How Dystopias Aren't So Dystopian Anymore

People like being scared. From roller coasters to haunted houses, to escape rooms, it is evident that we as a society are a bunch of thrill-seekers. There’s just one problem - that adrenaline rush is often only available in life-threatening situations. Fortunately, the desire to be scared safely has pioneered the invention of many new genres in media - horror, mystery, and last but not least, dystopian. However, as a society, we may begin to lose the privilege of being able to be scared safely in dystopias. Though they are supposed to be seen as a warning for the future, it seems more and more like we’re living in 1984 rather than 2021.

The dystopian genre is perhaps the closest thing that humanity has ever come to fortune-telling. We marvel now at the accuracy with which many authors predicted our current world. However, perhaps we should have thought of the dystopian novels of the past as less futuristic fiction and more a desperate warning for humanity to change its ways.

Around the world, China has already begun to construct its own version of Big Brother. In 2014, China introduced a “social credit” system. It’s similar to the way that high schools rank students based on GPA. Each person gets a certain social credit score based on the way they behave. According to Business Insider, “The exact methodology is a secret, but examples of infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games, and posting fake news online, specifically about terrorist attacks or airport security”.

Punishments for breaking these rules include restricted air travel, slower internet, and in some cases, barred admission to colleges and universities, or even high school. In fact, that was the case for a student in 2018. He was denied admission at a university he had been accepted into because of his father’s poor credit score. Identified by the surname Rao, he was blacklisted by the university and had his enrollment revoked. However scary this may seem, the even scarier thing was that this method seemed to work - his father ended up paying back the funds.

You may think that you can rest easy since this is happening halfway across the world. However, that's not the case. It’s been made clear that we in America are having our data tracked as well. Perhaps not physically, but every keystroke, touch of a button, and phone call we make is being recorded and analyzed. The only difference between America’s social credit system and China’s is that China is transparent about its system. It’s clear that warnings in the form of books, television, and media haven't worked. At least now that it’s happening in real life, let’s take notice and begin to enforce change.

We have lost the privilege of imagining a damaged world. We are living in one right now. George Orwell, Margaret Atwood, and Ray Bradbury have done their best, and it all seems to have fallen on deaf ears. So perhaps at least now, we should take warning. Perhaps it’s time we stop thinking of dystopian novels as the future. Perhaps we still have time to change something. But perhaps we’re too late.