this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
1121 points (98.4% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
17458 readers
832 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article
--If a video's content isn't clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it's about.
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not to glaze surveillance, but at the very least it can have some positive results, like in China, where it helped bring down crime to non-existent levels, and increased public safety.
You can just leave your stuff on the street and come back for it later, without worrying about theft. Whether or not it balances the negatives is another question entirely, but I think we can all agree some upsides beat no upsides any day.
As opposed to countries such as the US, Australia or the UK, where surveillance is used for nothing but spying on you and ensuring you're as miserable as physically possible. Nobody even bothers using the existing surveillance infrastructure for any positive effects. It's like everything only has the sole purpose of benefitting the oligarchs.
Similarly, the EU is slowly pushing some surveillance plans, with no thought behind them whatsoever. As of right now, they'd be a 100% net loss for everyone, everywhere, in every situation, except the tiny elite class.
I guess they just got tired of pretending lately. Even the good old "think about the children" is used less often nowadays. Soon it'll just be "submit without question or get executed."
For so many years we've been manipulated to be grateful for everything, because we could always be living in a dystopia like China. And here we are, moving in a considerably worse direction, without even the slightest benefits of those dystopian structures.
Have we forgotten the most effective ways of keeping politicians in check?
You know what eliminates crime way better than cameras? Eliminating poverty.
Murica: "understood"
begins eliminating the poor
In the United States the murder resolution rate is around 50% (in Canada it is around 60-something%) meaning despite massive surveillance they don't catch a lot of the more serious crimes. In NYC the most surveilled areas actually have lower murder resolution rates.
TBH we have the “think of the corporations” line these days that’s used more than think of the children
Think of the poor, starving slumlords before passing that anti-rent gouging bill!
poor blackrock! how can we expect people to ever live in a society if they can’t exploit people and then see their plans through to make profit from them at the expense of literally everyone else?!?!
I'd rather have to worry about my shit being stolen than have ANY government owned cameras tbh. I like a little crime in my life.
I'd like to know what world you've been living in where that was the case because for as long as I can remember, being raised in America we are taught about the racism, economic issues, and rise of inequality, and watching it blasted on the news
You are grossly generalizing a country with 50 individual education systems let alone how different regions like the south are from the northeast.
You're trying to make the same point you're willfully missing yourself.