Every once in a while, you’ll be in a customer support chat and realize you’re talking to a bot. Then you take a step back and realize there are quite a few things like that have permeated modern society.
So we’ve collected posts and pictures that folks online thought were deeply dystopian, from faucets with screens to ads inside of fortune cookies. Get comfortable (before that becomes a subscription) as you scroll through, upvote the worst examples and be sure to share your own thoughts in the comments below.
A little surveillance here, a little forced cheerfulness there, a subscription fee where a one time purchase used to be. It's dystopia in miniature, the genre's DNA showing up in the small print of everyday annoyances rather than in a sweeping fictional regime.
Calling your smart fridge dystopian is obviously a joke, mostly. But jokes like that stick around because they're pointing at something real, the sense that modern conveniences occasionally come with a faint aftertaste of control. So as you scroll through the examples below, keep an eye out for that mix of slick design and quiet unease. It's the same recipe Mill was gesturing at back in 1868, just running through a much smaller, much stranger set of appliances.
#26 After The Government Let Companies Influence School Curriculums, My Exams Now Look Like This
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23points
#32 How Did We Go From Paper Cups And Plastic Straws To Plastic Cups And Paper Straws?
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19points
#35 Dystopian Storage Container Walls Around People’s Park In Berkeley CA To Keep Homeless Out
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18points
#36 My Son’s Kindergarten Class Is Being Exposed To Gambling To Win Snacks At Lunch
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18points
#38 This Is Veterans Row. A 3 Block Homeless Camp In West L.A. Where Homeless Veterans Live In
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18points
#39 Family Friend Sent Me AI Generated Response To News Of My Father Passing Away
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17points
