Don't get me wrong - I love Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Akira, but it is a very 1980s-90s coded aesthetic.
Bar said, those of us who are younger are leaning more towards a Korean aesthetic which itself borrows heavily from American (and especially 2000s-10s LA cholo style) streetware and aesthetic.
It's the 2020s. Tech is just "normal" to us, and for a decent size of our demographic, it's viewed no differently than how the legal industry, accounting, or high finance was back in the 1980s-2000s. Tech is viewed as a "normal" concenpt and career path with no real emotional or psychological attachment.
Sorry if this sounds very "Ok Boomer", but like much of the technology and stuff mentioned in cyberpunk fantasies back then is basically an engineering problem at this point, and a very tech ambivalent lens is becoming popular amongst younger people.
Even amongst younger Gen Z/Zilleneial type hipsters, neo-Marxist or neo-Maoist style views are kinda hip in the same way 50s-70s era nostalgia is becoming vogue amongst younger Americans on both sides of the aisle (ie. neoliberal views being viewed as antithetical by both ends of the spectrum) due to the cutthroatedness of modern society.
my point is a bit orthogonal: even if cyberpunk-as-aesthetic ages out, why doesn’t the replacement look like neo-shanghai when the built world clearly does. three boring forces:
canon lock-in. art teams reuse the same visual grammar because it ships on time: rain, stacked kanji, noodle carts, neon. low risk, instantly legible etc etc
incentive gradient. being specific about china is a liability if you want the big market, so productions either go “pan-asia blur” or retreat to retro-japan nostalgia that feels safely fictional
reality tax. the current dystopia is LEDs, QR rails, access gates, payments, logistics. it’s structural, not cinematic. the camera loves neon, spreadsheets and turnstiles not so much
on the korean point, agreed that look is ascendant. it’s globally cool, politically safer, and has a whole export machine behind it. that actually supports the claim: we swap in the aesthetics that are both fashionable and low-friction to sell
so yeah, “tech is normal now” explains the cooling. the essay’s angle is just that economics and politics still decide what tomorrow is allowed to look like on screen, even after the vibe moved on
boopity2025•4mo ago