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Comment by aspenmayer

Considering how the former leader of Wagner countermanded orders from above and was recalled, as well as Wagner’s usage of press-ganged convicts straight out of gulags, the unit was fairly irregular compared to the Russian military proper. Wagner’s other activities such as natural resource diversion from their legitimate owner/lessor seems to firmly put the organization proper in cyberpunk territory.

Cyberpunk as a concept is fairly subjective and subject to interpretation. Perhaps your conception of cyberpunk is more exclusive and prescriptive than others’? I wouldn’t interpret a difference of opinion about the tropes or ethos of cyberpunk in a normative way.

Just because folks see cyberpunk aspects in society or literature that you do not is not a contradiction of your own perceptions. It might be a case of prescriptivism vs descriptivism.

Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art, or both (or neither)? You seem to be saying that cyberpunk is only a literary genre, which is somewhat limiting the discussion when so many cyberpunk works have been adapted to other media, which then inspires other works which were never in written form to begin with. To limit your own discussion to written works is your prerogative, but it seems a needlessly narrow scope for the discussion of others who don’t share your view.

To say that we’re wasting our own time is to discount the fact that others are participating in the discussion in good faith for their own reasons. HN writ large isn’t a means to an end, HN and the individuals of HN are ends unto themselves.

parent aspenmayer 3 months ago

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