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What the Future Fiction of 2015 Revealed About Humans Today (vice.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the better-days dept.

An anonymous reader writes: There were a lot of stories told about the future in 2015. More than usual, maybe. Big budget blockbusters, hefty, idea-rich novels, and epic, dystopian video games—there was complex, stirring speculative fiction dripping from every media faucet we've got. And it spoke volumes about our anxieties about the present. In 2015, those anxieties are, apparently, concern the rise of science denial, climate change, total collapse.

15 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Let me guess... by penguinoid · · Score: 4, Funny

    That humans today are still terrible at predicting the future?

    --
    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    1. Re:Let me guess... by EmeraldBot · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That humans today are still terrible at predicting the future?

      This one's a given. People overestimate what happens in 50 years, but underestimate what happens in 2. Personally, I would be quite interested to see what 2018 will be like, though I suppose in 24 months I'll find out. After all, just three years ago, we didn't even know about PRISM...

      --
      "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
    2. Re: Let me guess... by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 4, Funny

      You mean http://goatse.cx.

      Ordinarily I have no use for stupid fucking hashtags, but.... #kidstoday

      The irony was irresistible. You couldn't even make it a live link...

    3. Re:Let me guess... by Eunuchswear · · Score: 2

      No,humans today can't write a fucking gramatically correct sentence:

      In 2015, those anxieties are, apparently, concern the rise of science denial, climate change, total collapse.

      WTF.

      --
      Watch this Heartland Institute video
    4. Re:Let me guess... by silentcoder · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > and pointless infra projects
      That simply isn't true, if anything the exact opposite is true. America's buildings, bridges and other critical infrastructure is crumbling and falling apart. You're risking millions of lives every day with unmaintained infrastructure.
      If anything - you can't manage even the most basic infra projects required to prevent disasters !

      Infrastructure projects are not sexy, they aren't politically appealing - and they don't attract donor money. What corporation is going to give you campaign finance because you "promised to patch the crumbling concrete of a bridge in your town" ?

      Whatever the reason may be, despite the fact that infrastructure projects would not only have short-term employment benefits but the much more important benefit of actually keeping the stuff your entire economy depends on to function working past the end of the decade - they aren't being done.

      I haven't read the book - so I can't say how accurate the rest of your description of it is, nor how much modern America really reflects that - but this claim was simply outright provably and factually incorrect.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  2. Drama people by Kohath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    tell dramatic stories about a dramatic future. Stories about a future where a guy goes to work and installs software on computers for an insurance company don't get made into movies.

    And Hollywood continues to turn out lots of bland, unimaginative, formulaic movies that are less and less compelling relative to TV and video games.

    1. Re:Drama people by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Informative

      Stories about a future where a guy goes to work and installs software on computers for an insurance company don't get made into movies.

      No, I disagree that this is insightful.

      A large amount of spec fic, especially sci fi (not space opera though) is to examine the *present* and the human condition (literally the title, summary and text of TFA). What does your supposed story say about the present or human condition? Does it bring any new insights?

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  3. Alternate Title by Kunedog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Watch Us Try to Spin as Many Science Fiction Works as Possible into Supporting All the Progressive Talking Points We Were Planning to Cram Down Your Throat Anyway"

    Getting repeatedly called out on thinly-veiled, agenda-driven clickbait like this is exactly why Motherboard Vice censored its comment sections.

    1. Re:Alternate Title by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      It's more like they were having their hypocrisy and double dealing pointed out repeatedly and got tired of the masses back-talking them. If there's one thing leftists can't stand it's a conversation where other people get to talk. Just slap a label on them (in this case "regressive" was chosen, whatever that means) and boom, instant cause to do what you wanted to do all along.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    2. Re:Alternate Title by dbIII · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Except reality was a guy handing a script to a woman who also works in the movie industry and asking her opinion - just like what happens with many scripts only this time you somehow think the woman was pushing a feminist agenda instead of doing a job. It's no more feminist than "Dukes of Hazard" and written by a guy that grew up in the country shooting huge wild pigs as a kid and has more balls than you will ever grow. You saw all those eye-candy girls and still thought it was feminist? Or are you just parroting some family court victim that hates women who pretended a road chase movie was somehow feminist?

      Deliberate pretended stupidity to push some wacky party line is something that really pisses me off, hence the rant. Please don't mislead the kiddies just to push your very petty little crusade against women in IT or whatever the fuck has got you acting like a person ten times worse than you really are.

    3. Re:Alternate Title by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2, Informative

      Censorship is not the same as not being able to speak your mind at any place, at any time for any reason. Locking you out of somewhere is not censorship. And frankly a website without a comment system is indistinguishable from one that never had one.

      People like you do a real disservice to actual real censorship by cheapening it with incessant butthurt.

       

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    4. Re:Alternate Title by epyT-R · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Except reality was a guy handing a script to a woman who also works in the movie industry and asking her opinion - just like what happens with many scripts only this time you somehow think the woman was pushing a feminist agenda instead of doing a job.

      Uhh. yeah, that's kinda the definition of 'doing her job' in this particular case. In any movie made in the last 15 years or so, the men are either made into insecure, bumbling fools, killed off, or used as emotional tampons for the new heroines to take their places (eg: Transformers series, mad max:fr, Star Wars:TFA, Thor). Of course, unlike the strong male character leads of the past, this isn't considered sexist by feminists. When this bullshit is pointed out, feminists 'justify' their own sexism by spewing some neo-marxist claptrap about it being impossible for (their self-described) victim class to discriminate. How convenient.

      Deliberate pretend-stupidity? That's what's in these movies: A deliberate attempt to propagate a social agenda at the expense of the story. With some of these movies, the grafting is so obvious it's painful to watch. What feminists don't understand (or just won't acknowledge out of insecurity and/or sense of entitlement) is that true empowerment doesn't come from forcing others to give you their stuff/attention. It comes from achieving on one's own. In the case of entertainment, the women in hollywood should come up with some new female characters with their own stories.

  4. Basically people are cowards. by EzInKy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maintain the status quo, that is what people today and people of yesterday are all about.

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  5. The 1% can suck my dick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "If only they [men] saw us for the filthy creatures we really are." Daisy, 27, told me. "Take me for example" as she lifted up her right pant leg, "I haven't shaved my legs or my pits in 5 years."

    How did she get dates, I wonder. Was she married to a blind man?

    "I love to live as I really am! In fact, if every feminist were true to themselves they would live as I do. No razor, even if your upper lip sprouts hair." She leaned forward towards me and whispered as if the whole world were listening, "no waxing, not even for my private parts!"

    Truly this woman was honest. More honest than any feminist I had ever met. I wondered what she did when she went swimming somewhere.

    "Oh I get a lot of looks, a lot!" she laughed. "Mostly curious but it sure does keep the men away." She reached for a coffee mug and pointed to her hairy legs. "This is what we really are! This is how we really should appear. Why hide it?"

    Why, indeed. I excused myself and thanked Daisy for her time and honesty.

    Finally, I had met a woman. A real woman. "Well, back to the world of lies and perfume on a pig" I told myself, walking out to the street where I hailed a taxi. I looked back at Daisy as she stroked her leg hair. "A reeeeal woman" I blew out through my smiling lips.

  6. Re:Analysis of Star Wars: The Force Awakens by tburkhol · · Score: 4, Informative

    Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens was basically a demake of the original Star Wars. It's not a shot-for-shot remake, obviously, and it's not a reboot. But it is basically the same fucking story and it's got tons of scenes and settings that are found almost identically in the original.

    Hardly surprising. If you look closely enough, most stories are the same. They used to teach the basic plots in grade school English, because the formulas for "good" stories have not really changed since Euripides.