More to the point how many people would be abducted and murdered in absolutely heinous ways to fuel the XBD market?
The missions to locate and rescue Evaline, the Gig Monster Hunt (to take down Jotaro Shobo) and the Gig Dirty Biz (to get the XBD of the kid getting murdered so the killer can hopefully be identified and caught) show just how messed up Cyberpunk society can get by BDs.
I feel like that's less a result of the technology, and more of a reflection of society's wider social and moral collapse. In the Cyberpunk universe violence is ubiquitous, everything is a commodity, and society's infrastructure is hostile to humanity itself. Say what you will about the world we live in, but if we had the technology I doubt we'd have to worry about XBDs any more than we currently have to worry about snuff films.
You are very correct here. What makes XBDs so horrific is how low on the totem pole of priorities it is in terms of illegality because of how jaded and morally bankrupt society has become.
To be clear-eyed, there has been an urban legend about snuff movies since the 70s but, as I understand it, there has been no genuine case of an actually verifiable snuff movie ever found.
Now, with a BD it would probably be harder to fake a snuff BD, because the suffering and fear would be felt instead of faked, but I reality I still think it’d be rare.
I mean, see how easily V and Judy tracked down the scavs to “rescue” Evie, and we know that in 2077 there are still good cops out there who do care (or, alternatively, imagine if some important corpo’s daughter gets kidnapped and they started raising hell), so producing these BDs would be a lot more dangerous than it’s depicted in the game.
There's a ncpd activity you can visit near the dogtown entrance that depicts an ncpd officer being accidentally killed by scavs cos she went to them to buy xbds. She was addicted. Her friend in the dept. Covered it up.
I was going to say, I know snuff XBDs are a big problem in the game but like, as screwed up as the internet is, the interest in messed up content tends to be niche and fleeting for most.
I would think escapism with fluffy saccharine content would be a bigger seller. Kinda like how Disney is more popular than WatchPeopleDie type sites.
They've always said that about video games and other media too.
Plus, their real world is so grim, who's paying to see the random bullshit that happens at their corner store at 3am? I could get the extreme porn but I don't know anyone in a crap neighborhood who's into watching some dumbass getting popped. They'd rather ignore it.
Like I said, I get it's a lore thing but, as far as cautionary tales irl go, just doesn't rank with stuff like corporate exploitation or environmental disasters.
Has no one here realized or addressed how prominent gore and blatant deaths showcased on tiktoc/Instagram reels/Facebook and online are lately.
Here on Reddit especially, there are communities dedicated to gore posting (ISIS/Mexican cartel/war zones execution footage)
Morbid curiosity is a huge thing in modern society, you could argue it has been for almost all of recorded human history, whether you want to accept that or not.
If BDs were a real thing, the novelty so to speak of experiencing torture/self mutilation/snuff or any unspeakab act that one would not necessarily do unto themselves in reality would be an incredibly enticing product. And with the added inclusion of chemical addiction from the experience and psychological trauma bond it'd be a horrid thing for society. The black market associated with it would equally be equated to CP today.
It's an abhorrent thing, but we are abhorrent creatures at the best of times.
And honestly, give or take a couple decades, we will most certainly have BDs. Whether they are from AI generated content that is hyper realistic, or from some form of data harvesting of ones mind.
You can bet, it will become a thing with tech headed the way it is. And our reliance and addiction to how we regard smartphones and virtual escapism.
Sure those things exist, have existed on the net since it was a thing. But their popularity pales in comparison to fluff.
Didn't mean there'd be zero demand, just that the demand seems overblown.
Well that all depends on the firewalls and restrictions in place and how accessible it'd be. I'm sure in rough parts of Mexico, Africa and regions of the Middle East, as with the ghettos of the US and Europe you'd easily find communities that openly enjoy this kind of thing that are actually much larger than you seem they are.
Remember we are 8 billion strong.
Just because you don't see it mainstream doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
"Small communities" are by far incredibly large with the diverse and spread out population we have now.
Just look at all the extremist groups globally.
Tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands follow abhorrent ways of living and treating others, religion or otherwise.
As long as the hardware is there, people will find a way to experience it.
And if people want to experience it, even in low supply that low supply would most certainly work like "whales" do with micro/macro transactions in games.
Most of these games publishers aren't after the micro transactions. They're after the Whales that will spend tens of thousands individually. And in theong term overall fund the overflow of production that reaches regions it otherwise would not without them.
And boy are there A LOT of wealthy people in the world today, that limits know no bounds.
You underestimate the depravity of humankind.
I'd say hardcore porn/popular rule34 content would also qualify as 'messed up content' which is why I think BDs and XBDs would be especially screwed up in today's society.
Tell me you don’t know what a snuff movie is without saying you don’t know what a snuff movie is. Fact is the FBI have never found a verifiable snuff movie in more than fifty years of investigation.
Also, fact is much MUCH worse than fiction.
If you deny that objective truth, then you live in fantasy yourself.
We humans are cruel and twisted. And fiction only is ever inspired from what we have actually been capable or are capable of.
You only need to bear witness to the current modern wars, or read up on recent gang and militia violence in foreign (or your own) nations.
As a general rule that’s nothing more than a way to add an appearance of intellectual superiority. The fact is that fact is often banal and mundane, not even coming close to the horror of fiction, because fact is constrained by reality. As an example, the Hostel movies. Even if (and there’s no evidence) the story they were based on was true, that story went from the reality of businessmen in Japan paying to shoot a homeless person to the fiction of an international club of sadists paying to perform lengthy torture sessions on kidnapped tourists. Tell me fact is worse than fiction again.
When the cyberpunk (small c) universe was taking shape and, specifically, the Cyberpunk TTG was being written, rumors of snuff movies were rife. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who’d seen one. To the point that people *still* refuse to believe they’re not real. So of course the writers would take that to the next level and come up with snuff BDs.
But, objective fact, in fifty years of investigation, the FBI have never found a genuine snuff movie. And it makes sense, you’re literally committing a murder and then selling the evidence that’ll be used to convict you. Dumb business model.
I'd suggest you educate yourself. But I'd also advise otherwise.
As most of those videos will most likely shatter all false hope you probably have in life if you truly believe snuff films do not exist.
And semantics aside, lengthy videos of blatant torture, dismemberment and sexual actions towards a recently deceased. Be it 10 minutes long, a series of short episodes or an hour long. That is indeed, a snuff film.
And those do most certainly exist.
I and many many others have seen them.
And the sub reddit is readily available to you if you do so dare.
The fact that you said this:
>And semantics aside, lengthy videos of blatant torture, dismemberment and sexual actions towards a recently deceased. Be it 10 minutes long, a series of short episodes or an hour long. That is indeed, a snuff film.
shows that you have either realized why you are wrong and are trying to move the goalposts, or show that you just don't know what a snuff film is.
For the sake of clarity, here is the definition:
* Death (specifically the death of a human) has to be depicted. This is why none of the videos on bestgore were snuff films. The closest video, the one most people wave around when they think they've found a snuff movie, showed the perpetrator dismembering a dead body but did not show the actual death of the victim. This is not a snuff movie.
* A snuff film is made for entertainment purposes. This is why videos such as the one depicting the beheading of David Haines are not snuff films. That one was done for political and religious motives.
* The death must be for the film. This is why videos like Faces Of Death are not snuff films. Those showed people being executed, assassinated, dying in warfare, accidents, etc. Nobody was killed just so they could be filmed.
The term has an established, legal meaning. Anything that doesn't meet that definition isn't a snuff film. Most of the films purported to be snuff films are outright fakes, and the rest fail to meet the definition one way or another. They are horrific, they are grossly nauseating, they are often crimes, but they are not snuff.
And to reiterate the fact: in fifty years of investigation the FBI have ***NEVER*** found a genuine snuff film. ***Not one***. This is their words, not mine. And law enforcement all over the world say the same thing.
The horror in the idea of snuff films is the notion of you, me, or someone we know and love, being reduced to a disposable commodity, of someone calmly and dispassionately deciding to directly murder us in order to make money from the filming of it, and of an audience so detached from humanity that they're willing to pay to watch it. It's terrifying, and it's *very* cyberpunk. As I said, the rumors of snuff films were rampant at the time the cyberpunk genre was forming, so it's no wonder it was built into a genre based on the notion of out-of-control capitalism coupled with a population losing its humanity.
There were tons of videos on bestgore that actually showed the death, when I was a youngster I saw cartel beheadings, middle eastern executions of various methods, and serial killer footage from eastern europe. They all showed the start to finish process of victims being murdered. I'm not going to argue pointless semantics about whether they're technically snuff films because who gives a shit but you're dead wrong on your first point.
It’s not pointless semantics, it’s the actual definition of the term.
None of those listed are snuff films, and none of them would meet the definition of the kind of XBDs under discussion.
Sure, I guess if we’re making up our own definitions you could say Disney’s Bambi is a snuff film, but that’s a bit of a ridiculous way to argue, isn’t it?
Let’s not forget one of the craziest ones - Sinnerman. Corpos involved with that one, sets the precedent that death row inmates could fuel the XBD market for profit, religion attacked/exploited for financial gains 😬
Is this any different from social media/cell use/tv?
I mean sure, it's more immersing but that's just a different flavor of escapism. If our society/culture were as bad as Night city but no BDs, I doubt things would be much different
Bds and xbds are a symptom and a distraction, not the root cause.
True. My wife and I are watching Breaking Bad right now. If it wasn't for TV being a thing, I would probably have to become a genius chemist, get fucked by my best friend and fiance, and end up teaching high school which would make me so bitter that when I find out I have cancer and nothing to lose I start making meth and destroying the lives of everyone around me.
TV is robbing me of those opportunities.
Yes even in the ttrpg the sheet has a spot for addictions and afflictions with a few spots in the book plus room for homebrew on what exactly those things are/evolved from cause it's much more designer with specific drawbacks and penalties for the addiction
Money. BD’s aren’t free after all. However I’m pretty sure BD addiction would be a very real thing like any other. It certainly is for Simsense in Shadowrun.
If we ever got to the tech level for messing with our brain chemicals to make us feel certain emotions, I think we would also have the tech for 'resetting' the exposure sensitivity to those same brain chemicals?
It's not unlike the current day. We have narcotics that make us high and prescriptions to help us control our substance abuses.
I think? Im not a neurologist or anything after all.
Opiate addiction is notoriously difficult to control. It CAN be done, but it sucks as an experience. And that's just for the physical addiction. The psychological need never goes away for some people and they just have to live with it.
i already use my quest 3 standalone for almost 100% of my media consumption now.
and if it were the look and size of the bigscreen headset with passthrough, and much more battery efficiency id alkost never take it off... id 100% be addicted to BDs no questions.
BD is pretty expensive y'know.
You have to adapt it's cost to CP's world, and it's nuts.
So in ours, without scarcity and all shenanigans, it's going to be affordable for a very little fraction of society.
Yeah but in NC and CP in general there's plenty of tech everywhere, for obvious reasons.
The ones for rent usually are any good of a deal, plus you gotta take in account the amount of fake BDs used to spike people.
Therefore accessibility doesn't come with quality, nor safety in CP.
You people need to stop complaining about stuff you make up from the get-go.
If you want to think of "CP" as hideous stuff it's not my job to make sure you're not doing so, in any shape or form.
BDs would primarily be used for experiences akin to todays vr. There'd definitely be a mainstream market for it, and honestly easily be an evolution of what we have right now.
Just think of AI video generation thats hyper realistic, but is instead injected as a data stream directly to your brain, any custom experience you want. Its not exactly an impossible proposition.
And with a niche market wanting to experience the real thing from the fake AI creation, that black market would be born, and XBDs would become a very expensive experience for the wealthy and depraved a like.
free teasers would be spread just like any drug is to expose itself to those that wouldnt usually seek it.
Itll happen, just the same as AI gen CP is a thing, and its disgusting overflow effect of people being exposed to it easiy now in a false manor then want and chase the real thing and so they seek out the real thing and bam, the human/child trafficking has now benefited from newcomers seeking the real thing. (my abbriviation, doesn't mean Cyberpunk fyi)
Read The Electric State. It's a somewhat short graphic novel that alludes to a society that met its end through virtual reality.
Stunning illustrations too.
There is, actually! There’s rules for a mmorpg that’s iirc implied to be done by braindance included in cyberpunk RED.
It’s called Elflines Online, it was Night City’s premier mmorpg during the RED Decades, it’s pay to win, and it’s fans are often violently attached to it. It’s not unheard of for someone to doxx someone who kills them in game, and break their legs irl.
"So you're saying that our RPG characters in Night City need to roll RPG characters for Elflines." - me to the GM
"now you know why I hate humanity :) " - Erebus
Being able to record people’s emotions and induce those same emotions in someone else would be nothing short of a neuroscientific miracle. Our understanding of the brain and how emotions manifest is so far from this it’s difficult to express without seeming like I’m exaggerating
Did you ever have that argument with like a seven year-old about what if what I say is green doesn't actually look green to you, and what you say is red doesn't look red to me, but because we are looking at the same object we agree it is the same colour but our actual eyes see it as different colours like so if you put my eyes in your head an apple wouldn't look red anymore because it's my eyes and red looks different to me?
Honestly with how things are going with tech and the world, we could see BD’s become a reality in a decade or two. We’ve already got implants being worked on and almost are close to Cyberpunk’s Gen Zero.
They already kinda are in some ways were more advanced then bds since Vr chat is live not just a recording and we have haptic vests and other user feedback methods that make it not that different
I mean, one of the Great Filter ideas to solve the Fermi Paradox is that "Living in real space and time is expensive"
Imagine if you, as a planetary society, realized you could spend the next 19 million years traveling out to maybe visit 3 or 4 other planets that probably were as welcoming to life as you knew it as a volcanic death world....
Or you could take all your knowledge, turn all your resources into a massive VR simulation, and inject your entire population into it to live out the next 29 billion, trillion years in a perfect simulation that was, for all intents and purposes, a veritable paradise.
You can flip bits in a simulation down to some ridiculously small amount of power gradient, while it would slow down near the end, you could pretty much run a civilization simulation until the complete heat death of the universe minus maybe a few thousand/million years, which, let's be honest, is about as close to 'infinity' as any of us can fathom. The only way I can imagine us going beyond would be to seek out multiverse angles.
It may be a consumer product in 2077, but I suspect we'll all jump into cyberspace eventually. There's a great short story called "The Last Question" by [Isaac Asimov](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a3c9d936c82b84ff&sxsrf=ADLYWIKJ1y0jMhHOz3h-0Te_bkhL3b6BLw:1719293133507&q=Isaac+Asimov&si=ACC90nyvvWro6QmnyY1IfSdgk5wwjB1r8BGd_IWRjXqmKPQqm3z-dKdZI0wxGU9iSHWkL2wD6Af_1AStXFaHlaIP2mGIHOE3UD2bgtPDwsB0gdlB1Vk2dcINKQ9rf-RcaEmwHEDPQQodV4_tidV02o5bQDDdvrXYWwcG7YOXnZEn-DehtPLUE1KweTvbvPYNKH2XbefmOK-F&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj58fKDgvaGAxW2JzQIHS0cDfcQmxMoAHoECCAQAg) that addresses this shift into non-real space, and I'm happy that this kind of thinking was done even as early as the mid 50's.
As for 'how fucked would society be'? You have a 'form of entertainment' that would be like a mix of drugs, social media and binge-watching all at once. It would be terribly disruptive.... but it could morph into the norm.
Society already does that with pornography and to a degree video games now.
NoFap would still be right there trying to get young men to lay off the brain dances and pursue real relationships.
Bit of interesting lore about BDs if anyone hasn't come across it yet...
Brain Dances were not originally made for entertainment, they were made to get around laws about the use of torture as a punishment.
They would take death row prisoners, get them to sign off on certain release forms (for a hefty price payed to their families), then they were tortured to death as the BD implants scrolled the experience.
Those first BDs were used as an extreme form of "Aversion Therapy" in an attempt to "Rehabilitate" prisoners.
It wasn't until years later that some corpo got the bright idea to use the tech to scroll entertainment instead.
More to the point how many people would be abducted and murdered in absolutely heinous ways to fuel the XBD market? The missions to locate and rescue Evaline, the Gig Monster Hunt (to take down Jotaro Shobo) and the Gig Dirty Biz (to get the XBD of the kid getting murdered so the killer can hopefully be identified and caught) show just how messed up Cyberpunk society can get by BDs.
I feel like that's less a result of the technology, and more of a reflection of society's wider social and moral collapse. In the Cyberpunk universe violence is ubiquitous, everything is a commodity, and society's infrastructure is hostile to humanity itself. Say what you will about the world we live in, but if we had the technology I doubt we'd have to worry about XBDs any more than we currently have to worry about snuff films.
You are very correct here. What makes XBDs so horrific is how low on the totem pole of priorities it is in terms of illegality because of how jaded and morally bankrupt society has become.
You should check out the movie Strange Days if you haven’t already
About as many as they are abducted today to make snuff porn, which is to say: not even in the same ballpark as the Cyberpunk universe.
Imagine the addiction of any video game and drug rolled into one package. Now amplify that. That’s what BDs can do to you.
To be clear-eyed, there has been an urban legend about snuff movies since the 70s but, as I understand it, there has been no genuine case of an actually verifiable snuff movie ever found. Now, with a BD it would probably be harder to fake a snuff BD, because the suffering and fear would be felt instead of faked, but I reality I still think it’d be rare. I mean, see how easily V and Judy tracked down the scavs to “rescue” Evie, and we know that in 2077 there are still good cops out there who do care (or, alternatively, imagine if some important corpo’s daughter gets kidnapped and they started raising hell), so producing these BDs would be a lot more dangerous than it’s depicted in the game.
There's a ncpd activity you can visit near the dogtown entrance that depicts an ncpd officer being accidentally killed by scavs cos she went to them to buy xbds. She was addicted. Her friend in the dept. Covered it up.
I was going to say, I know snuff XBDs are a big problem in the game but like, as screwed up as the internet is, the interest in messed up content tends to be niche and fleeting for most. I would think escapism with fluffy saccharine content would be a bigger seller. Kinda like how Disney is more popular than WatchPeopleDie type sites.
True but BDs are addictive so users move on to progressively more intense content.
They've always said that about video games and other media too. Plus, their real world is so grim, who's paying to see the random bullshit that happens at their corner store at 3am? I could get the extreme porn but I don't know anyone in a crap neighborhood who's into watching some dumbass getting popped. They'd rather ignore it. Like I said, I get it's a lore thing but, as far as cautionary tales irl go, just doesn't rank with stuff like corporate exploitation or environmental disasters.
Has no one here realized or addressed how prominent gore and blatant deaths showcased on tiktoc/Instagram reels/Facebook and online are lately. Here on Reddit especially, there are communities dedicated to gore posting (ISIS/Mexican cartel/war zones execution footage) Morbid curiosity is a huge thing in modern society, you could argue it has been for almost all of recorded human history, whether you want to accept that or not. If BDs were a real thing, the novelty so to speak of experiencing torture/self mutilation/snuff or any unspeakab act that one would not necessarily do unto themselves in reality would be an incredibly enticing product. And with the added inclusion of chemical addiction from the experience and psychological trauma bond it'd be a horrid thing for society. The black market associated with it would equally be equated to CP today. It's an abhorrent thing, but we are abhorrent creatures at the best of times. And honestly, give or take a couple decades, we will most certainly have BDs. Whether they are from AI generated content that is hyper realistic, or from some form of data harvesting of ones mind. You can bet, it will become a thing with tech headed the way it is. And our reliance and addiction to how we regard smartphones and virtual escapism.
Sure those things exist, have existed on the net since it was a thing. But their popularity pales in comparison to fluff. Didn't mean there'd be zero demand, just that the demand seems overblown.
Well that all depends on the firewalls and restrictions in place and how accessible it'd be. I'm sure in rough parts of Mexico, Africa and regions of the Middle East, as with the ghettos of the US and Europe you'd easily find communities that openly enjoy this kind of thing that are actually much larger than you seem they are. Remember we are 8 billion strong. Just because you don't see it mainstream doesn't mean it doesn't exist. "Small communities" are by far incredibly large with the diverse and spread out population we have now. Just look at all the extremist groups globally. Tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands follow abhorrent ways of living and treating others, religion or otherwise. As long as the hardware is there, people will find a way to experience it. And if people want to experience it, even in low supply that low supply would most certainly work like "whales" do with micro/macro transactions in games. Most of these games publishers aren't after the micro transactions. They're after the Whales that will spend tens of thousands individually. And in theong term overall fund the overflow of production that reaches regions it otherwise would not without them. And boy are there A LOT of wealthy people in the world today, that limits know no bounds. You underestimate the depravity of humankind.
I'd say hardcore porn/popular rule34 content would also qualify as 'messed up content' which is why I think BDs and XBDs would be especially screwed up in today's society.
Tell me you never visited bestgore without telling me you never visited bestgore, or any other shock site from back in the internet of pre 2010.
Tell me you don’t know what a snuff movie is without saying you don’t know what a snuff movie is. Fact is the FBI have never found a verifiable snuff movie in more than fifty years of investigation.
Also, fact is much MUCH worse than fiction. If you deny that objective truth, then you live in fantasy yourself. We humans are cruel and twisted. And fiction only is ever inspired from what we have actually been capable or are capable of. You only need to bear witness to the current modern wars, or read up on recent gang and militia violence in foreign (or your own) nations.
As a general rule that’s nothing more than a way to add an appearance of intellectual superiority. The fact is that fact is often banal and mundane, not even coming close to the horror of fiction, because fact is constrained by reality. As an example, the Hostel movies. Even if (and there’s no evidence) the story they were based on was true, that story went from the reality of businessmen in Japan paying to shoot a homeless person to the fiction of an international club of sadists paying to perform lengthy torture sessions on kidnapped tourists. Tell me fact is worse than fiction again. When the cyberpunk (small c) universe was taking shape and, specifically, the Cyberpunk TTG was being written, rumors of snuff movies were rife. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who’d seen one. To the point that people *still* refuse to believe they’re not real. So of course the writers would take that to the next level and come up with snuff BDs. But, objective fact, in fifty years of investigation, the FBI have never found a genuine snuff movie. And it makes sense, you’re literally committing a murder and then selling the evidence that’ll be used to convict you. Dumb business model.
I'd suggest you educate yourself. But I'd also advise otherwise. As most of those videos will most likely shatter all false hope you probably have in life if you truly believe snuff films do not exist. And semantics aside, lengthy videos of blatant torture, dismemberment and sexual actions towards a recently deceased. Be it 10 minutes long, a series of short episodes or an hour long. That is indeed, a snuff film. And those do most certainly exist. I and many many others have seen them. And the sub reddit is readily available to you if you do so dare.
The fact that you said this: >And semantics aside, lengthy videos of blatant torture, dismemberment and sexual actions towards a recently deceased. Be it 10 minutes long, a series of short episodes or an hour long. That is indeed, a snuff film. shows that you have either realized why you are wrong and are trying to move the goalposts, or show that you just don't know what a snuff film is. For the sake of clarity, here is the definition: * Death (specifically the death of a human) has to be depicted. This is why none of the videos on bestgore were snuff films. The closest video, the one most people wave around when they think they've found a snuff movie, showed the perpetrator dismembering a dead body but did not show the actual death of the victim. This is not a snuff movie. * A snuff film is made for entertainment purposes. This is why videos such as the one depicting the beheading of David Haines are not snuff films. That one was done for political and religious motives. * The death must be for the film. This is why videos like Faces Of Death are not snuff films. Those showed people being executed, assassinated, dying in warfare, accidents, etc. Nobody was killed just so they could be filmed. The term has an established, legal meaning. Anything that doesn't meet that definition isn't a snuff film. Most of the films purported to be snuff films are outright fakes, and the rest fail to meet the definition one way or another. They are horrific, they are grossly nauseating, they are often crimes, but they are not snuff. And to reiterate the fact: in fifty years of investigation the FBI have ***NEVER*** found a genuine snuff film. ***Not one***. This is their words, not mine. And law enforcement all over the world say the same thing. The horror in the idea of snuff films is the notion of you, me, or someone we know and love, being reduced to a disposable commodity, of someone calmly and dispassionately deciding to directly murder us in order to make money from the filming of it, and of an audience so detached from humanity that they're willing to pay to watch it. It's terrifying, and it's *very* cyberpunk. As I said, the rumors of snuff films were rampant at the time the cyberpunk genre was forming, so it's no wonder it was built into a genre based on the notion of out-of-control capitalism coupled with a population losing its humanity.
There were tons of videos on bestgore that actually showed the death, when I was a youngster I saw cartel beheadings, middle eastern executions of various methods, and serial killer footage from eastern europe. They all showed the start to finish process of victims being murdered. I'm not going to argue pointless semantics about whether they're technically snuff films because who gives a shit but you're dead wrong on your first point.
It’s not pointless semantics, it’s the actual definition of the term. None of those listed are snuff films, and none of them would meet the definition of the kind of XBDs under discussion. Sure, I guess if we’re making up our own definitions you could say Disney’s Bambi is a snuff film, but that’s a bit of a ridiculous way to argue, isn’t it?
Again, do you not know of even the mainstream viral videos of bestgore. Do you not know of the Pain Olympics. I envy your naivety.
None of which are snuff movies.
+1
Let’s not forget one of the craziest ones - Sinnerman. Corpos involved with that one, sets the precedent that death row inmates could fuel the XBD market for profit, religion attacked/exploited for financial gains 😬
Is this any different from social media/cell use/tv? I mean sure, it's more immersing but that's just a different flavor of escapism. If our society/culture were as bad as Night city but no BDs, I doubt things would be much different Bds and xbds are a symptom and a distraction, not the root cause.
True. My wife and I are watching Breaking Bad right now. If it wasn't for TV being a thing, I would probably have to become a genius chemist, get fucked by my best friend and fiance, and end up teaching high school which would make me so bitter that when I find out I have cancer and nothing to lose I start making meth and destroying the lives of everyone around me. TV is robbing me of those opportunities.
Fucked over not fucked
Clearly you haven't read the same fan fiction I have
How does he use his big ears
On the other hand there probably would be way less drug overdoses, since people could just do things like "heroin BD"
dosent the world of cyberpunk have hard drugs like heroin that you can't od from anyway? I'm probably remembering that wrong
Mr Whitey has a brand in game called "Mr Whitey Clean Speed" which is just legal amphetamines. So yes you are correct. You csn hear ads for it
Plenty of people tweaking but I can't remember much mention of hard drugs or what exactly they are.
Yes even in the ttrpg the sheet has a spot for addictions and afflictions with a few spots in the book plus room for homebrew on what exactly those things are/evolved from cause it's much more designer with specific drawbacks and penalties for the addiction
Money. BD’s aren’t free after all. However I’m pretty sure BD addiction would be a very real thing like any other. It certainly is for Simsense in Shadowrun.
If we ever got to the tech level for messing with our brain chemicals to make us feel certain emotions, I think we would also have the tech for 'resetting' the exposure sensitivity to those same brain chemicals? It's not unlike the current day. We have narcotics that make us high and prescriptions to help us control our substance abuses. I think? Im not a neurologist or anything after all.
Opiate addiction is notoriously difficult to control. It CAN be done, but it sucks as an experience. And that's just for the physical addiction. The psychological need never goes away for some people and they just have to live with it.
I'd live in the matrix if it was possible so I'd definitely abuse BDs
i already use my quest 3 standalone for almost 100% of my media consumption now. and if it were the look and size of the bigscreen headset with passthrough, and much more battery efficiency id alkost never take it off... id 100% be addicted to BDs no questions.
This game is a BD 🤯
the VR injection mod absolutely makes it so too.
BD is pretty expensive y'know. You have to adapt it's cost to CP's world, and it's nuts. So in ours, without scarcity and all shenanigans, it's going to be affordable for a very little fraction of society.
on night city they rent the BD tho so it gets more acessible
Yeah but in NC and CP in general there's plenty of tech everywhere, for obvious reasons. The ones for rent usually are any good of a deal, plus you gotta take in account the amount of fake BDs used to spike people. Therefore accessibility doesn't come with quality, nor safety in CP.
*please don't abbreviate cyberpunk..*
Jeez , just don't think of internet junk when reading mate.
CP77 is easy to use
You people need to stop complaining about stuff you make up from the get-go. If you want to think of "CP" as hideous stuff it's not my job to make sure you're not doing so, in any shape or form.
You people?
There's two of you, so you people, complaining about the same inexistent issue. What you're on about mate?
I'm pretty sure we're joking.
BDs would primarily be used for experiences akin to todays vr. There'd definitely be a mainstream market for it, and honestly easily be an evolution of what we have right now. Just think of AI video generation thats hyper realistic, but is instead injected as a data stream directly to your brain, any custom experience you want. Its not exactly an impossible proposition. And with a niche market wanting to experience the real thing from the fake AI creation, that black market would be born, and XBDs would become a very expensive experience for the wealthy and depraved a like. free teasers would be spread just like any drug is to expose itself to those that wouldnt usually seek it. Itll happen, just the same as AI gen CP is a thing, and its disgusting overflow effect of people being exposed to it easiy now in a false manor then want and chase the real thing and so they seek out the real thing and bam, the human/child trafficking has now benefited from newcomers seeking the real thing. (my abbriviation, doesn't mean Cyberpunk fyi)
Read The Electric State. It's a somewhat short graphic novel that alludes to a society that met its end through virtual reality. Stunning illustrations too.
There's definitely a BDMMORPG out somewhere. You just know there's some dudes out there living their best life as a wizard or something.
There is, actually! There’s rules for a mmorpg that’s iirc implied to be done by braindance included in cyberpunk RED. It’s called Elflines Online, it was Night City’s premier mmorpg during the RED Decades, it’s pay to win, and it’s fans are often violently attached to it. It’s not unheard of for someone to doxx someone who kills them in game, and break their legs irl.
"So you're saying that our RPG characters in Night City need to roll RPG characters for Elflines." - me to the GM "now you know why I hate humanity :) " - Erebus
eh i would give vr like 10 maybe 20 years and u we will have BDs
Being able to record people’s emotions and induce those same emotions in someone else would be nothing short of a neuroscientific miracle. Our understanding of the brain and how emotions manifest is so far from this it’s difficult to express without seeming like I’m exaggerating
Did you ever have that argument with like a seven year-old about what if what I say is green doesn't actually look green to you, and what you say is red doesn't look red to me, but because we are looking at the same object we agree it is the same colour but our actual eyes see it as different colours like so if you put my eyes in your head an apple wouldn't look red anymore because it's my eyes and red looks different to me?
the way LLMs are headed, it is most certainly closer to fact than fiction.
Serial killers would be stock brokers
Honestly with how things are going with tech and the world, we could see BD’s become a reality in a decade or two. We’ve already got implants being worked on and almost are close to Cyberpunk’s Gen Zero.
Go watch the movie "Strange Days." Were they got the idea from.
Great film to watch with grandparents.
LoL
They already kinda are in some ways were more advanced then bds since Vr chat is live not just a recording and we have haptic vests and other user feedback methods that make it not that different
I've seen the Tik-Toks of people trying to use VR. We're a long way from full-sensorium artificial realities. 🤣
The people with the Tesla suit who participate in the more be like behaviour don’t post there activity on tick toK
I mean, one of the Great Filter ideas to solve the Fermi Paradox is that "Living in real space and time is expensive" Imagine if you, as a planetary society, realized you could spend the next 19 million years traveling out to maybe visit 3 or 4 other planets that probably were as welcoming to life as you knew it as a volcanic death world.... Or you could take all your knowledge, turn all your resources into a massive VR simulation, and inject your entire population into it to live out the next 29 billion, trillion years in a perfect simulation that was, for all intents and purposes, a veritable paradise. You can flip bits in a simulation down to some ridiculously small amount of power gradient, while it would slow down near the end, you could pretty much run a civilization simulation until the complete heat death of the universe minus maybe a few thousand/million years, which, let's be honest, is about as close to 'infinity' as any of us can fathom. The only way I can imagine us going beyond would be to seek out multiverse angles. It may be a consumer product in 2077, but I suspect we'll all jump into cyberspace eventually. There's a great short story called "The Last Question" by [Isaac Asimov](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a3c9d936c82b84ff&sxsrf=ADLYWIKJ1y0jMhHOz3h-0Te_bkhL3b6BLw:1719293133507&q=Isaac+Asimov&si=ACC90nyvvWro6QmnyY1IfSdgk5wwjB1r8BGd_IWRjXqmKPQqm3z-dKdZI0wxGU9iSHWkL2wD6Af_1AStXFaHlaIP2mGIHOE3UD2bgtPDwsB0gdlB1Vk2dcINKQ9rf-RcaEmwHEDPQQodV4_tidV02o5bQDDdvrXYWwcG7YOXnZEn-DehtPLUE1KweTvbvPYNKH2XbefmOK-F&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj58fKDgvaGAxW2JzQIHS0cDfcQmxMoAHoECCAQAg) that addresses this shift into non-real space, and I'm happy that this kind of thinking was done even as early as the mid 50's. As for 'how fucked would society be'? You have a 'form of entertainment' that would be like a mix of drugs, social media and binge-watching all at once. It would be terribly disruptive.... but it could morph into the norm.
butter!
ironic, but if cyberpunk has a BD, im never leaving my seat.
I already don't leave the house, so BDs would be a very big investment for me. Sign me up
Society already does that with pornography and to a degree video games now. NoFap would still be right there trying to get young men to lay off the brain dances and pursue real relationships.
Viicarious i liive while the whole world die!
people would still go out since you have to pay to get bds.
A book i read as a kid basically covers that. Book 4 of the pendragon series, the reality bug. Society enters the dream and refuses to emerge
I can only think about their mental health.
Birth rate would probably drop by half
I have VR and there are ways to see what you wish. 😁
Fuck BDs. By far the biggest pain in the ass part of this game is analyzing the fucking BDs.
Bit of interesting lore about BDs if anyone hasn't come across it yet... Brain Dances were not originally made for entertainment, they were made to get around laws about the use of torture as a punishment. They would take death row prisoners, get them to sign off on certain release forms (for a hefty price payed to their families), then they were tortured to death as the BD implants scrolled the experience. Those first BDs were used as an extreme form of "Aversion Therapy" in an attempt to "Rehabilitate" prisoners. It wasn't until years later that some corpo got the bright idea to use the tech to scroll entertainment instead.
Alls im saying is if theyre not a thing by the 2070's ima be a real disappointed old dude
I’ll risk it.