the comfortable apocalypse

by Robert Dean

When I graduated high school in 2000, I thought the future would be awesome. Flying cars. Dream jobs. Maybe even a pizza hydrator like in Back to the Future II. What did we got instead? A world where I can’t afford to fix a broken tooth, but I’ve got nine streaming subscriptions I can’t remember signing up for. This feels like we live in corporate HR’s wet dream.

We were promised progress. Sleek, smooth, world-changing stuff. Instead, the world changed in all the wrong ways. Columbine was the first crack in the dream, but we still believed things would get better. That belief? Dead. Buried under a mountain of student loan debt, $12 hot dogs, and spam texts about our car’s extended warranty.

The chasm between the future we got and what we thought we were walking into isn’t the same ballpark; it ain’t even the same sport. The promised future was a lie; we bought it because we didn’t have an iPhone to reflect upon. We were promised a future of leisure, but we got TikTok influencers. We’re on the cusp with AI transforming the mundane, but we’ve demonized the idea and applied it to people not having a backup plan, as jobs are being compacted like trash into a cube. We can’t chat about Universal Basic Income because it’s a social crutch – so which is it? Dystopia or Utopia?

Technological theorist Mark Fisher said in his work Ghosts of My Life that we’re experiencing “The slow cancellation of the future,” how the technological promises of previous generations have been eroded, leaving us in a state of disappointed expectation. And with that, I gotta say – no fucking shit, dawg.

We got a future where dental care is a luxury, but we can livestream a billionaire eating gold-plated sashimi. (And a President Kook who has a gold-plated shitter.) The promise of automation was freedom. Instead, it's been gig-worked, password-protected, and means-tested until the only upgrade we qualify for is a faster way to hear “no.”  Instead, I got a Roomba that needs an app installed on my phone. 

The techno-optimism of the late 20th century sold us a vision of progress that would solve human problems, create more chill time, and distribute prosperity. We’d all have these dope lives. Instead, we got the opposite: technology creates new alienation, an economy demands more work for less. We’re in the new gilded class, and we can Google why everything sucks. I just want to stop living through a constant world-changing event. I’m tired of being one of Christ’s strongest soldiers.

I wanted a personal robot, and all I got was the threat of a constant apocalypse. You know what we have? We have Ben Shapiro. That sucks.

The World We Got Instead

I shared a photo of a hot dog costing $1.80 with free fries. It’s depressing to remember when $20 went a long way. Today, $20 is lunch. Like, what even is America at this point?

Buying a house in today’s money is impossible. I have a broken tooth in my mouth because even though I have insurance, I can’t afford to get it pulled and then the root canal and the replacement. We have fought disease and won, but now we’re giving it back to the public because of broken politics. We have machines in our pockets that can give us the historical context of the world, but people believe what they see on Truth Social.

The broken social contract is one of the hardest pills to swallow: “Go to school, get that good job, buy a house, have kids, die in Florida.” And now? We’re all in debt. The smart people who went to trade school might be closer to retirement, but they have fucked up backs. We were promised we could be anything — if we mortgaged our future for it — and then got life screaming it was our fault when the ladder collapsed.

Everyday Dystopia

Cameras are everywhere, and they’re not doing cool stuff like showing everyone doing the nasty like a sport. We’ve got Alexas in our houses listening — but what does an Alexa do besides tell you the weather? Everyone I know who has one doesn’t really use it beyond as a speaker. JBL makes those, too. JBL doesn’t know that you want tikka masala for dinner.

Everyone stares at their phones like zombies and gets their information from some dickhead yelling about politics from their car, and that guy barely got out of Civics class, but somehow, he’s a political scholar.

There are plenty of improvements like the internet letting us get a date and a burrito in the same time frame, but mostly, it just feels like we were sold a shitty upgrade.

I make a living as a writer. It has its ups and downs. I’ve been broke as hell, and I’ve also bought shoes I didn’t need. I’ve learned anyone with a tangible skill always looks for side hustles. Want to buy that new car? Plan a vacation? Steady money for child support? Side hustle. Our day jobs pay our daily lives — dreaming beyond your bills ain’t happening.

Thanks for the Inheritance, Nana

What kind of world did we inherit from the Boomers? They ripped the flesh off everything, and now, as Gen X + Millennials run the show, we’re looking back at Gen Z like, “We’re trying our best!” as the dam is leaking water everywhere, and the fingers we’ve got in all the holes don’t feel like we’re doing more than breaking the bones.

Boomers tell everyone they’re lazy, but they had it all and left us with jackshit. They go to the lake house while surfing on the corpse of the middle class and voting for red-state politics to fuck everyone over while the rest of us hope to not get cancer from all the poison in everything.

I have to explain to my kids that the plane is on fire, but at least they have their own water bottles to keep their water cool while Katy Perry goes to space and acts like she solved world hunger. We used to put thinkers on platforms — social critics, comedians, writers, and artists — and now we think the Costco Guys are cool. What?

Reboots and Reruns

Katy Perry singing “Wonderful World” is the corniest shit. You flew in space shorter than it takes to make a pizza at Domino’s. And on Jeff Bezos’ dick rocket. And while I’m monologuing on stuff that sucks — why does everything have to be IP? Why does everything have to be Star Wars or Marvel? We want new stories and new villains to hate — and instead, we get Cinderella in live-action. I mean, the ’50s promised atomic utopias and got McCarthyism; we got Silicon Valley and Mark Zuck trying to not be the dork he is. Healthcare costs have risen 300% since 2000, but my Wi-Fi is faster. A house price reads like a Lotto number. Dystopia is cool.

Again. I just want to not be in generational debt. Can we get some awesome upgrades instead of some guy with an orange face who says “Bigly”? I want my damn pizza hydrator. I would settle for affordable dental care. This is a eulogy for the future we were promised — where instead of jetpacks we got Venmo requests for rent, instead of robot maids we got Jordan Peterson’s lobster hierarchy, and instead of moon colonies, we got Elon Musk’s Twitter.

But hey — at least we’ll die with faster internet. What a wonderful fucking world.

*Stay tuned for the Robert Dean’s next monthly installment in June.