So over the course of many months, I have been doing some soul searching, and am trying to come up with a better way to serve those that consume my content. I know I haven’t been spectacular about updating this blog, nor the other written content that I had intended to pump out this year. Ironic, considering COVID-19 kept most people stuck in their homes, I know, but as an “essential worker”, I didn’t haven’t had down time.
As 2020 fades from “waking nightmare” into “awful memory”, and we watch to see if our governments will indeed keep their promises to us with the advent of the vaccine, I have come to realize that I’m not optimistic. Governments rarely give up power they have managed to claim, and this age of soft martial law, rule by executive edict, increasing censorship, and monitoring by Megacorporations that would make the writers of Shadowrun novels stare in awe, it came to my attention that we are now living in a Cyberpunk Dystopia.
Dystopia were once the realm of novels; primarily written by the likes of George Orwell, HG Wells, Ayn Rand, and the plethora of people that write for the Warhammer 40K universe. Now it has come to real life. We are ruled by a technocratic and oligarchic elite; our lives managed by an aristocratic ruling class that issues rules for us, but flaunts them in our faces. We are monitored 24/7 by the very tools we use to make our lives easier, and that data is used in order to cater to our every desire and need, serving ads to us, providing us with the products we want, keeping us happy while the Constitution is slowly eroded into meaninglessness.
This week, I started production of the Julien McBain Show, a podcast dedicated to navigating this Cyberpunk Dystopia. With it, I will help hold a torch up against the darkness. Furthermore, I will be adding improvements to this site, increasing the amount of content (I swear I’ll make it happen this time), and have plans to institute a membership program on this site, to eventually phase out my Patreon (which has a history of censorship).
I will be increasing the amount of work I do and start providing exclusive content to my members by the end of 2021, which I plan to include extra videos for subscribers. I will roll out exclusive content to Patreon in early 2021, then transition them to this site as I figure out how this site works more in-depth.
So I want to thank you for joining me on this journey. The Cyberpunk Dystopia is upon us, so we must pick up a torch and navigate it as best we can. I will continue to be a voice, and push back against the excesses of those that would rule us, and remind them that in Cyberpunk, underneath the censorship, and the oppression, there is a lawless subculture ready to challenge their status quo.
McBain Manor 