Shamelessly hijacking this story to recommend The Private Eye digital comic [0]. Set in a future where everyone has normalised the wearing of masks in public to preserve their anonymity. The protagonist refuses to get a driving license because he wouldn't want a photo of himself in a database.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Eye

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autoexec 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Thanks for that! Vaughan is great. It's funny that it's a digital release considering the topic. That small sense of unease I feel each time I feed my personal and credit card data into yet another website should only enhance the experience.

	▲	embedding-shape 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Slightly bad example as it seems the company did "one of the first DRM-free, pay what you want comics", going to the website you can enter 0 and download without giving any other details (besides everything else you leak on the web): http://panelsyndicate.com/comics/tpeye

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dayvid 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ever since Covid, people are obscuring their faces in public more often. I especially see gig workers wearing balaclavas. Partially for sun and wind protection, but potentially for anonymity

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burningChrome 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would also add the Netflix movie "Anon" which came out in 2018:

In the near future, humanity lives in a technologically advanced, dystopian society. The government requires that everyone receive an ocular implant that records everything they see. The implant provides an augmented-reality head-up display to the user with information about anyone and anything they may see, as well as recording the user's view. Investigations into crimes amount to detectives reviewing video and assessing whether an alleged perpetrator is innocent or guilty.

Sal Friedland, a detective with the metropolitan police force, crosses paths with a young woman who appears to trigger a glitch in his ocular implant, as no data about her is retrieved. When he reviews his own record of that day, he finds that every single frame of her has been mysteriously deleted. At work, Sal is handed several homicide cases where the victims' own visual records of their deaths are replaced with the killer's point of view, thus hiding the killer's identity. At another murder scene, Sal chases the apparent killer only to nearly be killed when they hack his implant and change what he sees in real time.

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GinsengJar 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You got any other comics to recommend in this style/genre? Cyberpunk, dystopia, etc

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autoexec 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Transmetropolitan was pretty good.

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gopher_space 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The subtext of that comic felt a bit like “what if Hunter Thompson was mostly sober?”

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xoxxala 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I cannot recommend Transmetropolitan enough. It should be required reading.

	▲	autoexec 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Considering how long ago it was written it's both surprising and unfortunate how relevant it is to where we are now

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themafia 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> refuses to get a driving license because he wouldn't want a photo of himself in a database.

I refuse to get a "RealID" for nearly the same reasons.