A dystopia doesn't always have to be apocalyptic. Sometimes, it's the slow accumulation one one miserable event after another.
Transcript:
I mean... sure.
Healthcare feels like a luxury.
Privacy is basically a myth.
Groceries cost more than your car payment.
Rent eats half your income.
And billionaires? They play god... on livestream.
But that’s just how things are, right?
Totally normal... right?
When we picture a dystopia, we think big.
Zombies.
Nuclear war.
Hostile aliens.
Or some doomsday asteroid slamming into Earth.
Those are hard dystopias—loud, violent, cinematic.
They wipe out everything, fast.
The survivors are tough, dirty, and constantly fighting for scraps.
Terrifying, sure.
But... not exactly likely.
Slow dystopias are different.
They sneak up on you.
Little things start to slip:No bombs.
No explosions.
Just... decay.
Diseases spread.
Prices rise.
Rent becomes unmanageable.
Freedoms shrink.
Privacy vanishes.
And the number of people sleeping on the street? Goes up.
Disasters hit more often.
Help takes longer—if it ever comes at all.
You’re not dead.
But you’re not fine either.
You’re adapting.
Normal keeps shifting.
The temperature rises slowly.
And one day... you're sweating.
But you never noticed the heat starting.
This isn’t The Stand.
It’s not War of the Worlds.
It’s more like Stalinist Russia.
Or North Korea.
Or the slow, quiet Jackpot from William Gibson’s The Peripheral.
It’s not the end of the world.
Just... the end of the world you thought you lived in.
-----PART 2
How do you know if you're living in a slow dystopia?
Not a big-bang collapse. No zombie virus.
Just a long, dragging, soul-sapping slide.
After all, we've already made it through:
Civil wars.
World wars.
Deadly leaders.
Pandemics.
Climate disasters.
Inflation, deflation, recessions, and that one time eggs were seven dollars.
So what makes this different?
In a slow dystopia, things don’t explode—they erode.
Problems stack up. Nothing really gets fixed. And even when it does, nobody believes it’ll last.
So here are the warning signs to watch for:
One: Trust is leaking.
You see it everywhere—less faith in governments, in big business, in anyone “in charge.”
Power gets scooped up by a select few: CEOs, unelected officials, billionaires with rocket ships.
Their decisions feel remote, unexplained, and unstoppable.
And that uncertainty breeds mistrust.
Two: You’re being watched—and nudged.
Governments and corporations invest in knowing everything about you.
Where you go. What you buy. What you almost said out loud.
Meanwhile, propaganda oozes from your screen, whispering what to think, what to fear, and who to blame.
You're not exactly told what to believe. You're just pushed there.
Three: Everyone’s uneasy—and getting quieter about it.
The rich get richer. The middle class gets squeezed. The poor get blamed.
The planet burns or floods—depending on the week.
And the average person? Feels overwhelmed, hopeless, and alone.
(But hey—at least there’s a new phone coming out.)
Four: Populism. Nationalism. Stuff-ism.
Materialism is the new religion.
Education? Undervalued.
Empathy? Optional.
Critical thinking? In decline.
People are told the poor are lazy, the foreign are threats, and the powerful are heroes.
(It’s fine. It’s all fine.)
So What’s Next?
Sound familiar?
You’re not alone.
A lot of people feel like they’ve slipped into the wrong timeline and just… never got back.
That’s the danger of a slow dystopia.
It doesn’t kick down the door.
It seeps in—until “how things are” becomes “how things have always been.”
But sometimes... a slow collapse speeds up.
In Part 2, we’ll talk about one of the biggest threats we aren’t prepared for:
Solar storms.
Like the one in 1859 that set fire to telegraph stations.
If that happened today?
Goodbye GPS, power, and maybe your last working group chat.
So join us for Part 2—
Or, if your faith in humanity needs a break, check out a chapter of That Way You Feel Right Now by Kat Monet.
Because sometimes, fiction’s the only place that makes sense.
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