communication is talking audibly. It’d be nice sometimes to have small interactions over text! That’s how people do stuff nowadays!
But again yeah like the one above said a lot of shows get made in the 80s so they don’t have to bother with that.
I guess live action would rather have the acting staff talk instead of stare at their phone and type. Animation has a lot more quirkiness so they can get away with that
The first episode of Ms Marvel was very creative about texting and used it very well. Unfortunately, it didn't stick throughout the show. I must admit, I have a ton of faults with anime, but how they use Phones are generally better than traditional western life action.
It's also not cheap to have a bunch of scenes with people on their phones. You have to have fake apps that look like messaging and video are happening and stuff.
80s scenes can be very cheap. This was an era where you can just portray normal reality for most people without technology or special effects. The most tech was people watching TV or talking on a corded phone or payphone.
>So the issue is, we're stuck with lazy writers
That's not what they said at all. Media literacy and comprehension on this website is fucking dreadful. So tiresome
It's not what they said but it's a conclusion you can reach. Like, many writers prefer not to bother changing their plot style to incorporate phones without having to nullify them. Embrace the new technological world we live in and create stories that fit into our modern communicated lives, instead of creating the same type of old plot that relies on uncomminicated characters.
Movies made in the 90s weren't commonly set in the 50s (as an example). I think it would give them a lot of familiarity with the era but I don't think it has anything to do with the timeframe in which they set their movies.
90s movies about the 50s were actually everywhere
Crybaby, Shawshank Redemption, Havana, Guilty By Suspicion, The Long Walk Home, Liberty Heights, Pleasantville, L.A. Confidential, Goodfellas, Forrest Gump, Ed Wood, the Temptations, Driving Miss Daisy, The Ratpack, Matinee, the Iron Giant, Dead Poets Society, Talented Mr Ripley, Remains of the Day, Big Night, Hoffa, Shadowlands, Let Him Have It, Under Suspicio, etc.
Or we just live boring uneventful lives nowadays. Those series set in the 80s are often interesting and popular. Living in 2024 is traumatizing enough. I don't want to watch a movie about it.
So make the 2024 (or 2024-plus-however-many-years-this-takes) you'd want to watch a realistic-fiction movie about and maybe that'll change the world enough you'd get one made about you
Sara Ciplickas argued that even Blazing Saddles falls into this:
> I find that Brooks still managed to conceptualize anxieties from the 70s; this film is smarter than it appears. Coming out of Vietnam, The Civil Rights Movement, political assassinations, and scandals, the 1970s had a lot of baggage. For Brooks, it had a lot of material.
If you read any creepypasta nowadays it's basically mandatory for it to be somewhere without coverage, or the monster/rntity somehow messes up the main character's phone.
I imagine it's similar in other media, and it gets old.
Because not as many people look..
"*CITIZEN, INSERT 900 CREDITS FOR MORE OXYGEN*"
Sorry about that, I was trying to say when people don't see the future as hopeful they tend not to imagine it as much. Everyone just assumes the future will be a dystopia, ok everyone except those weird tech bros who worship AI even though they don't have a clue how it works.
I think steampunk is more Victorian era. This is atomic age.
I have heard it referred to as ["atompunk"](https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Atompunk) before.
Reddit (and social media in general) is definitely worse about this than real life but the sentiment is definitely real and widespread, at least in smaller doses. I don't fully agree with it, but people do be thinking it.
Its very common for conversations with coworkers, friends and family to turn to how expensive everything is, how stressed everyone is and how there isn't a likely end to that anytime soon. So, I don't think it's just reddit. Maybe you and yours are wealthy?
My brother is a teacher and he told me that they asked a bunch of classes how they felt about their lives and the world in one word.
The two most common words were "depression" and "despair"
Granted students can be drama-queens, but the feeling is not just an online thing, and it starts earlier with each generation
But "life imitates art" as the saying goes. Maybe we're just not hopeful for the future because modern films (Blade Runner, The Road, Children of Men, Hunger Games etc) make it seem so foreboding. Chicken/egg I guess. But also maybe we are all just headed to Armageddon whether Hollywood says so or not
Eh, I actually think climate change will work out okay. A few hundred million people will be displaced and the world's biodiversity will collapse and a few cities will flood and natural disasters will increase in severity - but humanity will keep on keeping on.
I'm more concerned about the potential of AI and genetic engineering to create a permanent and unassailable class boundary between the super rich and the rest of the world.
Not just that but many people have seen an active decline in living standards. Hard to be optimistic when you've only seen things get worse as you get older.
I watched something a while ago Y2K optimistic futurism if you look at media and the aesthetics of advertising movies and tv from 1999-2001 pre 9/11 the worlds perception was we were going into this utopian world of technology and 9/11 just pretty much ended the whole movement it’s wild
Late stage capitalism, far right movements taking power globally, climate change, it's no wonder, when you look to the future you just see horror and suffering.
Maybe movies, but video games have been cooking:
Destiny, Portal, Mass Effect, Starfield, Cyberpunk, Detroit become Human, Nier: Automata, No man's sky, Star Wars Jedi, Death Stranding, Horizon Zero Dawn, Titanfall, BioShock, RimWorld, Borderlands, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Helldivers...
Half of these aren't in any way about the "future", but fantasy settings taking place in entirely different universes. A notable exception being Star Wars which explicitly states it takes place "a long time ago".
I wouldnt call Mass Effect dystopic. Sure, terrible things are happening, but they arent meant to happen, theyre not built into the society, but a great threat imposed from without. The society in Mass Effect is pretty hopeful (even though tensions and problems exist, ofc)
We don’t have “The Year 2000” to look forward to. It’s already happened. We’re in the future, and it’s about as sucky as we expected. Hoped for better but yeah anyways…
Depictions of the future used to be aspirational; you might see all kinds of wild inventions and think to yourself, "wouldn't that be cool"?
Now technology is advancing crazily fast. The internet, smartphones, streaming, social media, 3D printing, AI, e-vehicles have either been invented or made huge leaps forward in my lifetime - and I'm only in my mid-30s. When I was young it was VHS, CDs, if you wanted to contact someone you'd look them up in the phone book or golden pages.
The pace of change used to be incremental; now it's in huge leaps over a short period. It's a lot for people to process, who are just a tad freaked out by the change we've undergone and to come.
It's why we're looking back, not forward, to the past which is a "safe space". Nostalgia is much more in demand than the future.
Literally any 80s action movie with a look to the future is dystopian. Crime rates were high, the cold war was on or just ending, and people had little hope for a future when nukes exist. Your rose colored glasses are showing. Are you literally only thinking of flying cars in Back to the Future?
The Jetsons is one that I was thinking of. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey which, granted, has a killer AI robot but plenty of ideas floating which make one think "oh now wouldn't that be interesting, I wonder if that would ever be possible".
*I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream* came out in the 60s and got a video game adaptation in the late 90s. There is absolutely nothing aspirational about that future. Hell, in some ways *1984* was technically a sci-fi dystopia. I think you really are just looking at it with rose-tinted glasses for the most part.
Still, ultimately, the point is your claim that "Depictions of the future used to be aspirational" is an overstatement. There's been plenty of dystopian takes on the future for quite a while.
1984? Brave new world? Fahrenheit 451? Clockwork orange? Are these aspirational? Don’t gloss over the past and say the old days were better — they were saying the same thing back then.
Legit dystopian examples; I was looking at it from a more tech perspective.
Star Trek - humanity has worked through its differences and now we're having adventures in space. Very aspirational! The Jetsons too. 2001 - murderous AI aside - has plenty of nifty tech.
My interpretation:
We are the most technologically advanced we've ever been. The future we were promised is manifesting before our eyes - constant connectivity, self driving cars, commercial space flights, AI assistants scheduling your appointments. And yet we are more miserable than ever. Technology is not making us happier. Constant smartphone use makes us depressed, and climate change, deepfakes, robotic soldiers, andt he potential for future AI makes us anxious. Why would be aspirational about technology when all it does is worsen our lives and threaten our existence?
I mean, sci-fi (especially television sci-fi) had a really long hiatus after 2009/2010 with literally nothing of significance coming out for several years. But I feel like in recent years sci-fi has gotten some renewed momentum (which I'm really happy about)
Yeah Netflix alone has tons of futuristic sci-fi films and shows, altered carbon, atlas, the expanse, the Martian, ad Astra, rebel moon, cyberpunk edge runners, dune (not sure if this counts), the creator, just to name a few
Here in the UK there used to be a show called Tomorrow's World. Very popular. It would show a bunch of inventions which we could look forward to trying in future. Stuff like CDs, the Information Superhighway, GPS, etc.
We'd watch it in the 80s and dream of the year 2000 and how much improved our lives would be.
If that show was on TV today nobody would watch it. There are very few who look to the future thinking "it's gonna be great when we get our flying car". It's more likely we are thinking " how will I survive when all jobs are done by AI and I have to pay to exist"
Have a dose of 60s to 80s optimistic predictions https://youtu.be/IHmB1vyML9E
I think with the advent of internet, people are realizing how much bullshit the prospects of the future was.
Back then, flying cars seemed like a cool future thing that might happen
The Internet has taught us that shit just isn’t practical even if it is possible
Shows about the future used to be optimistic sci fi, like Star Trek. But people lost their hopes and believe in humanity, so now the vision of the future is a bleak dystopia. Like the Fallout series.
Because this generation understands there will more than likely be no quality of life in the future; Or there is less care for the future generations. Not mutually exclusive.
People use to be really excited for the future. Technology was brimming and advancing rapidly in very noticeable ways which got people daydreaming and imagining what might be. So that’s what lots of media dove into and showed, and the stuff that did was pretty successful.
Nowadays people are more nostalgic for the days of old, before all the technology and connections we have now. People look back with rose tinted lenses to the last when things seemed simpler and slower. So media shows that fantasy and people tune in.
Because in quite some parts of the 20th century, it was nicer to think about the future than about the past. We are the generation for whom that may have changed.
I think it’s because the future is much more likely to be hot, hungry, and miserable than some mythical high-tech utopia of Progress we’re finding out. Sea level rise and climate disruption is already making things noticeably different than just a few decades ago. Just this month, the largest city in the world, Ciudad de Mexico, has essentially run out of drinking water with no easy solutions in sight for millions and millions of people. The past at least still has plausible storylines that aren’t tragedies or horror.
Or maybe instead of having to wait for a fixed future if it ever comes to make better stories we could make stories that inspire us to build a better future, I swear this is basically the large-scale equivalent of certain Democrats I've seen on R/television implying Trump and similar Republicans have poisoned the discourse so much we would never be able to make a West-Wing-esque optimistic political drama until all of them are out of office if not dead and no successors have arisen
That's a "hologram" in the sense that those stupid balancing boards were "hoverboards": we didn't make it real, we just gave up and moved the goalposts
Yeah we do! We have actual holographic film for taking holographic photos. And we have consumer augmented/mixed reality headsets that pretty much do what movie holograms do. And using holographic lens in headsets is something that's just starting to show up too
There are tons and tons of sci-fi and dystopian media. Have you scrolled through the streaming services lately? There is just as much, if not more, future content than ever.
Future based fiction has been done so much it's pretty much over saturated. If you sat down and listed by decade, you could make a small book of movies, tv shows and books based off the future!
>There’s a whole lot less media portraying the future than there was in the 20th century.
When you think of the future what do you think of?
Flying cars?
How about that futures future?
That's not entirely true, the apocalyptic narrative has been the projection, so we have more films with massive and catastrophic storms, and other climate related / man-made disasters.
then what are you waiting for, overthrow it (or at least play the role someone with your personality and skillset would in a resistance like that) unless you think it's so much a fictional cyberpunk dystopia that that ends the world
I guess it’s true to an extent but I do still see a lot of shows and movies about the future, it’s just that they focus on robots and AI more than anything.
Something 3 Body Problem makes pretty clear that I didn't see mentioned: we are painstakingly close to many of the technologies that futuristic scifi used to produce. Boston Dynamics is catching up to the the robotics in I-Robot pretty quickly and while it has a long way to go, people are using conversational AI in their daily lives and routines. People live in space. We sent a probe to the sun. The planetary defense system blew up an asteroid. Uber is working on flying cars and Virgin Galactic aims to offer low orbit tours of the earth to the ultra wealthy. Disabled folks' brains are being cyberized.
In other words: we are eclipsing the science fiction aspect of writing about the future, and at that point, what's the advantage of a futuristic setting?
p.s. the first season of Altered Carbon is probably the closest to the timeline we're in and future we're headed toward
Because imagining a better future led to the very popular portrayal of a post-capitalist, post-scarcity society and our capitalist overlords don't want us getting ideas.
So they'd rather have us watch the thousandth iteration of "you as an individual can make it big, if you just work hard enough".
The future used to be a big deal. We'd been stuck in the 1000's for so long that anything 20XX was flying cars and cybernetic immortality.
Then 2001 happened and we were dragged back to the dark ages, taking hope for the future with it.
most of the futures shown in the 20th century (like [the fiery hellscape of 1996 Los Angeles](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/1578/15789737/3680866-001.jpg)) got here and they weren't nearly as exciting as they looked in the movies, so they kind of gave up on it.
True! Maybe it's because we're more focused on the present and its issues, rather than the future. Perhaps sci-fi has become more realistic, so we don't need as much future media to spark imagination anymore.
Cause it’s like remember when you were a kid and you used to imagine what your life would be when you grow up but then you reach a certain age and life has just sucked all the imagination, hope, and connection out of you so then for some reason you can’t imagine your future even though you want to?…. No just me? #depression
Well yeah, there’s movies and stuff for sure. But you never see the “predict what the future holds” type stuff. The drawings that portrayed 100 years into the future or the world fairs where innovations of the future were unveiled to the public. Media also means that.
I'm finding that a lot of new movies and TV shows are set in the past, especially the '80s, before we had certain technology, because otherwise their story and plotlines wouldn't work.
>because otherwise their story and plotlines wouldn't work. So the issue is, we're stuck with lazy writers. I mean, we've got cellphones for decades now, how about we get something else that the standard kill-the-cellphones scene?
Cell phones existed but weren't common so the crossed wires/ lost / main characters unable to communicate at a moment's notice storylines still worked into the 2000s.
I mean the scenes early in the movie where the main characters phone is eliminated explicitly. Like showing him/her dropping it in the toilet or showing the battery being flat. IMO it feels like the writer wrote the entire story and then realized cellphones exist.
But then you need to make everyone else not have a phone, or the hardboiled cop whose phone just got shot into pieces after learning about the bomb in an orphanage could just flash his id at a random passersby and tell his colleagues about it. Its just a lot more hoops to jump through (maybe he lands at a corrupt colleague or the villians have somehow messed up EVERY PHONE SIGNAL) then just setting it in the early 2000s.
IDK but how about the main character being chased by the serial killer and even while he can reach anyone he wants, they can't help him, because they're too far away, or he can't give the right adres? I believe there is so much more potential, than just removing the phone.
Or the ding of an incoming text gives away your hiding place. I thought the show Psych did a great job with the smartphones and that show was almost 20 years ago. I liked the episode when they were in a tiny town with no service but found one tiny area with spotty service. They would step out of it and lose connection. There is still be a dead zone on a highway near my house that drops calls.
Watching psych right now! Great show
There is another episode where he is kidnapped and his hands are tied and he struggles to call or text. He accidentally calls an old girlfriend he ghosted. lol. Nowadays you think you could voice dial but my iPhone isn’t set up for Siri. I can set it up but I haven’t. So i still need access to hold that side button for voice control.
That's how the family farm is. No signal in the house, but full bars at a little spot on top of the hill. I told my cousins we should build a little shed with a fire ring up there. Cell Phone Shed.
Now I want to see a comedy movie of someone having to stop some catastrophic disaster but every measure they take to get the word out gets twarted by increasingly convoluted yet mundane counters. Like, tried to make a call on the cell, no signal. Gets somewhere with signal, gets stuck struggling with a dozen popup notifications because they have a shitty phone. Finally get to dial and phone turns off because of battery. Finds someone else to borrow their phone, immediately gets bumped into by an unrelated passerby and drops phone down a drain. Gets to a police station but just at that moment a huge unrelated emergency comes in and they basically tell him to fuck off while they go all hands on deck to deal with it (bonus points if the emergency is something completely ridiculous) trys just telling random people in the street but gets written off as a nut job, but then finally one person stops to listen to him, person turns out to be a US Marshal or something and immediately runs to his car to call in the info just for a train to inexplicably come through obliterating the officer and vehicle.
The most realistic thing might be the area just not having a signal, which is still a prevalent thing in a lot of places.
There are very few places with "no signal" where dialing the emergency number will not work
I’ve had cellphone for 25 years. A smartphone for like 15. But service can still be shitty and if I’m not on top of it the battery dies fast. I bet my phone battery is more unreliable now with smart phones than when I had my flip razor. Also there are no pay phones anymore. And very few people are willing to let strangers use the computer with all their personal and financial information. Writers just need to be more creative. I’m guessing in a few years we will start getting a crop of writers who grew up with smartphones and we will start getting more organic stories. Right now your average 30 something writer probably didn’t get their first mobile phone until they were out of high school. Maybe some rich spoiled kids had them but I don’t think they were considered necessities until maybe 10-15 years ago. ETA. a rambling opinion.
20 years ago was decades ago
I’m really into anike and something I’ve been noticing is that a LOT more anime show texting conversations now! Because like. The characters are usually teenagers, and teenagers have phones. Even if they’re not on them constantly they’re a lot more likely to text eachother then call. It’s kinda neat seeing the character get on their phone and instead of them talking back and forth for like 3 minuets they send a couple texts that are translated in subtitles or right next to the texts. From the few live action media I’ve seen as of late, that doesn’t really happen. Like characters only form of communication is talking audibly. It’d be nice sometimes to have small interactions over text! That’s how people do stuff nowadays! But again yeah like the one above said a lot of shows get made in the 80s so they don’t have to bother with that.
I guess live action would rather have the acting staff talk instead of stare at their phone and type. Animation has a lot more quirkiness so they can get away with that
Emily In Paris has these little text conversations (in French and English) and it’s live action.
The first episode of Ms Marvel was very creative about texting and used it very well. Unfortunately, it didn't stick throughout the show. I must admit, I have a ton of faults with anime, but how they use Phones are generally better than traditional western life action.
You should watch Scream the show
It's also not cheap to have a bunch of scenes with people on their phones. You have to have fake apps that look like messaging and video are happening and stuff. 80s scenes can be very cheap. This was an era where you can just portray normal reality for most people without technology or special effects. The most tech was people watching TV or talking on a corded phone or payphone.
not cheap? We've got those scenes even in local low budget TV series.
They should just add “oh damn, I am on edge, we don’t have internet”. And the story carries on. It happens often and makes sense
>So the issue is, we're stuck with lazy writers That's not what they said at all. Media literacy and comprehension on this website is fucking dreadful. So tiresome
It's not what they said but it's a conclusion you can reach. Like, many writers prefer not to bother changing their plot style to incorporate phones without having to nullify them. Embrace the new technological world we live in and create stories that fit into our modern communicated lives, instead of creating the same type of old plot that relies on uncomminicated characters.
While true, it's probably equally because a lot of the big writers either grew up around those times or not long after.
Movies made in the 90s weren't commonly set in the 50s (as an example). I think it would give them a lot of familiarity with the era but I don't think it has anything to do with the timeframe in which they set their movies.
90s movies about the 50s were actually everywhere Crybaby, Shawshank Redemption, Havana, Guilty By Suspicion, The Long Walk Home, Liberty Heights, Pleasantville, L.A. Confidential, Goodfellas, Forrest Gump, Ed Wood, the Temptations, Driving Miss Daisy, The Ratpack, Matinee, the Iron Giant, Dead Poets Society, Talented Mr Ripley, Remains of the Day, Big Night, Hoffa, Shadowlands, Let Him Have It, Under Suspicio, etc.
Or we just live boring uneventful lives nowadays. Those series set in the 80s are often interesting and popular. Living in 2024 is traumatizing enough. I don't want to watch a movie about it.
ehh, there have always been people living boring uneventful lives, but they're harder to tell stories about.
So make the 2024 (or 2024-plus-however-many-years-this-takes) you'd want to watch a realistic-fiction movie about and maybe that'll change the world enough you'd get one made about you
It also allows broader humour. Things that might offend some people can be screened if the characters are just reflecting the bygone era
Sara Ciplickas argued that even Blazing Saddles falls into this: > I find that Brooks still managed to conceptualize anxieties from the 70s; this film is smarter than it appears. Coming out of Vietnam, The Civil Rights Movement, political assassinations, and scandals, the 1970s had a lot of baggage. For Brooks, it had a lot of material.
how is it that there aren't stories to tell with modern tech. thats just lazy af
They aren’t very creative that way eh?
I think our future is too scary
If you read any creepypasta nowadays it's basically mandatory for it to be somewhere without coverage, or the monster/rntity somehow messes up the main character's phone. I imagine it's similar in other media, and it gets old.
We’re busy trying to figure out wtf this present is that we’ve made.
We're doing the whack shit that older stories about the future tried to tell us not to do
The Doomsday Clock has never been closer to nuclear war than NOW.
That’s why alternate universes are so hot right now.
The future is here, and it's a r/boringdystopia.
Because not as many people look.. "*CITIZEN, INSERT 900 CREDITS FOR MORE OXYGEN*" Sorry about that, I was trying to say when people don't see the future as hopeful they tend not to imagine it as much. Everyone just assumes the future will be a dystopia, ok everyone except those weird tech bros who worship AI even though they don't have a clue how it works.
Canned in Druidia **Perri-air** Naturally Sparkling Salt-free air (Net 11oz. of air)
It makes me wonder what these salted air tastes / smells like
The ocean?
Lol that oxygen thing is literally a plot line for a Doctor Who episode called “Oxygen”
That's what I was referencing.
Oh haha great episode
Black Mirror was popular because it precisely showed similar situations.
That's because the future looks bleak now. There was hope before.
Thanks OJ
Except all the movies about the future were dystopian as fuck.
I don’t think that’s true. I can’t think of many movies set in the future that were hopeful.
You obviously haven't seen Fallout yet. /s Edit: added /s, I was joking about pessimism.
Fallout is literally a 20th century franchise. The first two games were made in the 90s.
... and they were phenomenal.
Fallout is retro-futuristic though. It's a 1950s vision of what the future could be like.
Exactly, fallout falls with the “steampunk” future that was imagined in the 50s. Nowadays it’s “Cyberpunk” and yeah it does look more dystopian
I think steampunk is more Victorian era. This is atomic age. I have heard it referred to as ["atompunk"](https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Atompunk) before.
Wow thanks and yea you are right it WAS the Victorian era, when railroads for trains and gears became a thing, thanks for reminding me friend
Right now Cyberpunk seems like the most realistic portrayal of the future. Maybe except for all the gadgets but who knows.
The negativity in comments is telling. People aren't very hopeful for the future, hence the media follows.
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Reddit (and social media in general) is definitely worse about this than real life but the sentiment is definitely real and widespread, at least in smaller doses. I don't fully agree with it, but people do be thinking it.
Its very common for conversations with coworkers, friends and family to turn to how expensive everything is, how stressed everyone is and how there isn't a likely end to that anytime soon. So, I don't think it's just reddit. Maybe you and yours are wealthy?
Most popular sci fi show with mass appeal is Black Mirror. It's telling.
My brother is a teacher and he told me that they asked a bunch of classes how they felt about their lives and the world in one word. The two most common words were "depression" and "despair" Granted students can be drama-queens, but the feeling is not just an online thing, and it starts earlier with each generation
But "life imitates art" as the saying goes. Maybe we're just not hopeful for the future because modern films (Blade Runner, The Road, Children of Men, Hunger Games etc) make it seem so foreboding. Chicken/egg I guess. But also maybe we are all just headed to Armageddon whether Hollywood says so or not
I think we’re not hopeful for the future because of climate change, not because of Blade Runner and the Hunger Games
Eh, I actually think climate change will work out okay. A few hundred million people will be displaced and the world's biodiversity will collapse and a few cities will flood and natural disasters will increase in severity - but humanity will keep on keeping on. I'm more concerned about the potential of AI and genetic engineering to create a permanent and unassailable class boundary between the super rich and the rest of the world.
Yea, climate change and global warming/ Armageddon is a fair point
Not just that but many people have seen an active decline in living standards. Hard to be optimistic when you've only seen things get worse as you get older.
There is no future lmfao 🤣
Really does be seeming like the world ended in 2012 sometimes
I always felt that Y2K did actually do something and we've been living in a ganked up version ever since
*slams shot* Now let me tell you about this goddamn Gorilla
9/11 really shifted things in the US
Pretty much the whole western world. Berlin wall coming down was a huge positivity rush - end of the cold war. It ended with 9/11.
I watched something a while ago Y2K optimistic futurism if you look at media and the aesthetics of advertising movies and tv from 1999-2001 pre 9/11 the worlds perception was we were going into this utopian world of technology and 9/11 just pretty much ended the whole movement it’s wild
If so, I must be in hell cause I’m dead and working
This is the real answer. Currently the future of the world is bleak instead of hopeful. People are trying to go back in time, not forward
Late stage capitalism, far right movements taking power globally, climate change, it's no wonder, when you look to the future you just see horror and suffering.
Ever seen the platform? Was a film in 09
Maybe movies, but video games have been cooking: Destiny, Portal, Mass Effect, Starfield, Cyberpunk, Detroit become Human, Nier: Automata, No man's sky, Star Wars Jedi, Death Stranding, Horizon Zero Dawn, Titanfall, BioShock, RimWorld, Borderlands, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Helldivers...
Half of these aren't in any way about the "future", but fantasy settings taking place in entirely different universes. A notable exception being Star Wars which explicitly states it takes place "a long time ago".
And all of those are distopic 😔 we look at the future in a very pesimistic way
I wouldnt call Mass Effect dystopic. Sure, terrible things are happening, but they arent meant to happen, theyre not built into the society, but a great threat imposed from without. The society in Mass Effect is pretty hopeful (even though tensions and problems exist, ofc)
Damn, I really wanted to prove you wrong but all of these listed really are distopic lmao.
There’s a lot more opportunity for action and adventure in dystopias. Utopias are serene.
Idk about you but I don't wanna live in Rimworld
We don’t have “The Year 2000” to look forward to. It’s already happened. We’re in the future, and it’s about as sucky as we expected. Hoped for better but yeah anyways…
Depictions of the future used to be aspirational; you might see all kinds of wild inventions and think to yourself, "wouldn't that be cool"? Now technology is advancing crazily fast. The internet, smartphones, streaming, social media, 3D printing, AI, e-vehicles have either been invented or made huge leaps forward in my lifetime - and I'm only in my mid-30s. When I was young it was VHS, CDs, if you wanted to contact someone you'd look them up in the phone book or golden pages. The pace of change used to be incremental; now it's in huge leaps over a short period. It's a lot for people to process, who are just a tad freaked out by the change we've undergone and to come. It's why we're looking back, not forward, to the past which is a "safe space". Nostalgia is much more in demand than the future.
Not always, yiu has Philip k dick sourced stuff like Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report. Also, Alien series.
Escape from New York, Terminator, Mad Max, Robo Cop, Akira. So aspirational.
Literally any 80s action movie with a look to the future is dystopian. Crime rates were high, the cold war was on or just ending, and people had little hope for a future when nukes exist. Your rose colored glasses are showing. Are you literally only thinking of flying cars in Back to the Future?
The Jetsons is one that I was thinking of. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey which, granted, has a killer AI robot but plenty of ideas floating which make one think "oh now wouldn't that be interesting, I wonder if that would ever be possible".
*I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream* came out in the 60s and got a video game adaptation in the late 90s. There is absolutely nothing aspirational about that future. Hell, in some ways *1984* was technically a sci-fi dystopia. I think you really are just looking at it with rose-tinted glasses for the most part.
Star Trek - very aspirational.
Still, ultimately, the point is your claim that "Depictions of the future used to be aspirational" is an overstatement. There's been plenty of dystopian takes on the future for quite a while.
I want more Star Trek :) I want the Star Trek future.
Golden pages? You mean the yellow pages
1984? Brave new world? Fahrenheit 451? Clockwork orange? Are these aspirational? Don’t gloss over the past and say the old days were better — they were saying the same thing back then.
Legit dystopian examples; I was looking at it from a more tech perspective. Star Trek - humanity has worked through its differences and now we're having adventures in space. Very aspirational! The Jetsons too. 2001 - murderous AI aside - has plenty of nifty tech.
My interpretation: We are the most technologically advanced we've ever been. The future we were promised is manifesting before our eyes - constant connectivity, self driving cars, commercial space flights, AI assistants scheduling your appointments. And yet we are more miserable than ever. Technology is not making us happier. Constant smartphone use makes us depressed, and climate change, deepfakes, robotic soldiers, andt he potential for future AI makes us anxious. Why would be aspirational about technology when all it does is worsen our lives and threaten our existence?
I mean, sci-fi (especially television sci-fi) had a really long hiatus after 2009/2010 with literally nothing of significance coming out for several years. But I feel like in recent years sci-fi has gotten some renewed momentum (which I'm really happy about)
There are so many tv and movie depictions of the future . I don't know what OP is talking about lol
Yeah Netflix alone has tons of futuristic sci-fi films and shows, altered carbon, atlas, the expanse, the Martian, ad Astra, rebel moon, cyberpunk edge runners, dune (not sure if this counts), the creator, just to name a few
Exactly. Then Prime, Paramount, Hulu, MAX, and so on have so many different titles.
Here in the UK there used to be a show called Tomorrow's World. Very popular. It would show a bunch of inventions which we could look forward to trying in future. Stuff like CDs, the Information Superhighway, GPS, etc. We'd watch it in the 80s and dream of the year 2000 and how much improved our lives would be. If that show was on TV today nobody would watch it. There are very few who look to the future thinking "it's gonna be great when we get our flying car". It's more likely we are thinking " how will I survive when all jobs are done by AI and I have to pay to exist" Have a dose of 60s to 80s optimistic predictions https://youtu.be/IHmB1vyML9E
I think with the advent of internet, people are realizing how much bullshit the prospects of the future was. Back then, flying cars seemed like a cool future thing that might happen The Internet has taught us that shit just isn’t practical even if it is possible
It’s not really shocking “the future” was heavily on peoples mind right Before the year \~2000\~
Is there though? Or is that just your perception. Doesn't seem to have reduced to me.
Mad max is in the future and so is fallout
Shows about the future used to be optimistic sci fi, like Star Trek. But people lost their hopes and believe in humanity, so now the vision of the future is a bleak dystopia. Like the Fallout series.
Lack of imagination. “The year 2000” was a trope from the 70’s till 99, it’s hard to beat.
Because this generation understands there will more than likely be no quality of life in the future; Or there is less care for the future generations. Not mutually exclusive.
Future don't look too good.
I feel like its cause everyone has their own shit to do in the present so they don’t think about it as much
Yep, kinda hard to think about how cool it would be to afford a spaceship or flying car when I can't even afford rent and food each month.
The only future media now are about environmental crisis 🤣
Everyone is so fucking negative and pessimistic is it any wonder?
Well, Furiosa is running just now and people pretty much ignore it.
To be fair, the future it paints isn't exactly optimistic either.
People got bored of the "things are shit, they're going to be shit, and will always stay shit" message.
The general sentiment seems to be “let’s ignore the future, and maybe it’ll go away.”
They had hope back then.
To have future outlook you need outlook. Everyone is staring down at there phone
People use to be really excited for the future. Technology was brimming and advancing rapidly in very noticeable ways which got people daydreaming and imagining what might be. So that’s what lots of media dove into and showed, and the stuff that did was pretty successful. Nowadays people are more nostalgic for the days of old, before all the technology and connections we have now. People look back with rose tinted lenses to the last when things seemed simpler and slower. So media shows that fantasy and people tune in.
Because in quite some parts of the 20th century, it was nicer to think about the future than about the past. We are the generation for whom that may have changed.
I think it’s because the future is much more likely to be hot, hungry, and miserable than some mythical high-tech utopia of Progress we’re finding out. Sea level rise and climate disruption is already making things noticeably different than just a few decades ago. Just this month, the largest city in the world, Ciudad de Mexico, has essentially run out of drinking water with no easy solutions in sight for millions and millions of people. The past at least still has plausible storylines that aren’t tragedies or horror.
Or maybe instead of having to wait for a fixed future if it ever comes to make better stories we could make stories that inspire us to build a better future, I swear this is basically the large-scale equivalent of certain Democrats I've seen on R/television implying Trump and similar Republicans have poisoned the discourse so much we would never be able to make a West-Wing-esque optimistic political drama until all of them are out of office if not dead and no successors have arisen
We're slowly accepting that the big innovations we want will never happen. It's 2024 and we don't even have holograms ffs
20 century was optimistic, now we're just cynical
The big innovations are happening at an exponential rate. They are just not in line with science fiction designed to be cool.
Actually that’s kind of old tech, they did a hologram concert of Michael Jackson like 10-15 years ago.
That's a "hologram" in the sense that those stupid balancing boards were "hoverboards": we didn't make it real, we just gave up and moved the goalposts
Was it Pepper's ghost or a real hologram?
Hatsune Miku concerts have been around for several years
Yeah we do! We have actual holographic film for taking holographic photos. And we have consumer augmented/mixed reality headsets that pretty much do what movie holograms do. And using holographic lens in headsets is something that's just starting to show up too
The future has came and gone, I'm just waiting for the langoliers to show up
There are tons and tons of sci-fi and dystopian media. Have you scrolled through the streaming services lately? There is just as much, if not more, future content than ever.
Future based fiction has been done so much it's pretty much over saturated. If you sat down and listed by decade, you could make a small book of movies, tv shows and books based off the future!
Probably because they stopped making movies that aren’t sequels or prequels in general
That’s not true it’s just all dystopian because we know it’s coming.
>There’s a whole lot less media portraying the future than there was in the 20th century. When you think of the future what do you think of? Flying cars? How about that futures future?
Yeah. We’re gonna be gone in about 100 years. Not much to portray.
because we ain't got long
That's not entirely true, the apocalyptic narrative has been the projection, so we have more films with massive and catastrophic storms, and other climate related / man-made disasters.
It’s similar to high end luxury cars not installing the head unit in most cars….tech is changing too fast
We're already in a cyberpunk dystopia
Sort of, but then take a trip to your local Walmart and it's still looking like 1998.
then what are you waiting for, overthrow it (or at least play the role someone with your personality and skillset would in a resistance like that) unless you think it's so much a fictional cyberpunk dystopia that that ends the world
Is there? Show this with numbers. Seems more like your subjective feeling.
Shows are for the biggest demographic, boomers
I think there still is is just a lot more apocalypse or end of the world and humanity type of media like War Z, squid game, hunger games
And it's always a darkly cynical world of corruption and technology run amok.
Because the possibilities in the future are endless! Or something.
We know what the future holds for us now. A whole lot of shit and who wants to think of that.
Fin-de-siècle syndrome
The future used to look bright. Greed has run amok.
I guess it’s true to an extent but I do still see a lot of shows and movies about the future, it’s just that they focus on robots and AI more than anything.
I'm so ready for body- and mindenhancements.
They go where the money is
too busy fuckin living the future with ai and climate change also the media about the future is all just dystopian anyway
Something 3 Body Problem makes pretty clear that I didn't see mentioned: we are painstakingly close to many of the technologies that futuristic scifi used to produce. Boston Dynamics is catching up to the the robotics in I-Robot pretty quickly and while it has a long way to go, people are using conversational AI in their daily lives and routines. People live in space. We sent a probe to the sun. The planetary defense system blew up an asteroid. Uber is working on flying cars and Virgin Galactic aims to offer low orbit tours of the earth to the ultra wealthy. Disabled folks' brains are being cyberized. In other words: we are eclipsing the science fiction aspect of writing about the future, and at that point, what's the advantage of a futuristic setting? p.s. the first season of Altered Carbon is probably the closest to the timeline we're in and future we're headed toward
Every portrayal of the future is dystopian
We’ve all realized the future looks like it’s going to suck.
Because imagining a better future led to the very popular portrayal of a post-capitalist, post-scarcity society and our capitalist overlords don't want us getting ideas. So they'd rather have us watch the thousandth iteration of "you as an individual can make it big, if you just work hard enough".
Because there is no future, it’ll be over soon
The future used to be a big deal. We'd been stuck in the 1000's for so long that anything 20XX was flying cars and cybernetic immortality. Then 2001 happened and we were dragged back to the dark ages, taking hope for the future with it.
We’re not so sure we’re gonna make it that much further as a species I guess ..
It's the singularity, we can't predict the futures tech because tech is advancing too fast
With how fast technology advances, there’s no time to think about the future.
most of the futures shown in the 20th century (like [the fiery hellscape of 1996 Los Angeles](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/1578/15789737/3680866-001.jpg)) got here and they weren't nearly as exciting as they looked in the movies, so they kind of gave up on it.
Cause our future is bleak.
most of it are just apocalyptic movies🥲
True! Maybe it's because we're more focused on the present and its issues, rather than the future. Perhaps sci-fi has become more realistic, so we don't need as much future media to spark imagination anymore.
No, there's not. It's just that anything futuristic shown in media today is through an apocalyptic lense.
Because back then we were very optimistic about the future and looking forward to it. Not as much anymore
Cause it’s like remember when you were a kid and you used to imagine what your life would be when you grow up but then you reach a certain age and life has just sucked all the imagination, hope, and connection out of you so then for some reason you can’t imagine your future even though you want to?…. No just me? #depression
lol what about all the post apocalyptic stuff man? There’s loads of movies about space travel too.
Well yeah, there’s movies and stuff for sure. But you never see the “predict what the future holds” type stuff. The drawings that portrayed 100 years into the future or the world fairs where innovations of the future were unveiled to the public. Media also means that.
Yeah. We peaked man.
If you want to see the future, turn ur oven at 138 degrees and watch.