I still think it's hilarious that Facebook renamed to Meta, and anything they did with the "metaverse" was a huge failure. It's like they didn't learn their lesson from Second Life.
Pretty much. Welcome to the fucking future I guess. There's no flying cars and green cities and happiness or bloody universal healthcare, instead we have corpos trying to turn us into their consumer slaves and governments turning authoritarian. Just do what you're told and buy more. Don't ask questions don't think just browse TikTok, improve your social credit score, and imprint more ads into your psyche until WW3.
We're walking into hell with our eyes wide open fuck me it hurts.
Those names were always parodying the names of actual corporations. I'm pretty sure Weyland Yutani is basically supposed to be like Lockheed Mitsubishi
You want a trip down “is this a cyberpunk dystopia company” name, go check out the data brokers on the data broker registries in Vermont and California.
When runaway capitalism is the norm and all the shareholders care about is that bottomline, then they will lean into the dystopia and be blatant about it when nobody is stopping them laughing all the way to the bank.
If you think about it, all sorts of fucked up things that are happening now have been portrayed as a bad thing in past media:
Virtual words, virtual-fuckin' land (not 100% sure this one is real, still really hoping its not), misuse of AI, smart houses, where everything is controlled by a remote (which relies on electricity / wi-fi), even stuff like alexa, which is listening to every word you say, at your home...
Art creates the future. Whatever we envision we steer ourselves toward, consciously or unconsciously. A vision has gravity, and pulls people toward it. The more a vision is etched into people’s minds, the more likely we will live it.
I’m convinced Apple’s overall aesthetic is based on Star Trek: TNG. Or at least it was for a phase, until we got bored with it and took it even further.
There's a company near me called the Telamon Corporation, which is the name of the Dragon from the Wheel of Time. So it's not just cyberpunk, there's fantasy as well
When I think about the fact that Facebook thought it was a good idea to name their online VR platform “the metaverse“ it still breaks my brain a little bit
The meta rebranding made my skin craw. The X rebranding is dumb on Elon Musk's part. However you make a good point.
I believe Apple got its name from the biblical term of the forbidden fruit. Microsoft has a megacorp sounding name. Will Amazon rename itself to something dystopian?