Cyberpunk, Dredd and mental illness [see description]

Hello, anyone often on this beautifully unmoderated sub I’m the bitch that can’t stop talking about Dredd. Annoying people with another post, sorry. I do enjoy talking about it and going into societal effects/parallels into as this franchise so great at doing. And with that explores a unappreciated tropes that makes good cyberpunk… that made no sense did it. Anyone cares here’s the other posts, think it’s all quite neat https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/13zct9i/talking_about_subculturesfads_cool_part_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1

The Emerald Isle, one hell of a cool cyberpunk conception (explanation in description)
by u/koro-sensei1001 in Cyberpunk

One interesting Cyberpunk ideas, Block Wars. (Explanation in comments)
by u/koro-sensei1001 in Cyberpunk

So in Cyberpunk a aspect that we take for granted is how it effects people. I’m Dredd this is one of it’s biggest themes. As I stated before In the devolving Mega City One. It all spawns from the 95 per cent unemployment rate. As people are forced to live off welfare checks and just watch mind-numbing tv is in their apartment Mega blocks this creates an uneducated and incredibly lethargic population as they’re trapped in the city. There are four ways people cope with this, suicide, becoming a criminal (hence the high crime rate) or joining a subculture and living off in your own world… or you go chronically insane.

As it makes parallels with people that can’t cope with modern life, turning to conspiracies becoming schizophrenic… imagine then if you were in a Mega City. No green in sight, trapped in your room as technology grows I mean all those neon lights are blinding. This effect is called “Future Shock”. I’m Dredd mental illness is so common that to diagnose and treat individuals victims is pointless, so anyone who goes insane is defacto “Futsie” (in universe) slang for future shock). This can be from self harm, to just being plain unhinged but most of the time it’s simply ‘going postal’. This term being used so liberally can be applied to anyone slightly unhinged or even Justice Department’s enemies, to be against them could mark you as a futsie.

Psych wards are also far different now. Everyone becoming futsie and no hope for curing the insane are sent to “Kook cubes”. For some background in Dredd because crime is so high criminals are sent to “Iso-cubes”, those places in prison where they’ve been outlawed because it’s just so damn immoral? Well here it’s the defacto holding cell. Now the difference between this and the Kook cubes for the mentally I’ll is simple, the Kook cubes instead merely have padded walls. Of course suicide is given the same callus treatment, common place for “jumpers” to rocket down to the slab. Every juve child is expected to witness at least one jumper before they’re seven… all of this does make great tv for the slugvid.

To finish this off I think the best example of the futsie and how crapsack Dredd is is the tale of Zigg, the man with the gun shown above. He wasn’t your average joe cit, no see he had a job!! A janitor for a editorial firm. Living his life mundanely he was approached by a homeless man one day, this mad futsie told him how his life is a lie. How the Justice Department artificially creates jobs because they know idol citizens get restless. So one day after hours Zigg checked what was being written all day by the worker droids, and nothing! His editorial firm was writing nothing! Finding it out he went more disillusioned, he found out something he wasn’t meant to and felt the Jays were going to get him.

Stopped going to work as he talked to his local bar, the bar keep he knew for years now he later found out was a droid! Disguised to be a human. He was the only one that talked him out of it, he was a Justice Department ploy. So taking up arms Zigg went on a killing spree. Murdering innocents deeming them all to be “well built robots”. Later this conspiracy true or not was later to be revealed to be a ploy. A cabal of corps, Judges and gang bosses set up an experiment for a man to go insane. They replaced the barkeep with a droid, swamped out the papers. Seeing a man going insane killing innocents?.. was awfully enjoyable to watch. The most chilling thing about this that Zigg’e conspiracy’s was all but plausible…

Anyways that’s bit of a crummy explanation for an aspect of cyberpunk we take for granted which is essential a more mass scale of ‘going postal. Anyways sorry for this word of text… thanks for reading!