Lately I've been reading various New Age channeled stuff from the 70s-90s and one thing that's slowly accumulating is the way They keep on saying "just hang on, the galactic federation armada is coming in a decade or so to save you from the forces of the Dark!"
and here we are with all these dates well passed and it's still just us, and, well, *gestures vaguely at uspol*
*sigh*
@anthracite Someone was saying over on either Bsky or... Charlie's Apologia blog post? I forget which, that one of the things Elon specifically has done is capitalize on this.
By always claiming the future is just a few short years away, then moving the goal posts when people forget and he fails to deliver, he's used his position as dumb futurism guy to extract wealth from people that fail to hold him accountable.
So this isn't just a trend, it's an institutional source of grift.
@anthracite Anyway, of all places to find futurism discourse this week, for me it's been the work Kat Kingsley put into the Warframe 1999 storyline.
She took the huge mess of dystopian space crap that that universe is and made it relatable by saying: yeah, no matter how far flung and crazy things get, people are still people.
That's been sitting with me the past several weeks. It's the message I needed, really.
@anthracite That all said: futurism is incremental. There's no magic space armada in the next few years, unless it's some fascist vanity project that looks like they spaced a Cybertruck.
But things like smartphones, internet buildout globally, and all of the cool projects I see people putting in VRC give me much more hope for our society. In that: there's an appetite for not-terrible change, when you ignore futurism grifter guys.
It's slower and more boring, but hey, that's fine.