What is your absolute dystopia? - You don't need to tell me, I already know....I am watching you and I know what's best for you.....

[Get_your_kicks_with_30-06]

But America has no old traditional ways for the most part -- it's just a bland "corporate monoculture" like that quote says. The buildings are always modern and corporate.

Eh this is true for American cities I guess, but rural America is filled with tradition and beautiful rural architecture.

The thing about American culture is for a very long time it consisted mainly of a connection to nature and practicality. We didn't have the time or resources to build beautiful palaces, huge Gothic cathedrals, and pretty cobblestone roads. So things got made out of timber and didn't last long enough for the future. Along with Americans distrust of the aristocracy they found simple rugged living much more pleasant than flagrant displays of wealth. Plus we didn't need to create our own beautiful structures because America is still and more so back then filled with some of the most beautiful woodlands and nature in the world, which Americans found much more engaging than architecture.

Now granted along the way this all got co-opted by predatory corporations looking to change the rural America into a urban economic powerhouse. But to say all of America is just a "corporate monoculture" is a bit of a disillusioned urbanite way of thinking.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I'm stuck in a shitty urban environment somewhere in a part of America with little or no history or culture other than consumerism, so after reading the replies to my last post, I admit my situation can darken my view and make things seem worse.

 

[The Curmudgeon]

@Ughubughughughughughghlug @Get_your_kicks_with_30-06

I agree with you guys that America has culture. I'm just saying that the modern American left is trying to erase it.

Also, how would you tell the difference between a cultured small town and a redneck shithole? I ask this because I live in a rural area and none of the neighboring small towns are any better than the cities. Granted, they're bad in different ways than the cities.

 

[keyboredsm4shthe2nd]

California.

 

[Feline Supremacist]

California.

New York City

 

[Slap47]

At least in other modern places, there's still some traditional cultures left. Latin America has a variety of Latin American ways and traditions, like Puerto Rican salsa music or the Mexican Day of the Dead. Japanese have traditional culture that lives on to this day, like the yukata and sushi. Hell, even in Europe there's some old ways still around, like old castles and festivals.

But America has no old traditional ways for the most part -- it's just a bland "corporate monoculture" like that quote says. The buildings are always modern and corporate. Even the sidewalks are usually just bland cement squares (in Europe they can be in interesting patterns). Clothing is always advertising something with a message or logo. Food is just processed food and fast food, basic stuff, or "exotic" but foreign. "Festivals" are just "technology-saturated" events people just happen to gather for.* Mainstream churches are always like concerts in auditoriums with video. Stadiums and parks (which are always bland sports fields) are named after corporations. It seems there's nothing to do but shop or eat out**, and people like CWC consider malls "high culture." Cities revolve around the car, like giant strip malls.

If some global disaster wiped out the modern world, at least other places still have some traditions going to fall back on. America would have to invent new traditions from scratch.

*(When I went to a 4th of July festival, it was very isolating and modern: people stuck to themselves, plenty of police on standby in case anything happened, the only food was junk food, and during the fireworks they played crappy patriotic pop songs.)

**(before coronapanic struck that is)

edit to add: After reading the replies, this stuff about America may only apply to certain urbanized parts of the country.

America tends to prefer to have their cities as a living history of sorts. They like to like mix the old and new and have them side by side. Old homes are renovated over the course of 200 years and it just keeps going.

You don't really see that in the rest of the world. Asians think the old is trashy if it isn't some temple or monument and Europeans fetishize the old and unchanged.

 

[timewave0]

America tends to prefer to have their cities as a living history of sorts. They like to like mix the old and new and have them side by side. Old homes are renovated over the course of 200 years and it just keeps going.

You don't really see that in the rest of the world. Asians think the old is trashy if it isn't some temple or monument and Europeans fetishize the old and unchanged.

perhaps, but I feel like a consequence of that is that much of America just looks like one extended outdoor shopping center. Admittedly this applies more to suburbia than the cities, but regardless of where you are in the States you see repeated clusters of pretty much the same mega-chains. Shopping centers & parking lots. That is a dystopian characteristic, for me at least... it’s a piece of the unbridled consumerist mindset that drives so much of our culture. I feel that the rise of modern advertising & marketing in the 20th century really shifted our culture in a dark direction.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

A world where children are told that if they don't perfectly allign with gender stereotypes, they must mutilate and sterilize themselves to keep them from killing themselves. Often by people who once said gender stereotyping was evil patriarchy.

 

[Slap47]

perhaps, but I feel like a consequence of that is that much of America just looks like one extended outdoor shopping center. Admittedly this applies more to suburbia than the cities, but regardless of where you are in the States you see repeated clusters of pretty much the same mega-chains. Shopping centers & parking lots. That is a dystopian characteristic, for me at least... it’s a piece of the unbridled consumerist mindset that drives so much of our culture. I feel that the rise of modern advertising & marketing in the 20th century really shifted our culture in a dark direction.

I think this is more of western half of the continent thing. The first houses in the west were sod (dirt) houses, followed by wood houses and then by sandstone. The cities were rarely huge and as a result most of the cities were build in the 1950s when modernism, brutalism and whatever other nonsense was in vogue.

Before the 1940s most of the population was in the east and only with air-conditioning and ww2 did people go to California and the deserts.

If anything, the UK and their post-war stalinist housing blocks look worse. Function over form resulted in shitty function since people don't maintain stuff that looks like shit.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

[old vs new]

Old or new, either way, I still think Earth is a pretty dystopian planet like I said earlier. And the world has been shit since at least the dawn of civilization. The past may not have had the BS of the modern world, but they still had their own glaring issues -- slavery, torture, pillaging, horrible sanitation, and so on.

Then again, Earth isn't all bad. And like others said, living the Bob Chipman approved way -- packed like sardines away from nature in a modern city -- could make anyone misanthropic to a degree.

a grey district of misanthropy and pessimism

Cities drive you fucking insane. That's pretty much it. Cities fuck with your notion of personal space, they fuck with your perception of how society fucking works, they distort how you view other human beings.

 

[#KillAllPedos]

Diversity + Social Distancing = Dystopia

 

[Jan Ciągwa]

A world which won't allow me to off myself when I'm done with it.

 

[Orion Balls]

View attachment 1229523View attachment 1229525
This apparently doesn’t qualify as traditional culture.

This is really late, but nothing beats American culture like this.

 

[a6h51]

A place where the government has power over us all, and it's complete authoritarian. A world where we cannot choose what we do with our bodies, how we run businesses, and a world that is surveillance our every move. A world that is Marxist or Stalinist Communism, Socialism, Nazism or Fascism. A world where huge corporations have all of the power. A world where only certain humans have rights, and fuck the others. A world where free speech is banned.

 

[drain]

I'm so done with people man, I can't even think of something I would really like to happen, but animal cruelty needs TO GO.
If I had only one wish to make, I would choose the end of animal cruelty.

I'm not a PETA type of person who thinks killing to eat is a sin, I'm speaking about the senseless, needless, vulgar violence some people inflict upon animals (especially domestic). I'm super desensitized about gore and stuff like that, but if there's a thing I can't stomach is watching animal cruelty. Just fuck that man. Why beat a dog to death or burn a kitten alive? This shit needs to go.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

A world which won't allow me to off myself when I'm done with it.

Some think that could be reality. There's this theory that when you die, you "respawn" in an alternate reality where you didn't die, from some quantum physics crap related to Schrödinger's cat.

It's a horrifying possibility I hope is false.

 

[Calandrino]

To me the U.K. is even more unsettling than something like 1984 or Brave New World because it almost seems like it could be a real place. Like you could almost imagine something like that happening in real life.

 

[Bionicle of War]

Some think that could be reality. There's this theory that when you die, you "respawn" in an alternate reality where you didn't die, from some quantum physics crap related to Schrödinger's cat.

It's a horrifying possibility I hope is false.

How is this supposed to work with people who die of old age? Do they regress to a younger state or just keep aging forever until their bodies can no longer hold together from the weight of decay?

 

[Shroom King]

Any country where burning your own country's flag is considered "free speech" but burning the (((wrong))) flag is considered a "hate crime."

 

[[Redacted]-san]

In a country where you have to say something positive about your homeland, or else you'll be isolated from the public with a muzzle on your face, and locked in your own house with bordered up windows with the house key missing. And your internet gets permanently restricted until you say good things about your country full of factories and pollution in a very populated place.