Big Tech companies are finally getting the names we thought dystopian megacorps would have
Meta Platforms. X Corp. tell me those aren't straight from a strangely prescient cyberpunk classic
Don't forget Truth Social. Straight out of ministry of truth.
Now we just need companies to have their own militaries and then for someone to nuke one of their towers. We'd have the whole nine yards.
No thanks.
Too bad. There's no chance this doesn't happen after the agricultural collapse. Well, the first bit, anyway.
You should snopes check that one. They did acquire non working ships as payment, but they scrapped em. What you said is technically correct, but oversells it.
Wake up Samurai...
Amazon is a standing military or armed navy away from beating the all-time high score.
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.
Second Life isn't owned by Meta. And just by the amount of money Second Life earned, and somehow still earns to this day, it was a pretty huge success. The only real success in the "virtual world" field. It's not surprising somebody else would try to emulate that success.
They should have learned a lesson from Second Life. It was so much graphically better, more sophisticated and immersive even in 2d .
Users had a world where they could build, interact, buy land, make, buy, sell items and art, go to concerts, have virtual sex, attend classes, build a castle , explore, etc, etc. It would have been awesome in 3d.
This was like 20 years ago! Meta had such an opportunity there but instead had half avatars and chat rooms. It sucked.
A lot of it comes down to the Quest processors as they are just not very powerful. It had to be backwards comparable with the 835 Snapdragon processor form the Quest 1 and that is a 2016 processor. Makes senses it was so basic as they wanted to have many avatars on screen at once so things had the get cut…like legs. Ahahahaha.
I am not defending Meta, but just stating the facts and one of those facts is Zuck has said this is a long game and that it will be at least a decade before the Metaverse becomes something half compelling. I agree with that assessment. It is just not there today, but it will be.
Don't forget the conglomerate names:
Microsoft-Activision-Blizzard
"Well, there was a bit of a stir when it was decided that since corporations are people, they could technically run for president. But President Walt Disney-Pepsi-Comcast has done wonders for the economy... given that it's... now the economy"
Don't blame me I voted for Tim Apple
Oh and don't forget the cheeky suckers that explicitly named their nutritional supplement company Soylent Nutrition, Inc.
It's like whoever is offering up these names and convincing them to use them is trying to tell consumers and workers something in the countries they work and operate. That a rental service is literally named Hertz is pretty on the nose even without all the movie culture references.
I'm not too versed on movie references but certainly know about Hertz Rent-a-car, what's the joke here?
Hail Avis!
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.
I read this with the voice of Johnny Silverhand
Who is just another product of a shitty corporation
or bloody universal healthcare
I guess it depends on where you live. It's not true of the whole world.
Murica. Yeehaw.
It's definitely not all the utopia some thought it would be, but it's also definitely a lot better than the dystopia some predicted. Also, I personally prefer the internet to flying cars.
There are flying quadcopter taxis testing in Dubai
The only thing really keeping them from flying rich people in from their gated community and landing in the street in front of a restaurant is regulation.
With better battery life they'd be more flexible, but they're already technically capable, and compact enough.
Also when you try to speak against all this shit people ridicule you and ignore you. If they cant do that easily then its always just apathy and "it is what it is" whining.
My first ISP in the late 90s was Skynet Online.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(satellite)
The UK already owns it. I’m pretty sure Terminator takes the name from the UK military satellite network. And SpaceX has launched Skynet satellites for them before so there is probably some agreement.
The NSA also already has a surveillance program named SKYNET, which uses machine learning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKYNET_(surveillance_program)
That one I’m pretty sure was named after the Terminator program.
Those names were always parodying the names of actual corporations. I'm pretty sure Weyland Yutani is basically supposed to be like Lockheed Mitsubishi
Normal people reading dystopian fiction: “wow, the author really portrayed well the downfall of humanity if we were to go down the wrong path”
Billionaires reading dystopian fiction: “hey, you know what…”
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.
Acxiom, Experian, TransUnion, Oracle Data Cloud, CoreLogic, Axle, Equifax, Foursquare Labs, Inc., OnAudience, Nielsen, ... ... ... ...
California itself has about 517
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.
I always thought this for the financial market: Standard & Poor
Moody
The Fed (as in, the past tense of feed)
You didn't mention Facebook? That's super dystopian to me. What's a face book if not a large collection of identities being monitored?
It sounds like a cursed item in D&D or something.
The Book of Faces Wondrous Item, very rare
This enchanted tome magically records the likeness each humanoid slain in its vicinity, preserving a snapshot of their life and memories. The book can be read to glean superficial information about it's subjects. As an action, you can tear a page from the book to summon a ghostly spirit of its subject, which will be magically compelled to answer questions. The spirit knows nothing the owner did not know in life.
The Demon Lord Elgor Ithym is said to have a keen interest in this book...
Now do it for MySpace and Twitter!
👌🏼Pure delight
What’s a face book if not a large collection of identities being monitored?
Well, historically (and I mean in the 1990s) it was a collection of names and photographs of all the new students at your college, to help in meeting people and/or to see who's hot.
Meta is Facebook
Yes ofc, I just think the name Facebook is more dystopian than Meta.
There's also E Corp from Mr. Robot.
And the characters called it evil corp anyways so it might as well have been the name.
Not exactly, most of the characters seem to call the company E Corp but the main character (who's also the narrator) "corrects it" in his head.
I'm still waiting for the cool neon signs.
The lady eating a cherry is burned into my brain. In the Blade Runner point-n-click game she would appear every time you'd fly out from the marketplace, because it was a prerendered cutscene.
Nah, we got cheaper and brighter LED lights blasting 24/7 and annoying everyone trying to sleep instead. Neon signs are retro now.
I also like Alliant Techsystems, then merged with Orbital Sciences Corp into Orbital ATK.
They are part of NGIS (Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems), so evil things might come from there.
If DARPA was Lawful Evil
Yea, X Corps definitely becomes the manufacturer of the protein bar machines on snowpiercer
And lab-grown artificiel pet snakes as in Blade Runner
I find it amusing how nobody noticed when Valve changed their name to Valve Corporation ages ago, and people keep referring to it as Valve Software.
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...
what's the point of selling "virtual land" if it's practically unlimited anyway? (artificial scarcity?)
Yes absolutely. Virtual land = Yet another NFT
Yes
Haha yeah the virtual land was true thing. it was a crypto scam if I recall correctly. Everything nowadays is just crypto scam
You can just call it crypto. The scam bit is implied.
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.
Amazon web services
Doesnt sound so evil...
Amazon comes from the Greek meaning 'breastless'. Trans agenda confirmed 💯💯💯
Maybe not yet ... I bet they will soon catch up ... Btw in italian Ammazzo means to kill can u see some similarities... 😉
There's a company called Hashicorp that's been in the news recently. Literally perfect
Heh, people from 50 years ago hearing that my job is terraforming using Hashicorp equipment would be very disappointed.
Terraform it all. Pave the moon. Dairy Queens on Mars. Uber in the skies of Jupiter.
Hashicorp’s been around for years; since 2012 actually. Used to be a pretty cool company, looked up by many, like a shining beacon in the darkness. It’s unfortunate where they’ve gone to now.
I don't get how the name is dystopian. Is it from a book or movie or something? Search only turns up the company you're talking about.
Could be that it mixes what sounds like a Japanese name with an English word, which makes it seem like a company from Japan operating in an English speaking place.
In the 1980s people expected that Japan was going to take over more and more American business. Japan was a major player and so sci fi written then — including that which was cyberpunk dystopian — assumed there’d be companies like “Ford” but named after Japanese guys.
Also it’s not “Hashi Corporation” it’s “HashiCorp” which implies a sort of pop-cultureification, like the company has sort of compacted over the years, and gotten less Japanese (known) and more hybrid Japanese-American-Corporate-Marketing (unknown, megacorps have shady cultures, they’re new things).
If HashiCorp were to show up in a movie, it would be in a holographic ad someone flies past.
As long as we get coporate songs like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6HTR0BiFehA
Again
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=6HTR0BiFehA
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Good!
Do these also count: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-QThIoXfks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRVoJnxjpFg
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=j-QThIoXfks
https://piped.video/watch?v=HRVoJnxjpFg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/tfycVnRiGic?si=K3pav8U5MaoAGRpg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Sigh they dont make coporate propaganda like they used too.
But yes that
Holy shizz I forgot about that song. thanks for the rememory
Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations Inc is a pretty good one too.
My favorite is literally just "Brand." The "generic" brand company. Although I feel like they leaned purposefully into the cyberpunk shit.
Can't even find anything about them
That's how generic it is!
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
There's also Palantir, which does exactly what you think
Which is annoying because it's a fucking good name.
"Telemon" has an even more interesting history. He was a figure in Greek mythology, and generally around people like Hercules, Odysseus, and Jason. He is the son of a king and a mountain nymph.
As you may well know (but others don't) Robert Jordan, when building the world for his Wheel of Time series, pulled from all sorts of existing myths, legends, and memories. After all, it's just another turning of the Wheel, right?
Crazy to think they named Norse gods after the protagonist of the wheel of time.
Almost teleological in its implications!
We live in the world where Mr robot failed and gave up.
Theranos sounded like a superhero villain. I guess it kind of was?
Alphabet.
Soon to be alpha-bet
Currently waiting for BiffCo to spice up our lives and give us floating long boards
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
Would you have prefered "the faciverse"?
Ultimate Marvel's Gregory Stark was supposed to be a caricature. He's spot on though.
I mean, they’re no Tessier-Ashpool,SA. or anything.
I'm not a Christian, but can we start rapturing people away anyway? I gotta get out this bitch.
RAPTURE ME, PLEASE?! I WANT OFF THIS DYSTOPIAN HELLPLANET!
I mean, they're all also chasing AI too doesn't that typically lead to our demise too?
My fucking drunk self, highly agrees with you.
I'm waiting for Fuchi and Renraku...
Anaheim Electronics when? If I have to die in a war, I want to die in a Gundam.
That one is easy. Simply open up an electrics store in Anaheim, California.
Starting out small, so once I become rich, I can claim I got there through my own work, and not by having military contracts.
We are here.
Waiting for Sense/Net
Fuck I hadn't thought about it.
Microsoft was way ahead of everyone.
Dude "X corp" totally sounds dystopian lmfao
Wow it didn't hit me until I read your post. Thanks OP.
Wait for the AI corps!
Real life is getting closer to cyberpunk but without the cool tech.
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?
AFAIK Microsoft came from the Neuromancer novel. A microsoft is a tool in the book.
Could be wrong though, but I feel Ike that book was written before Microsoft was a company.
Bill Clinton's "Star Wars" program.
Um... what? Ronald Reagan's/Bush Sr.'s "Star Wars" program - LASERS IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE
You're about a decade off. It was started in the 80s and ended under Clinton. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
I’m just waiting for Omni Consumer Products (OCP) to open in Detroit.
Or Allied Commercial-Media Enterprises
Or E-Corp
Omni is actually a Swedish news aggregator. They just need to expand and change a bit.
Corporate Consumer Products already makes everything in China… hmm