On Dystopian Trends in Media and Financial Instability

[TranquilPanther]

I have noticed a trend in media and wonder if others here are seeing/feeling the same thing.

Let's harken back to the "Global Financial Crisis" of ~2007-2008 and the ensuing years of recession. Think back to predominant themes being presented in popular media. Maybe this is biased by what I personally noticed during that timeframe, but most all popular forms of fiction seemed to be markedly apocalyptic. It seemed as if we were being inundated with all things zombie, and if it wasn't to do with the undead it was instead some kind of Orwellian future. I'll give some examples below:

Of the Zombie Variety
- Walking Dead
- The Last of Us
- Day Z
- Zombies in Minecraft
- Dead Rising
- Left 4 Dead
- World War Z
- Zombieland

Other Dystopian
- The Hunger Games
- Maze Runner
- Divergent
- Black Mirror

(*Note: I think it's also interesting that during this particular period in school they had us reading The Giver, Fahrenheit 451, and Brave New World. Maybe these are standard reads, but it's too coincidental not to mention.)

I would posit that the inordinate rise of apocalyptic representations in media was an external manifestation of the internal feelings of dread and hopelessness regarding the financial and societal instability of the time. As all the current data indicates that we either are or imminently will be in another global recession I think it's prescient to survey themes in media today to see if there is a similar externalization of the collective unconscious. 

I believe that we can see the same phenomena being played not in the realm of narrative this time, but rather in music. There have been 3 major rap releases in the last ~six months by some of the most popular figures in the genre which have been explicitly dystopian.

Travis Scott's Utopia: It's right in the name. If you watch concert videos you can see the rapper wearing Mad Max style improvised armor.

Kanye's Vultures: Go and watch the video for the "Havoc Version" of the title track. Extremely dark, borderline explicitly satanic, emotionally evocative of the kind of scenes you might imagine during a Revelation type scenario. This is the most in your face Kanye gets with the theme, but there's undercurrents of this throughout the album and the promotional material/performances.

Yeat's 2093: The entire thing is basically a concept album aping the cyberpunk style of Deus Ex.

Whether or not you appreciate rap as a form of music it's indisputable that it has a stranglehold on the collective psyche of the west, and with a combined monthly listenership of over 160 million the impact from these artists is massive. 

I believe we're seeing a mirroring of what happed leading up to and during the "Global Financial Crisis" in the media landscape which is coinciding with data suggesting that we are in for another crash.

[Aizen]

A much more important phenomenon than the latest rap nigger beats is how immediately after Donald Trump became President, you saw the most insane kind of apocalyptic predictions and general seething from the left-media. The general populous has been inundated with all this for 8 years now.

Obama was the End of History for the political establishment. Trump obliterated their brains. Yadda yadda yadda, we all know this story. The dark themes you see coming out of the media are reflective of this, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" being WaPo's tagline for 8 years, Trump as Hitler 2, Perpetual 1939 on the fringe of Eastern Europe, etc. The dark themes now among the populous are reflective of the general feeling since the China Virus, the Festival of St. Floyd, and the myriad failures of the Usurper Brandon.

Can these be predictive of some future decline? I don't think so (though they could be both an effect of decline and a cause of more decline, but I don't want to go that far). For most people there's not much light at the end of the tunnel, but it seems to me that much of the themes of dark feeling you see in media and otherwise are reactive rather than predictive.

To illustrate my point, look at the markets. Markets are a good example because they are highly reflective of human behavior. A general rule of markets is that fear precipitates growth and hope precipitates decline. In a pure world of human actors with no outside manipulation, like you see in early bitcoin or ethereum markets, a general fear is predictive of growth, so I wouldn't put too much stock in the dark feeling of purely human actors as being predictive of further decline.

[anthony]

I'm into studying Isekai. It's far more spiritually a frontier fiction than neo-westerns like The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead is normalfags being tricked into watching Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman again because there are guns and redshirts dying. Isekai is why Hitler loved Karl May. A picture of liberation from owned space. The ability to flex talent again and advance status and grow in power.

Those shitty revolution stories are obamamaxxed feelgood poptimist fantasies of easy change. But, have I mentioned on this forum before that the lady who wrote The Hunger Games started out writing a homage to GOR sanitised for children? What she meant and what her work got taken as may be very different things.

[Aizen]

I'm into studying Isekai. It's far more spiritually a frontier fiction than neo-westerns like The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead is normalfags being tricked into watching Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman again because there are guns and redshirts dying. Isekai is why Hitler loved Karl May. A picture of liberation from owned space. The ability to flex talent again and advance status and grow in power.

Those shitty revolution stories are obamamaxxed feelgood poptimist fantasies of easy change. But, have I mentioned on this forum before that the lady who wrote The Hunger Games started out writing a homage to GOR sanitised for children? What she meant and what her work got taken as may be very different things.

What is GOR?

[anthony]

I'm into studying Isekai. It's far more spiritually a frontier fiction than neo-westerns like The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead is normalfags being tricked into watching Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman again because there are guns and redshirts dying. Isekai is why Hitler loved Karl May. A picture of liberation from owned space. The ability to flex talent again and advance status and grow in power.

Those shitty revolution stories are obamamaxxed feelgood poptimist fantasies of easy change. But, have I mentioned on this forum before that the lady who wrote The Hunger Games started out writing a homage to GOR sanitised for children? What she meant and what her work got taken as may be very different things.

What is GOR?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gor