Comment by keiferski

Perhaps publications like Mondo 2000 and WIRED (and Boing Boing) killed Cyberpunk the way The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis stuck a knife in the beatniks of the 1960's. Not that they made fun of Cyberpunk, but rather they so overly-embraced it that they kind of unintentionally made a mockery of it (so perhaps not so much like Dobie Gillis?). That was the way I saw it in the 90's anyway.

In the 70s/80s, the jobs that were available to you were basically what your family member could "get you in". I am of that age and I remember General Motors was a great place to work at that time. My friend "got in" after high school because his father was a union boss. For me, "getting in" to General Motors was literally impossible because I had no connections.

I was into 90s cyberpunk and the problem was the ideas were basically all wrong about the internet. Or maybe we could have gone in another direction with the internet but didn't.

The main difference overall though is in the past life was incredibly boring. It was so boring people had to invent all these cultural activities to escape the disconnected, mind numbing boredom of existence.

Life today is just much more interesting regardless of finances so there isn't the motivation to hang out at goth bar once a week.

> Cyberpunk was essentially a sub-type of counterculture, and counterculture itself has pretty much been dead for a couple decades now. When the hackers are primarily interested in VC funds, the cryptocurrency ethos overtaken by the finance industry, and the goal of every artist to “make it” as a creator, there’s basically no room for culture that explicitly wants to operate outside the system.

Counter-culture still exists. Look to minorities for it to exist, and think independently outside of what you get exposed to through media. The small web, and mastodon, are both built on the backs of queer/bipoc people, and it's possible to find spaces that still are operating outside of the system, you just have to actually leave the system to find it. Nobody's going to put it on your facebook or linkedin feed.

I think what you're trying to say was that "cyberpunk" appealed to a subculture of computer enthusiasts emersed in Asian cultural artifacts like manga, empowered by the 80's mantra that sex and violence sells and driven by the idea that all technology is socially transformative, just not in the ways we hope it will be.

Subcultures are far from dead and GenZ seem to be a subculture factory. Counterculture is also far from dead as it usually expands in the US every time there's a conservative president in power or a recession. Subcultures != Counterculture. The subculture of amateur horticulturalists that are also cat lovers and like photographing their cats in their gardens is only a thing because it's been empowered by technology.

I partially disagree, there are still some cyberpunk medias that feel fresh for today. But yes, they're definitely not as famous as the previous ones.

Mirror's edge (catalyst or not) comes to mind immediately, that game feels like is set in an apple store. It essentially is a modern cyberpunk setting, which apparently is called post cyberpunk.

Another title coming to my mind is cloud punk. That games has a very "old style" cyberpunk esthetic - rain, cloud, whatever trope you name it, there is -, but it is still kept quite fresh by the style with which the plot is written, the characters, and the situation happening.

I would like to say more titles, but I don't know any

Counterculture moved underground.

Cyberpunk as a sub-type: well, science fiction was for decades bound to get there, eventually. The Stainless Steel Rat would like to have a word about it…

Computers, the internet, it is all mainstream now, the opposite of a counterculture.

If you want a counterculture, look the other way. "digital detox", permaculture, degrowth, etc... In the tech world you have the "small web".

"Maker" movements, repair/reuse/recycling, etc... used to be countercultures but they have gone towards mainstream in the last few years (and I think it is a good thing).

Not all countercultures are "good". For instance what we now call "wokism" used to be a counterculture, it is now mostly mainstream. The opposite is now a counterculture, including incels, red pill, etc...

Countercultures change and go. Very few countercultures of the past still remain, they either integrate in mainstream culture, or become so niche that they effectively disappear.

Another reading is that there is no more counterculture because it won and became the culture.

It was already a libertarian/neoliberal fantasy - one where everything is corrupt, everyone is competing with everyone else, and the point of the game is to grab as much as you can for yourself while selling your services to the highest bidder.

There's nothing counter about it. It makes surviving in a white knuckle corporate techno-dystopia cool. It's a celebration, not a critique.

Compare with PKD or the much less well-known John Brunner in books like The Stone That Never Came Down and The Shockwave Rider - the latter being an obvious influence on Gibson.

fascinating insight