[machinehermiter]

So much of the populace has a digital IV drip of constant connection to algorithmic political slogan propaganda machines. If people consume propaganda all day everyday you can't blame them for being highly propagandized.

What else can we possibly expect than this to happen?

I honestly see no evidence that open society is compatible with modern digital communication networks. An authoritarian contagion almost seems an emergent natural property of the network.

The cyberpunk religion I use to believe in couldn't have been more wrong.

I just take solace that I will have been born and lived at the perfect time and place in history. I will have got to be part of this very short lived religion that the internet is the greatest thing for liberalism and freedom ever created when it is really the complete opposite.

I can even zoom out enough to see the historical beauty in such a historic mistake.

Hard to live in more interesting times than right now.

[shadowgovt]

There's plenty of room for the cyberpunk heroes, but I can't name a single such story where the hero was a megacorp.

Google is a mega corporation. If the world is trending cyberpunk, they're going to be the Arasaka of the story, not the Hiro.