1976 vs 2026: When Dystopia Starts Looking Cozy

When elites stopped governing and started outlasting

In 1976, the film Network imagined a future that horrified audiences.

A world run by corporations.
A world without nations, only markets.
A world where people existed to consume, work, and comply.
A world where every human need was commodified, pacified, and optimized.

It was meant to feel obscene.

One vast and ecumenical holding company… all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

That was the nightmare.

And yet—nearly fifty years later—it sounds almost… gentle.

That is not because Network was wrong.
It’s because our reference point has shifted.

I. Universal Control

The dystopia of the 1970s assumed something important:

People still mattered.

Not morally — but economically.

They were necessary as workers.
Necessary as consumers.
Necessary as political subjects.
Necessary as market participants.

The system wanted total control — but it wanted everyone inside it.

Everyone fed.
Everyone pacified.
Everyone entertained.
Everyone monitored.
Everyone needed.

It was oppressive — but it was inclusive.

That assumption is doing more work than we usually notice.

II. Dependency as Constraint

People often compare modern techno-authoritarianism to feudalism.

But even feudalism had limits.

Serfs were exploited, bound, and disposable — but only up to a point. They were still the foundation of the economy. They produced food. They maintained land. They generated wealth.

Which meant they had to be kept alive.

Not respected.
Not free.
But functional.

Their suffering had an upper bound.

Not out of kindness —
but out of dependency.

Power had a structural reason not to destroy its own base.

What we are approaching now is different.

A system where large parts of the population are no longer necessary as workers, no longer needed as consumers, no longer politically relevant.

Not exploited — but surplus.
Not oppressed — but irrelevant.

Feudalism needed its serfs.

This system doesn’t.

And that changes everything.

III. Selective Survival

The emerging fantasies of the 2020s no longer assume a universal system.

They assume fragmentation.

Enclaves.
Private governance.
Charter cities.
Fortress wealth.
Exit strategies.
Algorithmic sorting.
Privatized security.

The new dream is not:

“We will manage everyone.”

It is:

“We will outlive everyone.”

This is the shift.

Not from democracy to authoritarianism —
but from inclusion to disposability.

And once that shift happens, the rest follows.

IV. The Soft Version

Pop culture still imagines dystopia with a conscience.

Fallout gave us Vault-Tec: a monstrous corporation that exploited catastrophe, ran human experiments, lied to the public, and treated people as data.

But even Vault-Tec pretended to save people.

It built vaults.
It offered shelter.
It sold a narrative of collective survival.

That already felt obscene.

Now it feels almost quaint.

Today’s elite fantasies don’t include vaults for everyone.
They include exit strategies for a few.

Not shelter, but insulation.
Not rescue, but selection.
Not survival, but survivability.

Vault-Tec was evil because it lied.

The new horror is that the lie has become unnecessary.

V. Managed Breakdown

The old dystopia valued stability.

Stability meant profits.
Stability meant predictability.
Stability meant peace.

The new one doesn’t.

It treats instability as a resource.

Crisis becomes leverage.
Collapse becomes opportunity.
Disruption becomes purification.

This is why surveillance capitalism and companies like Palantir are not about preventing collapse.

Palantir doesn’t exist to stop crises. It exists to manage them.

Not solving causes —
but optimizing response.

Not reducing suffering —
but preempting resistance.

Not building legitimacy —
but maintaining compliance.

This is not governance.

It is counterinsurgency.

And counterinsurgency always assumes something:
that instability is permanent.

VI. The Architects

This shift isn’t accidental.

It is being actively imagined.

Not by governments, not by voters, not by societies —
but by a specific class of people who no longer believe in mass society at all.

They don’t imagine a future with everyone inside.

They imagine a future where they are insulated from everyone else.

They treat institutions like toys.
They treat democracy like a bug.
They treat collapse like a market condition.

Trump is not the architect of this worldview.

He is a blunt instrument.

A chaos amplifier.
A legitimacy eroder.
A useful asset.

He doesn’t design the systems.
He just smashes the constraints.

That makes him valuable.

VII. From Ownership to Irrelevance

The old dystopias feared universal control.

The new one doesn’t bother.

It is perfectly comfortable with the idea that most people will simply not matter.

That’s the real shift.

Not from democracy to authoritarianism,
but from participation to disposability.

Not oppression,
but abandonment.

VIII. Relativity

Dystopias don’t age badly.

They age gently.

Not because they were wrong —
but because reality kept moving.

What once felt unbearable
now feels almost humane.

What once felt unthinkable
now feels familiar.

Yesterday’s horror becomes today’s “at least.”

Not because things improved —
but because our reference point collapsed.

That’s how normalization works.

Not with arguments.
Not with announcements.
But with quiet shifts in what feels acceptable.

The unimaginable doesn’t arrive as an event.
It arrives as the frame.

Closing

In the past, dystopias tried to anticipate the future.

They exaggerated trends.
They stretched trajectories.
They asked: If this continues, where does it lead?

And sometimes, uncomfortably often, they were right.
Not in the details — but in the trajectory.

What feels different now is that our old dystopias no longer feel extreme.

They feel outdated.

Not because reality turned out better —
but because it became colder.

We no longer recognize ourselves in the futures we once feared.

Not because they were wrong,
but because they assumed something we no longer do:

That everyone would still belong.

In 1976, we feared a world
where everyone was owned.

In 2026, we are approaching a world
where most people are simply irrelevant.

And that’s how you know something fundamental has shifted.