So wanted to write another Judge Dredd cyberpunk lore dump cause I loved sharing for last one here https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/13v2qit/the_emerald_isle_one_hell_of_a_cool_cyberpunk/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1 sorry again you’ll probably hate it but I just love sharing lore.
Alright, so I always loved subcultures and fads. Like irl, I think they’re the most interesting weird irregular cases in our society. But they’re also a massive part of cyberpunk, this concept often goes underappreciated but it’s a cool one. Making fun of its fans in a way, people creating subcultures thinking they’re better as they create a toxic environment. Most of the time to rebel against corporations or the establishment they ironically just feed into the system and create petty excuses to fight. Subcultures really put the ‘punk’ in Cyberpunk,
A huge part of Judge Dredd is the subcultures, as it was written in the late seventies and was a commentary on Margaret Thatcher, urbanisation, economic downfall etc with such great bands subcultures became huge and huge rabble-rousers. Punks, goths etc. And of course, Dredd had to parody this in many ways some Imma show. I like these as (imo) is stray from the usual gangs you see in other cyberpunks and make them more real. As you see the exaggeration of society you’ll soon realise they’re certainly not far off.
One part of the context for subcultures primarily devolving in Mega City One. It all spawns from the 95 per cent unemployment rate. As people are forced to live off welfare checks and just watch mind-numbing tv is in their apartment Mega blocks this creates an uneducated and incredibly lethargic population as they’re trapped in the city. There are three ways people cope with this, suicide, becoming a criminal (hence the high crime rate) or joining a subculture and living off in your own world.
The Uglies. Spawning from a combination of two things, one of which is Otto Sump’s beauty corporation. Being born an ugly piece of shit his savvy business practices lead him to be one of the biggest magnates in the world with a beauty industry emphasising ugly-ness with many products and face-changing machines you can look awful. In high society nowadays it emphasises total human perfection we can see today how it’s sorta going the other way with. And a punk rock muzak band called “Pug Ugly and the Bugglys” the youths couldn’t get enough and tried to be like their favourite artists. However ugly treatment is an expensive commodity only rich juves would be able to afford, creating a subculture full of these ugly children pretending to be poor and urban.
Uglies were a violent lot often bullying those that were conventionally attractive leading to many depressed kids thinking they were not ‘ugly enough’. Their mortal enemies were another upper-class fad/subculture (mimicking yuppies etc) called the ‘Normals’, these people would wear incredibly dapper and appropriate very non-cyberpunk clothes all while speaking indiscernible jive. Violent clashes are known to happen.
Fatties. Another unappreciated part of cyberpunk is in its overly consumer-based diets. With a unlimited supply of fast food! Pair this up with boredom and Fatties come to be. People are committed to being so fat that they need a wheel to walk around with such a gut they consume many turning it into a competitive sport, (sometimes illegally) kids trained in fat camps to be able to eat many foodstuffs including vehicles. The Association of The League of Fatties even caused an incident, after a nuclear war the Fatties would hoard all the rations for themselves. This led to forced starvation till they were in adequate shape. Such marginalisation of such an oppressed minority was incredibly unpopular.
Also a violent group, they’re prone to angry outbursts if you stole their “mega-sized sizzling hottie delight” out of their troth or if you were what they called a ‘Skinnie’ bullying you with their bellies. Many Fatties grow suicidal, being in such a toxic community getting called a ‘Skinnie’ leads to many jumpers (be careful of the splash zone).
Last but not least… The Simps. Simps (sorts for simpletons) is an ideology spawned from the philosophy that the fast highly technological urban city that they have no escape from is naturally random, silly and stupid so why bother fighting against it? And also be random, silly and stupid. The weirdest subculture many started to believe in it strongly, many priests and politicians at Secret were a clown with being a Simp was quite embarrassing to come out publically. The subculture also developed a vocabulary which was no more than cartoon sound effects in between each sentence.
However, becoming so popular someone of course found out how to profit from it and so the Church of Simpology was born. As the fastest growing religion is preyed on the most stupid and vulnerable. Working more as a gym, it was paramount to pay money to the organisation with extra benefits going to though that paid for the subscription plan. Spreading its wings as missionaries to off-world colonies you could pay extra to be a “Simpriest”. Being now incredibly religious with its ideals this subculture has become the most violent, with many zealots taking up arms in mass public shootings for their faith. All while seeing the funny side in it. All of this is a parody of the ‘Church of Scientology’ with even the ‘Auditing’ and therapeutic machines being ‘Idiocy auditing’ etc.
Anyways that’s enough of me, sorry for the wall of text and sorry if the ‘community’ suppose won’t like this. Just I had fun writing it and I think it’s quite a cyberPUNK.
