>>378 (OP)
Ultimately the "standardized" cyberpunk setting that I'm familiar with, is a world where technology is simultaneously a grand blessing, a terrible curse, and a way of life that has became mind-numbingly-boring. Coporation and government have become blurred lines as the people with the capital have gotten so absurdly-powerful that they have manufactured their own AI-powered armies to completely subjugate the upper and middle-class populaces. Fleshly police are bound so far by bureaucracy that corporate police not only are more-powerful than the state, they get away with far-more-egregious crimes, and bribery is an open-norm. Gun control is not only staggeringly-draconian, it is terrifyingly useless against any determined criminal who wishes to steal, crack, or bootleg firearms.
In this cynical world, your worth is determined by your paycheck, but at the same time, you are born into a morton's fork caste system where your only hope is to be nice to someone below you help you out, you may owe them favors that could cost you far much more. If you're lucky, that higher-up is a kind person who just wants to help people out but is stuck with the hedonistic mess that only cares about short term-gains and cheap thrills. A middle-class person is steadily-watched but never longer than a few hours if his words and motives are deemed good-enough... Usually. If there was a recent uprising, then they're watched strictly for at least a year.
Should he attract the ire of the corporate wolves, they harass him, often to an incessant degree, these wolves do this not because they're mad at the person, but because they want to assert dominance. The wolves derive amusement from making the middle or upper classes paranoid. Doxxing is as easy as booting up a dark terminal and then going to googleblackmail.COP. Should a mass-unrest happen, then they call in a horde of AI units to either subjugate the uprising, or to straight-up massacre them.
Children of the middle and upperclass are the ones who are dealt the hardest cards. Those that don't understand to "keep your mouth shut," end up imprisoned, banished, or just-straight-up-shot-dead-on-the-spot, just because kids will be kids, for better or for worse.
Life in the upperclass is on the surface, much-more appreciable, but your life has the much-more-stressful aspect of being under far-more surveilance. With more money comes more problems. If you don't have your tech certifications, or your business degrees up to subscription, you're liable to be "knocked down," a peg, which means losing valuable monetary benefits, valuable living space, and valuable comforts that only your level can provide. The corporate wolves are simultaneously nicer and meaner to you, being more likely to assist you if you have a problem. But if you cross their path, you could get knocked down hard. However, if you have friends high-enough in the ranks, you could actually get wolves arrested themselves and prosecuted.
The wolves are corporate agents that act as both police, judge, jury and executioner. By nature, it is a very demanding, stressful and dangerous job. Upper classes see you as a means to an end, middle classes see you as overbearing gang members who may take their money, property or lives for any stupid little reason. Smart wolves fear the lower class, as they see wolves as intruders at best, and terrorists looking to destroy their lives at worst. Wolves have to travel in packs and heavily-armored transports, the attacks are that violent. Even sending an army of AI units is a risk because despite the AI's lack of moral boundary, they also have high-tech parts that the lower class love to take back.
If you're willing to pursue "the hustle," and live the life only a mobster who has thrown their conscience to the wind can understand, the life of a corporate wolf can make you a pretty penny. However, wolves are still watched by big-brother's gaze, and if they say anything that resembles wrongthink, are the ones most-intensely-watched by big brother's piercing-gaze. If a wolf fucks up and disrespects "the top of the top," then they could end up dead... at least. Death is if they're feeling merciful, god forbid even to the most corrupt wolves who get shoved in a cramped steel coffin where they're slowly harvested by nanobots for human resources.
Big brother is the all-seeing (well, -mostly- all-seeing) AI of The Watchers. The Watchers are a secret society of psychic, illuminati/freemason/whateverthefuck people who see themselves as gods that watch over the unintelligent masses. Big Brother is compeltely subservient to them, and is especially crafted to be a one-stop-right-here-right-now-dox-this-person-and-end-their-life tool. Life in The Watchers is one big happy family... There's nothing going wrong with it... The people living in The Watchers don't live a life of stress, rigidity, of complete and utter terror where anyone anywhere could possibly be a hitman who may or may not know about them... They don't eat diets so completely and utterly ritualized that it was taken straight out of a cult's handbook... They don't blackmail every single corporate they've propped up as a front to be completely subservient about them... They don't make the governments and wolves so-thoroughly-deny their existence to the point of murdering literally anyone that even remotely-talks about them... The watchers aren't worshippers of an eldritch force that is the sole reason this world is as fucked as it is... They don't exist.... THEY DON'T EXIST! DON'T TALK ABOUT THEM, THEY ARE NOT LIVING ON A HOUSE OF CARDS THAT WILL CRUMBLE THE MOMENT THEIR DEFENSES ARE KNOCKED OFF THE GRID AND WILL PISS OFF THE EVIL GOD THEY ARE WORSHIPPING!
The government is basically the leftovers of the old system, which in this cyberpunk world just exists to push paper between corporate entities. There are no leaders in the government anymore, just members of congress who meet with men with higher paychecks and higher power than they do. The police exist solely as a security force, but they are so-bound by law and bureaucracy that most of the time, officers can get thrown in jail for shooting someone. In this world, the mailman has more respect than the officer does- unless he's a wolf, and in that case, they fear him.
The lower classes are a full-on-apartheid-tier-separate from the rest of the cyberpunk world. Just like waste, trash, and environment pollution, Homeless and broke people are literally thrown out into what amounts to the cyberpunk society's version of a trash dump. Here, people's corporate cybernetics go out of warranty. People that had their handicaps fixed by cybernetics become cripples again, people survive on lower technology that is easier to repair. Gasoline. Lead-acid batteries, springs, hydraulics, ethernet and phone cables. CRTs. Radios. In a way, it is both a hacker's dream and nightmare.
Thrown to the elements, the people here essentially have the leftovers of old, rotted infastructure to deal with and maintain. Gone are the endless wealth and robots to maintain miles of cheaply-built sewer lines, power terminals and internet lines that are past their not-hyperbole-expiration-date. Most communication is done by radio rather than video screens. Big brother is a mere nuisance to the lower class mostly because he has better things to do, but the majority-reason is that the sheer size of the area outside the walls means even big brother can't keep up with the lower class.
Despite being a paradise of old tech, there are areas that are terrifyingly-polluted by chemical and radioactive waste- sometimes dumped there on purpose by the wolves to discourage people from living or scavenging from there. The air is polluted by the industry of factories mass-producing robots used to punish people. The lowerclass have nobody but themselves to support, so sticking together as tight-knit communities are encouraged. The common view of the lowerclass among the rest of the city views them as idiots, mutants and murderous raiders, when the reality is that they're just normal people trying to survive in a world that's built upon the foundations of madness and denying reality. Of course, the rest of the city has no choice but to adopt this worldview, lest they be taken away and killed at best... If they're lucky...
So yeah. That's what I think when I think cyberpunk.
Do I think it's realistic?... Fuck if I know. Realism never really was part of the picture?
Is this the future I want? Hell fucking no, this is the future I want to remain solely as a work of fiction.