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What is this site?

Present punk refers to the idea that we are either heading into a cyberpunk dystopia, or that we are already living in one. The purpose of this blog is to:

1) Assemble, document, or otherwise curate evidence that we are living in a cyberpunk world.

To the end of documenting cyberpunk dystopia in real life, there are two main approaches used here. One consists of recap posts that list dystopian events within a given time frame (e.g., September 2020 or the ‘Big List’ of things that have happened since the blog’s founding). The other is thematic, and covers where a certain situation stands at the time of writing (e.g., Amazon’s surveillance state or how close we are to nuclear war).

2) Analyze our cyberpunk world. Rationally.

That means differentiating between fluff and substance, being level-headed about where things are at and how they’re shaping up. May include essays on how dystopia can be avoided.

There’s also an illustrated series I started in 2020 and never resumed, but may come back to someday. Each “issue” of the present punk graphic novel is a standalone short story with a few illustrations. The themes explored vary issue to issue, but the general point is to ask how far apart real life is from dystopian fiction.

What is cyberpunk?

Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction that Wikipedia describes best as focusing on “a combination of low life and high tech.” We may expect to see, in a cyberpunk setting, incredible technological breakthroughs alongside poverty, societal breakdown, or authoritarianism.

Other common themes in the subgenre include: powerful corporations; artificial intelligence; metropolises; massive wealth stratification; slums or widespread poverty, especially in urban contexts; environmental destruction; augmentation of the human body and/or mind, and many others I can’t think of now.

Here’s a list of some popular works and franchises that are considered cyberpunk, if it helps to give you an image. (There’s a range here, with some being more aesthetically cyberpunk and others being more thematically cyberpunk, but you’ll get the idea).

• Blade Runner
• Tron
• RoboCop
• Terminator
• Judge Dredd
• Minority Report
• The Matrix
• Ex Machina
• Part of Cloud Atlas
• Ghost in the Shell
• Psycho-Pass
• Akira
• Deus Ex
• Believe it or not, even Cyberpunk 2077

How loose are you with the term “cyberpunk”?

A lot of these posts will include content that doesn’t sound flashy. News about politics, or economics, or technological innovations that aren’t necessarily headed down a terrible path would be such things.

Those who love cyberpunk know it’s a lot about aesthetic, and as much as I truly appreciate that, my focus here is primarily about the things unfolding today that build up tomorrow’s dystopia. A court ruling about Uber drivers’ employment classification admittedly does not sound cyberpunk at all–it’s just news–but it’s one detail in a larger trend of the economic demolition of workers in the high-tech economy. High-tech, and low life.

So bear with me or don’t bother reading. Most of this blog won’t bother with flashy things like robot police or augmented humans with machine gun arms.

Who are you?

I’m just a normal person running this as a hobby outside of a day job. I work in media professionally, so I consider myself fairly well-informed, but don’t let that encourage you. I’m in my late 20s, and I just have a BA. I’m not a PhD candidate, or some dissident scholar.

Why are you anonymous?

First, I don’t want to suffer professional repercussions for the opinions I express here. Journalism is a tough industry and I see no reason to make it tougher for myself. Staying anonymous is a practical way for me to maintain a regular source of income and to be independent as a blogger.

Second, I think it adds some fun intrigue. (This is a cyberpunk blog, after all.)

Third, I dislike how much online content creation revolves around social media personalities, so running an anonymous blog is a fun way of bucking the trend. It makes growing the blog a lot harder, but ideally the result is that people are reading for the quality of the content over anything else.

Are you selling me something?

Aside from an idea? No.

I’ve paid for website maintenance and invested a significant amount of time into this project for years without ever expecting a dime in return. I have a day job. While I’d love to be able to get paid to run this project, for the foreseeable future I’m not trying to milk anything out of you.

With that said, you are welcome to donate. Posts will remain free to everyone regardless of whether you contribute, and you won’t get anything special. You’re probably better off spending the money on a smart person’s Substack or some high-brow magazine subscription. If you insist, however:

Contact me, if you want to!

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