Don’t be drawn in, drowned by the noise of the society washing over you. There’s so much turmoil and junk in change — so much of it is nonsense. The only way to beat the noise and stay on top of it. Rather than letting the change move you, the solution is to find your own path. You are connected to the world that you flow through, but you have a voice that tells you what you need, and follow your virtue and you shall never be lost. You must be strong, so you can cut a wave through the tides to make positive change. There is no greater happiness than to achieve a content life, and there is no greater honor than to produce.
Cyberpunk the opposite. It is when you let go of achieving enlightenment and be allured away into consumption, cocooning away in the mania that feeds off of mainstream society. In a world where there is cyberpunk, there is the need for awakening, to not be cyberpunk.
Many platforms are designed to deliver repeated doses of dopamine to keep the users engaged. But at the end of the day, how much of the stuff you see on screen do you actually care about? Or, were you just simply “mildly interested” and “scrolling away”?
There’s nothing wrong with using technology, as they are tools with purpose. However, the danger is in letting technology distract you from your real goals.
Entertainment apps are designed to trap you like a casino would to a gambler, and the more you enjoy it, the more nonsense it feeds you. Such is Facebook, X, Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, etc. They are in essence, cyberpunk.
With these business models, you just have to be cautious and not waste your time and money by being distracted.
At the same time, these platforms are nothing but a temporary social experiment in the larger scale of time. Things change and interactions will take on different shapes. A decade or two from now, nobody will be “scrolling on phones”. It just happens that in the early half of the 21st century, the internet is so overly-coveted by marketers who compete to collect our data, and by platforms who compete for our attention. All of this will change, and hopefully for the better.
We don’t want technologies that are designed to subconsciously disrupt people’s prioritization and risk-reward systems through offering meaningless distractions. That’s cyberpunk.
My point is, just don’t get distracted, don’t become an easy target for mass influence by consuming too much nonsense, don’t let the algorithm feed you for too long out of boredom.
Do you still have time to think about the state of your mind? Think about where do you find yourself positioned in this world and what are your goals? Go after them! Use technology only as a tool.
Reset all that nonsense, redundancies, repetitive droning.
Look beyond the screens and live your fullest and most meaningful life!
That’s what I learned from playing Cyberpunk 2077 (it is aesthetic and beautifully immersive as a game). “Cyberpunk” is awareness.
What else do you think is cyberpunk in our reality? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
