Personally I have major dystopian rhetoric fatigue and think thr answer is that they need to collectively shut the hell up about authoritarian nightmares. Not in a censorship way but a "You people are being paniced dumbasses again in a way completely unhelpful even if you were right, and the sooner this stupid zeitgeist ends just like the 'terrorists planning on hitting the remote Iowa small town petting zoo' the better!" way.
The construct has become a worse than useless intellectual trap in multiple ways.
1. It immediately catastrophizes with the favorite of bird cage liners everywhere, bad extrapolations taken uncritically as gospel.
2. Instead of clarifying as a common touchstone frame of reference it becomes dystopia definition creep that undermines the very notion of bad outcomes as things to be avoided. Satirically succicently summed up as "Oh no, having to get a job by applying online is being enslaved by technology! Having to buy groceries? Enslaved by corporations!" "Abundance of food supply? Oh no! Overpopulation and obesity!"
3. It leads to the uber-dumbness of accelerationism and being so stubbornly married to being right about bad outcomes they outright seek to cause the "inevitable" as twisted vindication. It is doomsday prognostication but even stupider. Notably accelerationists have always been wrong about their "inevitable". The Manson family's "Helter Skelter" and dumbass idea of an apocalyptic race war.
What should be done instead of dystopianizing? Point out the actual non-remote hypothetical bad effects and the situation for why it is likely. "Counter situations" exist to many solid ideas. Levies when they hold and are overrun turn the "protected" area into a reservoir instead of letting the water potentially wash away. Conversly below sea level the natural tendency is towards flooding as waters will go towards you instead of away when they are unbound.
The construct has become a worse than useless intellectual trap in multiple ways.
1. It immediately catastrophizes with the favorite of bird cage liners everywhere, bad extrapolations taken uncritically as gospel.
2. Instead of clarifying as a common touchstone frame of reference it becomes dystopia definition creep that undermines the very notion of bad outcomes as things to be avoided. Satirically succicently summed up as "Oh no, having to get a job by applying online is being enslaved by technology! Having to buy groceries? Enslaved by corporations!" "Abundance of food supply? Oh no! Overpopulation and obesity!"
3. It leads to the uber-dumbness of accelerationism and being so stubbornly married to being right about bad outcomes they outright seek to cause the "inevitable" as twisted vindication. It is doomsday prognostication but even stupider. Notably accelerationists have always been wrong about their "inevitable". The Manson family's "Helter Skelter" and dumbass idea of an apocalyptic race war.
What should be done instead of dystopianizing? Point out the actual non-remote hypothetical bad effects and the situation for why it is likely. "Counter situations" exist to many solid ideas. Levies when they hold and are overrun turn the "protected" area into a reservoir instead of letting the water potentially wash away. Conversly below sea level the natural tendency is towards flooding as waters will go towards you instead of away when they are unbound.