yeah fair take on the vibe shift. to a lot of younger folks tech isn’t mystic anymore, it’s HVAC. the shiny stuff from old cyberpunk reads like “engineering backlog,” so the romance bleeds out

my point is a bit orthogonal: even if cyberpunk-as-aesthetic ages out, why doesn’t the replacement look like neo-shanghai when the built world clearly does. three boring forces:

canon lock-in. art teams reuse the same visual grammar because it ships on time: rain, stacked kanji, noodle carts, neon. low risk, instantly legible etc etc

incentive gradient. being specific about china is a liability if you want the big market, so productions either go “pan-asia blur” or retreat to retro-japan nostalgia that feels safely fictional

reality tax. the current dystopia is LEDs, QR rails, access gates, payments, logistics. it’s structural, not cinematic. the camera loves neon, spreadsheets and turnstiles not so much

on the korean point, agreed that look is ascendant. it’s globally cool, politically safer, and has a whole export machine behind it. that actually supports the claim: we swap in the aesthetics that are both fashionable and low-friction to sell

so yeah, “tech is normal now” explains the cooling. the essay’s angle is just that economics and politics still decide what tomorrow is allowed to look like on screen, even after the vibe moved on