While there is progress in certain areas and certain things are better now than in previous historical times, the need to look out for the downside of various processes is undeniable and possibly more urgent than ever, for the simple fact that power becomes dangerous without developing one’s responsibility accordingly.
No wonder some of the mental or real-life pictures of the contemporary world can leave us feeling… dystopian. These can include the massive amount of non-nature-friendly trash being produced and dumped all around the world, or attempts to imagine the implications of AI on our near future if we don't take the necessary precautions to play it safe.
People online stepped up, trying to raise awareness, answering one Redditor's question: "What's something that is accepted as normal, but is really dystopian when you think about it?"
More info: Reddit
#1
Jailing people for stealing food while throwing away tons more every day.
Report
213points
#2
Advertiser friendly language in daily life. Like people getting used to not being able to say words like "dead" on Tiktok because advertisers don't like it, so then you see a bunch of people saying words like "unalive" in real life.
Report
190points
#3
All of those "Feel good stories" about people working extra super duper hard just to barely scrape by.
"Kids make business to help another disabled child buy a wheelchair"
"Teacher runs out of PTO days fighting cancer so the whole school district started to donate sick days"
"Man walks 15 miles for a job interview, community raises money for a bicycle."
Report
182points
#4
Working full-time for a wage that won't support a family.
A family?? How about 1 person.
Report
167points
#5
Corporations being considered people and having more rights than real human beings.
166points
#7
Claiming drag queens are child predators, and ignoring all the abuse going on in the church, cause that, and all the new laws being proposed...seems kind of dystopian.
Report
160points
#8
Privatized-for-profit prisons, healthcare, and education.
Corporations and foreign entities buying up all of our land and housing.
Lack of Congressional term limits and self-oversight of Congress and Scotus.
2A absolutism.
Forced sex, forced birth, forced sterilization, and the medical community treating women as if being female is a "condition" while using male bodies as the standard.
Outlawing the act of collecting rainwater, while charging for the amount of runoff attributed to your property (my city has both of these).
Report
160points
#9
Homelessness in countries with enough money to keep it from happening
Report
154points
#10
The existence of billionaires whilst so many people are living in poverty. Justified cause they supposedly "work harder" or "earned it".
Report
150points
#13
The cost of rent. Or mortgages. Or the wealth gap. And the way minimum wage was ignored for decades while the top 1% took higher and higher raises and bonuses while paying very little to no tax. Trickle down economics.
Graceland1979, https://unsplash.com/photos/xlCmFoIS3oE?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink
Report128points
#14
The way women have control legislated away from their own bodies. Not even just abortion, but abortion laws that prevent women from being able to get medical care for their own conditions. Women who have to get close enough to death to get treatment, regardless of their present suffering or other long term effects. Prostitution laws. Certainly parts of them make sense but why is it illegal for some stay at home mom to give handies for spending money at home while the kids are in school?
Report
123points
#15
The amount of trash we humans produce. How distanced we are from the natural world.
111points
#16
American burial traditions. Spend thousands of dollars to preserve the body, pack it in an expensive box and bury it, sometimes in a concrete vault. To keep it from naturally decomposing? Why?
Report
106points
#18
Working until you’re in your late sixties when 50 billionaires control most of the wealth in an entire country.
Report
100points
