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Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest Unwittingly Reveal the Severity of the U.S. Surveillance State
(greenwald.substack.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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the thing 1984 got wrong is that people are willingly buying their own (multiple) telescreens and happily submitting their entire life to the party
We didn't see how we got to 1984. We just see one person living with consequences of what society has become. We're building our own 1984 right now!
This is why Fahrenheit 451 (and not 1984) is my go-to analogy for today’s plight: Bradbury correctly predicted that people would willingly walk themselves into an oppressive technocracy for the sake of entertainment and convenience.
i mean we could say we're living through 1984, brave new world, Fahrenheit 451, handmaid's tale, maybe lolita--i haven't read that one, but heard it's a bit child-rapey
whatever it is, no one source has really encapsulated the hell of actual reality today
I don't find Brave New World to be especially dystopian. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I haven't read it, what's not dystopian about it?
The first thing Wikipedia says about it is "Brave New World is a dystopian novel" 😅
Maybe you not finding it especially dystopian says more about the state of the world right now than the book... 😅
Keep in mind that the book is very old, published in 1931. DNA hadn't been mapped, information technology was limited, and so on.
In the book, people are born in factories. Working class people are born in from split cells, as quintuples if I remember correctly. Your role in life is largely determined by your genes - workers don't have the psychology for anything but labor.
In spite of that, it's not an especially oppressive society. There is a "perfect" drug, soma, which is sort of like a non-addictive, non-physically harmful heroin that can be delivered by gas. When there is unrest, security forces come in and get everyone high until they chill the fuck out.
Sex is open and easy, but always completely voluntary by everyone involved. When people are turned down they are sometimes surprised but never upset or aggressive.
Entertainment is presented as vacuous, but the people seem to enjoy it. There are movies, TV, and so on. Sports are engineered to require people take trains out of town to stadiums, and require deliberately-complicated equipment to play, in order to create demand for production.
So... is that a dystopia? There is no discussion of environmental damage, but overall it seems sustainable, not predicated on infinite growth. People are stuck in the role they were born to, but it seems like there are no artificial barriers to advancement... just that not everyone can be good at everything.
From the view of John the Savage, and to those who’s personalities align with John, it is a dystopia. This clean, orderly, and oppressive society removes the ability to experience real highs like love and real lows like sacrifice. The workers will only know shallow replacements. Furthermore, the workers no longer have the ability to choose. They cannot choose their role in society, and seemingly they cannot choose to leave the society either. Even John is seemingly stuck in the society, and in the end gives into the sensuality and group think after trying to flay himself.
https://www.huxley.net/studyaid/bnwbarron.html
I'd argue that intentionally cloning people with limited abilities and then raising them to stay in thier lane is an artificial barrier...
From the view of the savage, and to those who’s personalities align with John, it is a dystopia. This clean, orderly, and oppressive society removes the ability to experience real highs like love and real lows like sacrifice. The workers will only know shallow replacements. Furthermore, the workers no longer have the ability to choose. They cannot choose their role in society, and seemingly they cannot choose to leave the society either. Even John is seemingly stuck in the society, and in the end gives into the sensuality and group think after trying to flay himself.
1984 and brave new world ass world
relevant webcomic contrasting 1984 and brave new world, which is insightful, but doesn't include the reality that we're literally living in both novels' universes
Give me brave new world all day - it would be vastly preferable to whatever this shit is.
It seems Brave new world is the global north/middle class, 1984 is the global south/working class... With class experience varying by county and over time with a tend towards 1984 experience as the majorities wealth gets extracted by the upper class.
Definitely. A world where people are happy and healthy and live basically fulfilling lives. There are a few fanatics who opt out, and they're unhappy. Go figure.