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95 Photos Show The Horrid And Sad World We’re Living In
Every once in a while, you’ll be in a customer support chat and realize you’re talking to a bot. Then you take a step back and realize there are quite a few things like that have permeated modern society.
So we’ve collected posts and pictures that folks online thought were deeply dystopian, from faucets with screens to ads inside of fortune cookies. Get comfortable (before that becomes a subscription) as you scroll through, upvote the worst examples and be sure to share your own thoughts in the comments below.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
My City Rolled Out A Yearly Ems Subscription
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#2
$280,000,000,000
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 5 hours ago
If course we could not possibly tax the rich, they do so much good for us! Like replace workers with AI and automation, increasing their own profits.
#3
Apocalyptical Fiction Books Are Now In Current Affairs
Every dystopia owes its existence, weirdly enough, to a word that meant the opposite. Back in 1516, English lawyer and eventual saint Sir Thomas More published a book called Utopia, describing a fictional island with a supposedly perfect society. More was a bit of a punster, and he built the word from Greek roots that could mean either "no place" or "good place" depending on how you squinted at it, which was kind of the joke. The island was an ideal so perfect it might as well not exist.
For a couple of centuries, nobody had a proper word for the flip side of that coin. There are scattered traces of writers reaching for something darker, including an obscure 1747 poem that used the spelling "dustopia," but the term most people credit didn't show up until 1868, when philosopher John Stuart Mill stood up in the British House of Commons and tore into government policy on Irish land rights.
#4
A Letter To Humans Of The Future On The Site Of Iceland's First Dead Glacier
#5
One Day The Masses Might Cotton On
#6
This Display Is How I Learned That Missouri Banned An Introductory Book About Oil Painting
Bonesko 5 hours ago
I looked this up. The book about oil painting was banned because they featured reproductions of classical n**e artwork. And "Because of you John Lewis" was banned due to pressure from local political groups to restrict books that mentioned race, civil rights, and social justice. John Lewis spent 60 years fighting for equality and he co-founded and chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), organizing peaceful lunch counter sit-ins and participating in the historic Freedom Rides to challenge illegal bus segregation. Certainly can't have children reading these books 🙄
He argued that what people called "utopian" was usually just too good to work, while what the government was proposing was too bad to work, and he suggested calling that second kind of thing "dystopian." He simply swapped the "u" for the Greek prefix "dys," meaning bad or diseased, and stuck it onto "topos," meaning place. A bad place, official and on the record.
#7
School Bus Advertisement For Body Armor
#8
A Sign To Hand In Your Notice
#9
My Fortune Cookie Had A Qr Code Ad Inside
It almost didn't catch on. Fellow philosopher Jeremy Bentham had already floated his own term, "cacotopia," decades earlier, and for a while dystopia mostly sat around gathering dust while writers used other labels for grim fictional futures. It wasn't until the twentieth century, once books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty Four had thoroughly rattled readers, that dystopia became the word everyone reached for.
#12
Rows And Rows And Rows And-
Phantom Phoenix 3 hours ago
🎶 Little boxes on the hillside. Little boxes made of ticky-tacky 🎶
So what actually makes a dystopia a dystopia, beyond the vibes? Fiction in this genre tends to circle back to the same handful of ingredients. There's almost always some authority watching everyone a little too closely, whether that's a government, a corporation, or an algorithm nobody fully understands. Individuality tends to get flattened in favor of conformity, with citizens nudged, or forced, into thinking and behaving alike.
#13
It’s Some Twilight Zone Stuff
#14
This Store Announces They Collect Your Biometric Data
#15
Dystopian Storage Container Walls Around People’s Park In Berkeley CA To Keep Homeless Out
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 5 hours ago (edited)
How about convert those containers into homes for the homeless? It has been done elsewhere.
Technology is usually a double edged sword, promising convenience while quietly working against the people using it. Language itself often gets twisted too, with propaganda dressing up bad news as progress. And underneath it all, there's typically a thin layer of shiny, cheerful branding stretched over something rotten, which is exactly why dystopias are so unsettling. They rarely announce themselves. They look like normal life until you notice the cracks.
#17
#18
Pretty Weird
Robert Millar 2 hours ago
It is just one of those things because the victims vote for the perpetrators.
That last part is probably why the word gets thrown around so much online these days, usually with a laugh rather than a shudder. Nobody scrolling through pictures of a vending machine with a facial recognition ad panel thinks they're witnessing the fall of civilization. But there's something familiar in the pattern anyway.
#19
Glad Critical Medical Care Is Being Taken Care Of By Private Companies That Definitely Care
#20
Had My First AI Drive Through Experience
#21
This Restaurant's Bathroom Faucet Has A Display For Ads
A little surveillance here, a little forced cheerfulness there, a subscription fee where a one time purchase used to be. It's dystopia in miniature, the genre's DNA showing up in the small print of everyday annoyances rather than in a sweeping fictional regime.
#22
Buy Now, Pay Later At The Local Grocery Butcher
#23
School Put Gates To Lock Bathrooms Between And During Classes
Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 5 hours ago (edited)
Thankfully, there has never been a child with bladder, bowel, or menstrual issues who might need the restroom during class. Otherwise, this would be a very bad idea.
#24
They're Editing Digital Books To Contain Ads Now
Calling your smart fridge dystopian is obviously a joke, mostly. But jokes like that stick around because they're pointing at something real, the sense that modern conveniences occasionally come with a faint aftertaste of control. So as you scroll through the examples below, keep an eye out for that mix of slick design and quiet unease. It's the same recipe Mill was gesturing at back in 1868, just running through a much smaller, much stranger set of appliances.
#25
My Son’s Kindergarten Class Is Being Exposed To Gambling To Win Snacks At Lunch
Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 5 hours ago
What grade do they have to be for the elective Gambler's Anonymous?
#26
Went To Buy Formula For My Friend. Can't Find An Employee To Unlock The Case
Beak Hookage 5 minutes ago
Apparently people have been re-selling this stuff on the black market for profit. Here in Australia we had signs up saying you can only buy two tins at a time. No locked cabinets, though.
#30
This Sandwich Is Being Advertised As Having Its Recipe Generated By AI
Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 5 hours ago
That's not a selling point. In fact, it's a not selling point.
#34
After The Government Let Companies Influence School Curriculums, My Exams Now Look Like This
#36
AI Company's 'Stop Hiring Humans' Ads All Over Sf
Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 5 hours ago
When I was a girl, the science fiction stories were all about how robots would do the grunt work, leaving humans free to create art, music, and literature. Why is it that we're doing the grunt work, and AI is doing the "creating"?
#37
When You Live In America And Go To The Hospital For Food Poisoning
#38
My Text Book For School Came In With A Boxed Red Bull
#39
My Local Drugstore Locks The Beef Jerky In Anti-Theft Boxes
#40
Having To Scan A Qr Code In Case Of Emergency
#41
Outshine The Owner, Earn $15/Hr
#42
This Was The Hospital Bill We Received Today
Lukas (he/him) 5 hours ago
From OP: "I should clarify since this is getting somewhat popular.... My son was born with a congenital heart defect. We spent 6 weeks in the hospital after he was born in the CTICU. He had heart surgery when he was 10 days old. Countless medications, specialists, doctors, procedures, and more. Thank God for insurance otherwise we'd be paying almost $2M out of pocket. On the flip side of this whole debacle, my son gets to live a long normal life and I would work to pay back $10M if it means I get to have him in my life ❤️"
#43
My Bill Is $250k In A Day Stay At Hospital Having Appendectomy
#45
Imagine Buying A New Car And Putting Another Dude’s Name On It
#46
Family Friend Sent Me AI Generated Response To News Of My Father Passing Away
#48
Housing Destroyer In Dieppe, France
#49
Security Tag On Cheese In Aldi
#50
A Vendor Selling Bullet Resistant Glass To Schools At A Teacher Convention In America 10/17/2024
#52
Painfully Accurate
#53
What I Got For ‘Employee Appreciation’ After Working An Entire Year During A Pandemic
#55
C O N S U M E
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 4 hours ago
But we are being paid less and less each year. We will soon not to be able to afford to shop.
#56
My Company Made $1 Billion In Revenue And We Get Cupcakes To Celebrate
perylousdemon 5 hours ago
Yeah, that'll help me pay my rent. You go ahead and enjoy your second yacht. 👍
#57
Only Machines Are Not Invisible. (Chinatown, Philadelphia)
#58
I'm So Fd: Insane Health Insurance Increases 2026!
Pernille 2 hours ago
I've might have paid the same amount in tax in Danmark, but for that I also got good infrastructure, education, healthcare, at home help for the elderly, and a well educated police force that doesn't for shoot first. I do not understand why US americans keep thinking their country is good, it is such a shithole.
#59
And Youtube Wonders Why We Use Ad Blockers Or Pirate Stuff...and They Have The Nerve To Raise The Premium Prices? And The Ads Are Either Scams, Surveys, Or Three-Second Movie Trailer Clips
#61
Used To Think I Was Middle Class
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 4 hours ago
Meat farming in the scales we do is wrecking the environment. The farming industry will soon collapse and meat will be the preserve of the rich.
#62
I Live In One Of The Lowest Cost-Of-Living States And Still Feel Squeezed At The Grocery Store. How Does $60 For This Cart Stack Up To Other States In The Us?
#63
Our Art Teacher Teaches Us How To Draw Faces Using AI-Generated Images
#64
#65
Some Will Say It's Inflation But It's Price Gauging At Its Best
#66
How Did We Go From Paper Cups And Plastic Straws To Plastic Cups And Paper Straws?
#71
A Grim Reality Sets In
#73
Mta Installs Turnstile Spikes To Combat Fare Evasion
#75
Having To Pay A Fee So An Obituary Can Be Seen Ad-Free On A Funeral Home’s Website
#76
The Changes In The Costs Of Living For The Basic Necessities In The Us Ranging From Years Of '25-'26
#79
The Security Line At Jfk This Afternoon
#80
I’m 23 (Ftm) Found This In A Stack Of Books My Mother Recently Purchased
#83
#84
This Is What I Picked Up From The Spacex Crash In January. Now With The Recent Crash There Is Even More Out There In The Oceans
#85
Fees For The Pickleball Court That Replaced The Free Basketball Courts In My Gated Community
#86
Whoever Made This Billboard Can Shove It Up Their Behind
#87
Single Use Packaging And Healthcare Extortion. 2 For 1
#88
Did You Know We Don't Pay Our Servers A Living Wage?
#89
This Is Veterans Row. A 3 Block Homeless Camp In West L.A. Where Homeless Veterans Live In
#91
This Antenna That Looks Like A Tree
Lukas (he/him) 5 hours ago
I mean, there are going to be antennas for things like electricty, phone service, etc. Why not make them actually look good?
#92
Fish Rent? You Have Got To Be Kidding Me
#94
I Use To Sit On This Ledge Waiting For The Bus. It Seems They Installed This Bar To Prevent People From Sitting Here
#95
“I Love Netflix Because It Doesn’t Have Ads”
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