About: Dystopia Is Hard   Sponge Permalink

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Any Dystopia allowed to be more than a Straw Dystopia -- allowed contact with human nature as it is -- will go wrong (by the founder's standards) in ways that are often spectacular. The huge majority of Dystopias present in fiction would fall to bits the instant you apply anything like actual social dynamics to them. This trope happens when the author tries to puzzle out the kind of Herculean effort required to keep tabs on everything a country of a hundred million people or more do at all times, and then guide it in the desired direction...only to fail miserably because the author forgot to puzzle out how to keep tabs on the people that are supposed to be keep tabs on a country of a hundred million people and guide it in the desired direction.

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  • Dystopia Is Hard
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  • Any Dystopia allowed to be more than a Straw Dystopia -- allowed contact with human nature as it is -- will go wrong (by the founder's standards) in ways that are often spectacular. The huge majority of Dystopias present in fiction would fall to bits the instant you apply anything like actual social dynamics to them. This trope happens when the author tries to puzzle out the kind of Herculean effort required to keep tabs on everything a country of a hundred million people or more do at all times, and then guide it in the desired direction...only to fail miserably because the author forgot to puzzle out how to keep tabs on the people that are supposed to be keep tabs on a country of a hundred million people and guide it in the desired direction.
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  • Any Dystopia allowed to be more than a Straw Dystopia -- allowed contact with human nature as it is -- will go wrong (by the founder's standards) in ways that are often spectacular. The huge majority of Dystopias present in fiction would fall to bits the instant you apply anything like actual social dynamics to them. This trope happens when the author tries to puzzle out the kind of Herculean effort required to keep tabs on everything a country of a hundred million people or more do at all times, and then guide it in the desired direction...only to fail miserably because the author forgot to puzzle out how to keep tabs on the people that are supposed to be keep tabs on a country of a hundred million people and guide it in the desired direction. This trope is often used to deconstruct the concept of Dystopia. The villains have won the day, and now it looks like humanity is doomed. But then the villains learn a harsh lesson: running an actual country or company or what have you based purely on some flavor of evil is hard. Forget making all the trains run on time, just ensuring all the Black Shirts get a check on payday so they don't rebel is a titanic effort. Plus you're now opposed by those who you are trying to oppress at all turns. Your fellow ruling villains may turn on you or grow lazy and incompetent. Worst of all, humanity is resistant to the creation of a society that they believe is against their well-being. Making such a society work without having people act strangely in ways undesired by the state is difficult and requires incredible savvy, incredible PR, or incredible improvement of humanity's well-being. (And if you have to resort to increasing the quality of life of the people you're supposed to be oppressing, then it's not really a dystopia, is it?) In short, Dystopia Is Hard and often falls apart quickly. A crucial component of Post Cyber Punk, which tends to reject the ideas that a society can't be repaired and that explicitly malevolent organizations can sustain themselves for long, even without "heroic" interference. Compare Victory Is Boring, when villainy in general isn't as rewarding as Masterminds and Overlords thought it would be. Usually results in the regime being Fascist but Inefficient. See Despotism Justifies the Means where dystopic conditions may be allowed to foster just to keep the ruler in power, thereby averting this trope since the crapsack conditions are in themselves a form of governance. See also Bread and Circuses, where a leader consciously avoids dystopia for this very reason. Typically leads to A World Half Full situation. Examples of Dystopia Is Hard include:
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