/lit/ - Literature

What's missing from nearly all cyberpunk (that I'm familiar with) is people constantly complaining about their society's status quo.

They all have some kind of hypercommercial degenerated society and everyone in it just ignores it and pretends like it's totally normal. At most there is some super woke and redpilled character who tells it like it is (pic related) but everyone else is just... sheeple, I guess?

I mean I guess that's supposed to be the authors' message but that's not at all how it works in real life. We arguably already live in a cyberpunk society by 80s standards (minus super advanced tech like AI and full body cyborgs) but we still get thinkpieces, viral videos, newspaper cartoons and family reunion rants every single day about how modern society is hyperconnected, hyperconsumerist, isolated atomic individualist, kids today with their phones etc. etc.

Some of those hot takes are wrong, some are missing the bigger picture, some might even be totally right and relevant, but in any case the fact remains that people never shut up about this stuff. We are aware of the (valid or not) criticisms of our society and we get to hear them a lot. If cyberpunk literature seeks to be realistic (and much of it does, even when it's super exaggerated), it should reflect that.