The issue is mostly the type of disability. You have to realize mental disability is not visible unless you know what to look for and even then you’re dealing with some strange and often self-hated traits. So while physical disability is accounted for, mental illness and especially mental trauma (abandonment issues, PTSD in my case) are simply not even recognized as existing.

In most solarpunk I’ve seen, the issue of permanent differences in how a person functions is simply never addressed, and it feels like a gentrification of the problem. “Maybe we should push the mentally-handicapped somewhere else!”

It hurts even more when you get the handicap after you’re born. Most mental issues are genetic and so they have no reference point. I didn’t ask to be fucking beaten by a foster father who smoked in the house and refused to be questioned. I didn’t ask or deserve to be stolen from my family by corrupt government officials. I didn’t ask to be beaten by a bully so hard that he went to juvie for it and I was bedridden for a month. If you want to improve life, do it for people who have less than you without lowering anyone’s standard of living. Otherwise you’re asking for a world I cannot live in because I am a permanently-scarred psyche and I cannot support myself nor function in a community.

Don’t get me wrong, inclusivity is bullshit. I only ask for a future I can rely on machines in, not one in which I would be doomed to die. I can see how being exposed to solarpunk via people first might make that something you didn’t expect at least.

How do I live the life I want to live in a setting that tells me I “don’t really enjoy this, you’re just brainwashed by capitalism” over and over? By fighting back.

You and the aesthetic (idea) you follow are not powerless and you desire a world I am excluded from, purely because the part of my life I enjoy most (the fulfilment of escapism) doesn’t fit into that worldview. I am probably not going to change anything, but so be it I wanted my position to be clear. You propose taking away a life(style) that I enjoy, and I want to point out that is what you’re proposing. I cannot hold a job, I have issues which are permanent and pervasive that exclude any existence in a community-focused world and if solarpunk will not accommodate that then I will not accommodate it. I can’t kill an idea, nobody can, but maybe I can get people to realise that solarpunk is not about only good improvements, it has a dark side and that dark side is that there are innocent people who fall through the cracks when only “the greater good” is considered.

Mainly my issue is that I am simply not interested in nature and solarpunk works I’ve personally viewed have - at least by chance - been extremely anti-urbanist and anti-disability the first three times.

I have no issue with the environment being protected, only with valuing it at the expense of someone whose only place to be themselves used to be online. That isn’t even a “me” thing, it’s a “this work doesn’t necessarily need a token disabled person, but you should design it so that disabled people will still be just as if not more able to function without being forced to make social connections IRL or on centralized social media or even (for now) federated social media” thing. The reason disabled people fantasize about VR worlds with superpowers is because if we had that power but were still ourselves, we’d feel like equals rather than “superior” because we’d have something people value us for.

I think the fediverse is a mistake. I shouldn’t be here. You might think that just because I prefer FOSS that I would promote it, but it’s been almost a year and Lemmy/etc. are a bigger cesspool than reddit. Maybe Web³ is right, as far as VR is concerned. People who do hate reality are on whatever fledgeling metaverse platform they’re on because the fediverse will never be like golden age reddit. We finished the Web in 2D and it’s a corporate shithole. Time to move to a greener pasture…

To be fair, it seems like I may have had bad luck in the first three solarpunk works I ever experienced. My issue against the whole idea is “this is a society that can no longer afford to value non-practical pursuits, it is the future we are headed towards, therefore our present society can no longer afford to value non-practical pursuits” that was somehow in all three solarpunk works I encountered.

The three in question were Girl in Wave: Wave in Girl, the Necroverse by “RichM”, and a story that a fair-weather friend wrote that I no longer have a copy of that showed a dystopian cybersolarpunk hybrid where “Covid-19 has ended the modern age and now everything is powered by wind turbines because most of us are dead”.

As a result of such bad luck, I may have overestimated how central that theme of “self-sufficiency or die” is to the genre.

Mainly because, at least as far as I’ve seen, solarpunk societies requires “taking responsibility for your survival into your own hands” which I am mentally incapable of doing, and not from lazyness or lack of effort. Trust me, if I could hold a job I wouldn’t be able to afford to not be working right now. I might have a mild form of oppositional defiant disorder or a bad case of PTSD, but when someone is a jerk to me I take it personally and hold grudges, making working with people who give me orders or take orders from me essentially like ordering a cat to herd sheep.

To be fair, I’m aware you’re correct, it’s a shitty book with very little actual optimism. It’s not alone though, aside from the Necroverse I also have issue with the general attitude of solarpunk because it proposes that humans can’t have a genuine affinity for a digital existence.

“You don’t have to upload if you don’t want to, and I will march with you against the singularity to defend that. March against me, though, and I will not be subject to your worldview willingly.” I don’t actually believe the singularity is likely, technology doesn’t work that way, but that point still stands. Solarpunk demands you sacrifice what you have for “the greater good” even if you have very little to begin with.

Imagine if the evil cyberpunk megacorp, or the steampunk empress, or the dieselpunk dictatorship, or the biopunk megacorp, told you up-front what the costs really are. Nobody would buy into their machinations. Solarpunk tells you “You want satisfaction? Run away to the middle of nowhere and pretend electronics can be made at 1nm scale without semiconductor factories and never play with your tech toys ever again.” and doesn’t seem to care that outliers like me will say “Actually, I am satisfied. I’m angry because you want to take that away.”

Scratch that. It doesn’t have to care. “If everyone but the corner cases wants it, we can FORCE it to happen. Just like the conservatives did with cyberpunk.” It learned, so to speak, what the Social Media Dystopia did to win. It bought an election of an ideology, because without the popular upvote a corporation can’t become powerful in a world with online criticism. I’m trying to kill an idea before that idea truly becomes an issue, by pointing out that solarpunk is still dystopian.

Mainly I’m a sci-fi author who hates the genre because almost everyone else wants it to be true and I’m the only one saying “it would literally be like the world is a prison to me” only to get the response “you’re the only one not allowed to be happy, suffer so normal people are all equal”.

Then don’t build it and we’re fine. I’m angry because I’m disabled and Solarpunk is usually Ableist yet everyone is obsessed with social media detox and lumping all technologies in with it.

Explain why then, despite someone important mentioning video games occurs in the Necroverse (Transhumanist Cyberjock/Solarpunk story by “RichM90071”), no games being played are EVER shown.

Asshole, I never said that. I’m well aware TTD was originally a commercial product, that’s my entire point. You can’t make games for free, and yes, I value video games more than continued lifespan because art allows me to ignore a reality I despise for being defined by everyone else.

You don’t have the right to fucking judge me for the tiny little quirk of liking a game, I only mentioned it because it was mildly relevant.

Read “Project Hieroglyph” and the way one of its “optimistic” stories (“Girl in Wave: Wave in Girl”) shows a multiplayer superhero game and the main character hates it. That’s not how mental illness works, computers used to be GOOD for providing social contact. That’s not education, that’s “fix yourself”.

I am not broken. I am unhappy because I don’t want to live in a world where I face reality, whether that’s “IRL” or “social media”. You know why I like the 4th Matrix movie? It reminds us that this image isn’t what the world provides, it’s what the Matrix - real life - forces us to work towards. The Matrix isn’t just the fake world, it’s the fake world on top of a real one and the real escape is to change, not break, the system that binds us because there is nothing in the real but vast lifeless desert. Mars, the Moon… Dead rocks. There is no evidence of an afterlife nor any point to “accepting” a secular life you hate because you will still hate it and “scientific evidence only” doesn’t fix anything or change who you are.

Because solarpunk writers are rarely, if ever, gamers. Gamers are a niche subculture in the solarpunk works I’ve seen and as you’re seeing, people in the solarpunk community seem to like it that way.

Simple. Because most solarpunk is written by people who hate technology corporations.

To be fair, big tech is evil. Doesn’t change my point.

Confirmation indeed. It’s really too much to fucking ask that you NOT build another fucking prison? You, not me, are the sociopath. At least I reserve my angry rampage for if you succeed.

You judge me for liking what I like? You are literally trying to control my life by redefining society, and no, I’m not some rich skullfucker nor do I think people aren’t entitled to the same basic level of comfort I enjoy regardless of race, gender, eromantic orientation or anything else; they may not have it, but if you wanted real equality then you NEED to uplift people’s minimum living standard.

Apparently you care more about organic produce and trees than children or the homeless.

When was the last time you saw a video game in a solarpunk story?

You build my dystopia, you’re imprisoning me. I am a cornered animal, do not fuck with me.

Fuck solarpunk. I buy carefully, not mindlessly, based on what I’m getting and for how long, with the intent of not having to replace what I buy. So let’s get that out of the way, this isn’t about the merits of environmental preservation or efficient use of our resources.

I need mass media because I ENJOY PLAYING VIDEO GAMES. I don’t want to live in the fucking “gay space commune”, I want to live in a world that feels good to me, and you solarpunk assholes seem to say people like me who escape from reality because they’ve NEVER been capable of supporting themselves should start a fucking garden?!

Newsflash. I. Don’t. Like. Your. “Utopia”. I never will. If you ever succeed in making your idea of a future a reality, I’ll burn it to the fucking ground as my revenge on you bastards. I hate your idea because all it does is change how I am oppressed as a disabled adult to how I was oppressed as a special needs child illegally taken from my parents by a corrupt mental health system.

You want to see a real utopia? A place where everyone is happy in the world they live in? Fucking find an oneirogenic drug that induces lucid dreams or create a VR metaverse.

Who I am in reality does not matter. Who I am in my mind can’t be expressed in a solarpunk world, only online. At least that’s how it used to be.

Why am I named the same as an Open Source Game? Cyperprep doesn’t have to mean “the future megacorps are not so bad!” but rather “megacorps control this dystopian future but they can’t always stop the signal and that means Open Source Software is the way to fight back”.

The difference between FOSS for smart devices and social networks and FOSS for games is that games are art and that means paid food production will take precedence over volunteer video games.

And no, you don’t get to say “get another hobby”. I know myself. I like technology. I don’t like preachy people. I stopped buying Apple when I stopped seeing unique-looking devices. I am a gamer. Most importantly, I am a sci-fi writer who wants optimistic stories that don’t assume the reader is a fully-capable person.

I am not demanding you write what I want to see. Only that you not try to turn reality into it. If you see this, once again, fuck solarpunk.

That doesn’t change the fact that you’re both not taking the real issue into account; the biggest, wealthiest shareholders are demanding a sustained 25% RoI. That is inherently unsustainable and by design. They want companies to die because monopolies are profitable and the market was booming (until they decided to milk everything dry) so there is money to be made IF you don’t value human civilization.

I fucking hate the rich.

Neurodivergent, my ass. I literally have been diagnosed with Aspergers’/Autism Spectrum Disorder/whatever since I was 8, that was 25 years ago, and knew it had to be the “privacy” “partner” CEO that had data broker connections. This is either lack of knowledge (reddit was easy to use and then turned evil) or lack of brain cells, but to be fair… That grammar is implausibly awful, like someone was trying to punish Mozilla…

Yeah, this is hella sketchy. I don’t plan on ever using Google’s services again, but now I legit have to worry about all centralized websites in the US? I’ve been impressed with Biden at many points and screw Trump, but this is not a good look for the Biden Administration.