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In hindsight it doesn't seem that bad, overall.
(lemmy.world)
A still from the movie Demolition Man in which some police officers prepare to confront a character played by Wesley Snipes.
Top Text: Demolition Man: A movie which depicts a horrifying dystopia...
Bottom Text:...in which food is too healthy, bidets are common, and cops literally don't know how to assault a black man.
The supposed utopia is modeled after the ideal of suburban USA. That's pretty fucking dystopic. Add to that tge prohibition of kissing, sex, Rock music, etc...
I think someone didn't watch or utterly misunderstood the movie.
Comrade, I rented that movie from a locally-owned VHS rental shop that used physical membership cards.
Sure it's a dystopia, but it's a dystopia where they solved too many problems. John Spartan gets into a high speed car crash and his car instantly fills up with safety foam and he's completely unharmed. The police force is ethnically and gender diverse. Guns are museum pieces. The cops don't know HOW to assault somebody.
Sure they've killed a large amount of choice, and the guy in charge of it all seems to be determined to secure even more power for himself because of course he's a sociopath with Mr. Rogers' speech patterns, but all told I'd much rather live in the Demolition Man future than Judge Dredd or Death Race 2000.
But all the dystopian elements is not necessarily the price for the improvements. The message of the movie (to me) was "don't get fooled by some shiny surface when the core is rotten."
And your choice is not between "bad" and "worse". We can imagine even better futures (Star Trek Federation citizenship seems to be pretty neat (if you're not trying to settle some fringe worlds at the cardassian border) for example), so we can work on these.
If the right people don't have power do you know what happens? The wrong people get it!
Holy shit, I had no idea Raymond Cocteau was this before he was Raymond Cocteau. That's total genius casting.
What Pluribus is.
Ngl, digital tantric neural sex link seems pretty fuckin' rad.
I guess they left out the part where it implants Taco Bell ads, mines your subconscious for thought crimes, and sells the data so people can have virtual sex with your likeness. Less rad.
In a similar regard to OP's answer: why do you think that would be your only two choices, between "bad" and "worse"? Why not go another route that's more akin to "good"?
Also I think this is less about specific aspects of dystopia and more about "Don't let the shiny surface blind you towards the rotten core".