this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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Solarpunk
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Fuck solarpunk. I buy carefully, not mindlessly, based on what I'm getting and for how long, with the intent of not having to replace what I buy. So let's get that out of the way, this isn't about the merits of environmental preservation or efficient use of our resources.
I need mass media because I ENJOY PLAYING VIDEO GAMES. I don't want to live in the fucking "gay space commune", I want to live in a world that feels good to me, and you solarpunk assholes seem to say people like me who escape from reality because they've NEVER been capable of supporting themselves should start a fucking garden?!
Newsflash. I. Don't. Like. Your. "Utopia". I never will. If you ever succeed in making your idea of a future a reality, I'll burn it to the fucking ground as my revenge on you bastards. I hate your idea because all it does is change how I am oppressed as a disabled adult to how I was oppressed as a special needs child illegally taken from my parents by a corrupt mental health system.
You want to see a real utopia? A place where everyone is happy in the world they live in? Fucking find an oneirogenic drug that induces lucid dreams or create a VR metaverse.
Who I am in reality does not matter. Who I am in my mind can't be expressed in a solarpunk world, only online. At least that's how it used to be.
Why am I named the same as an Open Source Game? Cyperprep doesn't have to mean "the future megacorps are not so bad!" but rather "megacorps control this dystopian future but they can't always stop the signal and that means Open Source Software is the way to fight back".
The difference between FOSS for smart devices and social networks and FOSS for games is that games are art and that means paid food production will take precedence over volunteer video games.
And no, you don't get to say "get another hobby". I know myself. I like technology. I don't like preachy people. I stopped buying Apple when I stopped seeing unique-looking devices. I am a gamer. Most importantly, I am a sci-fi writer who wants optimistic stories that don't assume the reader is a fully-capable person.
I am not demanding you write what I want to see. Only that you not try to turn reality into it. If you see this, once again, fuck solarpunk.
I'm a shut-in, with untreated health issues, someone who partakes in escapism, and even someone who likes the idea of programming but can't really do much (I tinkered on rendering polygons from text input last September and didn't even finish it enough to be usable for me).
I haven't seen much solarpunk but I've never thought to myself that it'd be worse for me. If I existed in an environment like that (particularly from birth or at least for a long time) I don't think I'd be the same escapist shut-in. I could see open-source games still existing, and maybe programming being better even if people are less likely to have videogames as their most common activity. I've taken care of already-growing plants before, but it seems to me like a lax solarpunk environment would offer more options/opportunity than employment currently offers. Probably actual opportunity to travel, too.
Even carrying over my current mindset and (lack of) capability, I can't see a solarpunk environment being even half as restricted as my experience now. I mean the whole idea is better community and technology used to help people (not strictly for money) so it seems to me you wouldn't be required to garden.
To be fair, it seems like I may have had bad luck in the first three solarpunk works I ever experienced. My issue against the whole idea is "this is a society that can no longer afford to value non-practical pursuits, it is the future we are headed towards, therefore our present society can no longer afford to value non-practical pursuits" that was somehow in all three solarpunk works I encountered.
The three in question were Girl in Wave: Wave in Girl, the Necroverse by "RichM", and a story that a fair-weather friend wrote that I no longer have a copy of that showed a dystopian cybersolarpunk hybrid where "Covid-19 has ended the modern age and now everything is powered by wind turbines because most of us are dead".
As a result of such bad luck, I may have overestimated how central that theme of "self-sufficiency or die" is to the genre.