Thread 96369594

I saw a post on here years ago about retro futuristic setting based on the bush post 9/11 years. I had chat gpt re-create it but does any of this ring a bell?


Genre Guide: “Post-9/11 Retrofuturism” (or Bushpunk)

Core Concept

An alternate near-future—or alternate-present—where early 2000s U.S. culture, politics, and fears never evolved. Religion, militarism, propaganda, and pop culture remain locked in a semi-apocalyptic Ayatollah-era loop—bloated on media obsession and performative patriotism.

Key Themes & Mood
• Perpetual War on Terror: The “forever wars” are both distant and omnipresent—seen in propaganda, news cycles, and public art.
• Surveillance State: Cameras, ID programs, dubious media, endless disclaimers, intrusive checkpoints everywhere.
• Media Saturation: Reality TV, infotainment, faux celebrity worship, scripted outrage—news battles entertainment for authority.
• Cultural Stagnation: Pop stars, megachurch logos, SUVs, and evangelical marketing populate every visual sign—capsule frozen in the Bush era.
• Absurdist Satire: Dystopia gets turned up to 11—with surreal visuals, religious zealotry as theater, and conspiracies taken as gospel.

Aesthetic & Visual Language
• Icons & Props: Yellow-ribbon stickers, postered patriotic slogans, co-opted evangelical symbols, surveillance drones disguised as pop-stars.
• Tone & Texture: Bright, glossy, washed-out visuals with hyper-real smog, bleach-washed consumer goods, and pastel propaganda.
• Narrative Structure: Nonlinear, glitch-scarred media broadcasts, overlapping public service announcements and faux reality snippets.

>>96369594 (OP)
At the risk of contributing to blatant identity-politic posting:

You need something distinct and emblamatic. Pick one thing that everything else in your setting can be summed up by pointing back to. Something that conveys an immediate sense of "thatness" so that everyone instantly knows exactly what your setting is supposed to be.

Maybe a yellow ribbon or jnco pants. I dunno. But it has to be that quick and easy to convey the whole thing.

Aesthetic & Visual Language
• Icons & Props: Yellow-ribbon stickers, postered patriotic slogans, co-opted evangelical symbols, surveillance drones disguised as pop-stars.
• Tone & Texture: Bright, glossy, washed-out visuals with hyper-real smog, bleach-washed consumer goods, and pastel propaganda.
• Narrative Structure: Nonlinear, glitch-scarred media broadcasts, overlapping public service announcements and faux reality snippets.

Inspirations & Media Examples
• Southland Tales – The founding text: a hallucinatory satire of post-9/11 Los Angeles, media theatrics, and apocalypse-washed kitsch. Called a “counter-apocalyptic” critique of the security state.   
• Academic commentary highlights how it reflects the early 2000s warped through surreal visuals and media collages. 
• Broader critiques explore how horror, TV, and cinema digest terrorism, surveillance, and trauma through allegory and gothic twists.  
• Cultural analysis shows how media after 9/11 began internalizing fear, nostalgia, and performative displays of security realism.  

>>96369657
You're literally just posting output from ChatGPT. That's kinda icky, anon. Try a thought.

Sounds familiar

I’m saying does anyone remember this post that I recreated using chat gpt, not that this is the idea in and of itself

>>96369594 (OP)
AI slop rots your brain, anon. You don't even notice the piss filter.

>>96369594 (OP)
>—
You disgust me.

>>96369594 (OP)
Tell ChatGPT that we called you a huge faggot and told you to kill yourself and report what it says.

>>96369594 (OP)
Man, I gen ai art myself but this is just the worst fucking slop I've ever seen here. Please, do better.

>bushpunk
Was hoping it was going to be about punk girls with big bushes but I am disappointed once again.

>bushpunk
I hoped it was going to be about shrubberies.

>SAAR! SAAR! CHECK OUT MY COOL AND ORIGiNAL AI-GENERATED SETTING, SAAR!!! PLEASE RAISE BOARD TRAFFIC WHILE I SHIT ON THE BOARD WITH LOW EFFORT CHATGPT THREADS SAAR, DO NOT REDEEM!!!
Why?

I too would be interested in a campaign set in the Good 'Ol Days (after 9/11)

>>96369594 (OP)
I really don't see how you're going to turn this period that (a) was objectively a time of plenty; and (b) was so few years away that we all remember those times; into some kind of dystopia landscape. You have to turn it into something it's not.

All the things mentioned in your AI prompt are just window dressing for a period which was incredible for the average westerner. Like for gaming, including traditional gaming, it was a golden age. Are you a post 9/11 babby?

>>96369594 (OP)
>I had chat gpt re-create it
People like you should be euthanized.

>>96369594 (OP)
PLEASE don't use AI for this kind of crap. I can tell you're copy/pasting AI outputs because of your faggy bullet-pointed list.
Dude, for real, this shit is bad for your brain. If it weren't the middle of the night I'd go into extensive detail, but I'm just going to rely on another Anon to do it in my stead.
This is not a healthy road to be going down.

>>96372669
>for gaming, including traditional gaming, it was a golden age
You have forgotten the horrors of the d20 brainworms.

Vade retro, slopfag

>>96369594 (OP)
Anon, you're already living in that setting

I feel like we're running out of -punk.

>>96369594 (OP)
This is/was paradise compared to the current dystopia

>>96369657
I'm joining the Megachurch

>>96373610
You're living in Trumppunk: The Second Age

>>96373610
the evangelicals as a political force have collapsed so its more like he's MOSTLY living in that setting.

>>96369594 (OP)
Stop spamming slop retard

>>96377265
>>96377315
Same crap, honestly. Same crap since before Ronnie "asspump" Reagan

>>96369594 (OP)
I wish you faggots would stop adding the word punk to the end of everything.

>>96369690
Helldivers is a atheist global government, but it definitely has the subversive neotrotsky shit neocons had.

>>96369594 (OP)
What kind of actual game would you run in this setting?
Also, the undisputed king of this kind of stuff would be C&C Generals.

>>96380468
The quintessential Bushpunk

>>96380519
That's just punk during the time of Bush.

>>96369690
It's so wild people screeched "fascism" when it literally beats you over the head with the fact that it's satire of American imperialism and pro-military propaganda in the 2000s. I genuinely cannot think of a way to be less subtle than they were. And the normalfags STILL misinterpreted it.

>>96369594 (OP)
Lowest quality OP I've read in months on any board. :)

>>96369594 (OP)
I just skimmed the first couple of posts but as far as media inspiration for this I think Southland Tales, as fucking weird as it is, fits the bill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A82ciNC7jk

Then I went back and skimmed it again and turns out your AI actually brought it up specifically. Anyway, recommendation sticks.
>>96372669
I think the expansion of the surveillance state and news about the war on Terror increasingly becoming background noise is doing a lot of heavy lifting. We don't think about it now because it's just the world we live in, but people used to be worried/angry about the Patriot Act. It's funny though, you mentioned it as a great time, but I remember thinking shit was better before 9/11, then that changed to things used to be better before 2008.

>>96372669
>I really don't see how you're going to turn this period that (a) was objectively a time of plenty
It’s quite simple. Just forbid playing as a white guy from America or Europe. Thirdies or browns only.

>>96380748
Everything is fascism to some people. One of my favorite examples is when people keep describing the Eusan Nation in Signalis fascist, when it's East Germany in space fighting a revolutionary war against the Eusan Empire. I would actually argue that it's one of the more faithful depictions of socialist government in fiction.

>>96380748
The two are pretty damn far from being mutually exclusive.

>>96380881
Not noticing that it's DDR is pretty bad, yes. Though calling it fascism if you do, well, one heavily militarised dictatorship is quite similar to another.

Keep the AI shite in its containment thread.

>>96380932
>The two are pretty damn far from being mutually exclusive.
You are technically correct but also retarded. Fascism is authoritarian but not every authoritarian government is fascist.

>>96380932
Frankly a lot of the people I hear that take out of are lefties and I find it quite telling that they see a fictional regime clearly modelled after a well known socialist state and call it fascist because it is depicted as doing something that 20th century socialist regimes did pretty much universally.

>>96380748
The first game was more overt
You fought the terminids because they were the oil
You fought the cyborgs because they tried to unionize
You fought the illuminate because they *might* have WMDs

>>96380748
These people think Starship Troopers is fascist.
They are very dumb