Cyberpunk and Society this is what you wanted isn’t it?

Sometimes the neurodivergent focus can get the better of us with it. I was a little cranky this morning. I think everyone has had a morning with a little less beauty sleep than they needed. In my case it’s just sleep. As a result of how we structured our cyberpunk society it’s often the case that even if you’re tired and useless at work you’re expected to show up and look busy.

Alan Watts has such a beautiful and elegant way of phrasing complex topics. When hungry eat, when tired sleeep. Life is supposed to be simple, it’s humans that make it needlessly complicated. Admittedly I understand that some jobs require timeliness, but in reality there’s a lot of jobs that don’t. Many jobs have arbitrary deadlines and constraints placed on them. People and roles are abstracted into data and KPIs. Like cyberpunk fiction society has been a slave to technological optimization. The odd thing about this is in our quest to follow these self imposed deadlines is that the work and the workers suffer.

Three examples of Modern Workplace Woes

Activision Blizzard

The big news in the gaming space right now is that Microsoft had just layer off over 1900 employees from Activision Blizzard. I don’t approve of their corporate actions. Since the news of the layoffs many employees have stepped forward about how the company’s practices. Blizzard optimized around KPIs and not the customer experiences. Blizzard’s poor customer service is a result of metric optimization. Metrics like tickets processed and time to process a ticket being evaluated for employees retention. What’s more cyberpunk in society when your workplace tracks every metric it can about you. It was a bad look considering their vast player base and game library. In other words took the dissolution of their company to cause them to rethink these practices.

The Modern Anime Industry

I love both the anime and manga industry. So much so that I had the crazy idea to move here and go to animation school. A dream I still cling onto despite the growing realization that dreams don’t come true for everyone. Even if I went to animation school in Japan I’d avoid the Japanese creative industry like the plague. The reality of being an animator in Japan is awful. In cyberpunk society, companies abuse your passion for the craft creating modern day slaves. There are stories of animators making less than living wage working up to 18 hours a day. For mangaka the industry is just as unforgiving.

Why does an industry that makes over billions of dollars per year have people making less than 3 dollars an hour in it? The problem lies with the way the anime industry is structured. The animators are a small part of the pipeline and often they aren’t the ones who benefit from an anime’s success. I hope this will shift as we move to different platforms to support creative projects, but I’m unsure of the future.

One of the factors that go into crunch periods is the arbitrary deadlines we have decided for anime and manga. Even the gaming industry which is known for its crunch will delay releases. A week per episode and a month for manga chapter is unsustainable for the people who make the thing we like. Why is it a week?

As a Result of a Weekly Release Schedule

Due to the tight time constraints I’ve seen shows known for their great animations tainted with filler and subpar uninspiring scenes. Seven deadly sins, dragon ball super, and Boku no Hero Academia are examples of this animated race to the bottom. There could be an episode with amazing inspirational design and animation, but a season later we see the characters we know and love prostituted to fill a weekly release schedule.

My favorite Dragon Ball animation isn’t even an official release. Seeing creatives push animation to new heights fueled by their passion is inspiring. I recognize I could be a little biased because it paints my favorite character, Vegeta, in a better light than the original series. Despite this for anyone who is a fan of animation I recommend you watch this episode on Netflix. For me, this single video reawakened my passion for animation. A combination of violent, brutal, and expressive animation this single video shows more love for Dragonball than an entire season of Super did.

Hope for Animation Fans

Despite the anime industry being corrupted from the ground up there is still hope for fans of animation. Cyberpunk:Edgerunners gives me hope that with diversifying income sources from, in this case Netflix and CD Projekt Red, animation can be saved. Other notable standouts in animation I’ve seen over the years that I recommend are.

YouTubers No Longer YouTubing

In the past couple of weeks many YouTubers have announced that they will no longer be doing YouTube. Some of them might be cutting back, but some of them aren’t doing it at all. This shocking news hit the entire internet community like a wave. Following two videos every content creator on the platform was talking about it.

Cyberpunk society modern youtubers quitting

Sentiments varied from how short form content is favored, the skyrocketing production race, the frequency of uploads, to the last most important topic the feeling of always being connected and working.

We Live in a Cyberpunk Society Already

One of my favorite series embodies the essence of cyberpunk society. Cyberpunk 2077 carries both the dreams and nightmares of our current timeline. The world they crafted is just so interesting to me. It was the first time since The Matrix, where I have been so entranced by a fictional world. Cyberpunk by heart merges future technologies, transhumanism, corporations, dystopian control, and fighting against that control into mind bending stories. The genre has even inspired me to read some fictional stories. Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep and The Three Body Problem are two series I thumb through. Despite my love of disappearing from the world, Reading fiction is a rare occurrence for me.

If I’m not doing something to get ahead it feels like a waste of time. Even gaming I want to get good or create content around to maybe find success.

When thoughts like this popped into my head I’d realized we’re living in a Cyberpunk world already. I’m always connected online, constantly working, and still struggling to make ends meet.

Elements of Cyberpunk Society

Massive tech companies already have a grip on society. We consume content based on algorithms. In turn those algorithms control us. We compete and police each other based off our online activity and presence. If you’re not a content producer, you’re a content consumer, and even those of us who produce must consume to follow trends. Similar to the Matrix the methods of control are subtle so we feel like we make choices and are free. Thankfully, we do still have the element of choice and some freedom, but for how much longer will that last?

I like to be hopeful about the future and what it can provide for us, but there is also the dark possibilities that this technology presents. How long before insurance companies stop insuring people and issuing claims due to the big brother data system we’ve developed. Oh you can’t eat McDonalds today because you haven’t filled out your exercise activity bar. This is for your own safety. I can see a future where this technology becomes a prison. I don’t even want to touch on AI as we’re only seeing the very beginning of what it is capable of.

Cyberpunk Society is What You Wanted Wasn’t It

The main reason I started typing this was to log my activity. I had stayed up late Editing this short form content video.

Here are the Results

YouTube
Views: 73
Likes: 1
Watchtime: 30 Minutes
Avg View Duration: 22 Seconds

Tiktok
Views: 1,085
Likes: 132
Saves: 8

Instagram
Plays: 576
Initial Plays: 331
Replays: 193
Watch Time: 40 min 4 Seconds
Average Watch Time 7 Seconds
Likes: 37
Comments:

While that is really some success for my account it is an indication that I need to spend more time refining my content before I get the results I want.

People I Take Inspiration From

I fully embrace my identity as a Zillenial. While I have a lot of respect and love for long form content like film, TV, and old youtube. There’s also a part of me that gets really excited about the short form content I see now a days. Whether it is in 16×9 or vertical 9×16, the edits I’m seeing in the modern world show me the hidden potential in mastering after effects or resolve fusion.

When I see other editors, I used to think “you’ll never be able to edit like that”. After my dedication to making 2024 a good year I’ve decided to reframe this. “Look how much you have to grow!”

D2 Shots
Da Moves

Feedback to Myself

When you’re unhappy about your own results, it can be important to take a step back to think. What can be improved?

In Camera Settings

The colors seemed subpar, perhaps shoot in log and learn to color grade? I was upset about the shakes in the video so perhaps using a higher shutter speed and frame rate to record will help with post smoothing. I can add motion blur in post. Ideally I would like a wider angle lens but I’m strapped for cash so I can’t really afford one. I didn’t record vertically so I shouldn’t try to make vertical videos. For now, I will upload horizontal videos and have people turn their phones.

In After Effects

Some parts of the edit are really cool, like when the EVO is masked and the other parts of the scene cascade down. I think I need to learn how to color grade better. Some of the motion ramps aren’t as smooth as I’d like.

Adding Original Flair

It’s great to be inspired by people, but from what I’ve read in books like Steal Like an Artist, you still have to add your own original flair. For me perhaps that means leaning into the cyberpunk aesthetic. Perhaps it’s adding elements from anime. 2D animations add a certain character to 3D scenes. I’ve always have enjoyed the glitch effects so perhaps there is room to throw those into the edits.

Late Night

After working with the short for an extended period of time to only get those results is like a small little gut punch. After losing sleep to crashes and waiting on my PC to process and render the 4k footage had me dying late at night. My obsessive focus shot me in the foot here, because I wanted to sit here until it was done. The next day required a little more mindfulness to be patient about things outside of my control like the bus being late so missing a train. Small things would anger that little voice in my head. I laughed it off when I thought of a meme of all things.

One last year in Japan, to be a content creator, that’s what I wanted. I strolled through the day to meet my friend Dave. Dave needed help with his GT-R before our drinking party so that’s what I was there to do.

LaidbackLifestyle

My hope that is I’ll be able to build Laidback Lifestyle into a thing that I can work on in my irregular hours and still have it churn. I don’t want it to turn into a prison for me defined by the same thing I was trying to escape.

To Do List

~~Make a New Year’s Video For the LaidbackMarco Channel~~
~~Get Organized Physically~~/Electronically
Keep better track and record of finances
Design Shirts, Clothes, Sweaters, and Products for the brand
Make a diagram of LaidbackLifestyle funnels and web
Redesign website to integrate product sales
Cleanup YouTube channels, linking, and tags
Send Ophelia, Monstercat, and Other Labels a Demo. . .how do I put together a demo and press kit?
Visualizer for “Lost at Sea”
- Vertical Visualizer
Create shorts from Tokyo Underground Footage Vertical for LaidbackJDM
Upload any Video To LaidbackGaming
Finish Editing Yokohama Photos and Post Them Online
- Make a reel with trending audio of before and after edits
- Draw anime characters on them for laidbackanime
Create Shortform Content from Nissan Global HQ
How to Make Music Video DAW
A7III Review

0 0 votes

Article Rating