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Dystopian Digest, Vol. 1
This is the first edition of Dystopian Digest.
I’ve had thoughts about creating this newsletter for about a decade, believe it or not.
It’s not difficult to see why the idea has evolved and edified in my mind thanks to paradigm-shifting global events and trends like the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of AI, the fact that someone like Donald Trump is president, etc.
Of course, I’ve thought about dystopia for decades now, pretty much ever since my school required me to read The Giver, which eventually led to exploring giants in the space (Orwell, Huxley, Dick), or watching movies like 12 Monkeys and Gattaca. There is certainly a chance I would be writing about things like this even if the world wasn’t changing so rapidly.
I’m thankful to have parents who more or less didn’t care what I watched, as long as sex wasn’t involved (anyone with an Indian mother might be familiar with her reaching over to cover your eyes as soon as the plot hinted towards anything resembling a sex scene, which certainly didn’t stop me from trying to peep through her fingers) — which also meant I was able to see Waterworld at 9 years old — which was dystopian not only because of the plot/content, but because it was such a terrible movie for being the most expensive movie in the world at the time.
