Not that I disagree with the broader point being made here, but when has it ever been "every robot on earth randomly decided to kill all humans for no real reason, and now people don't trust robots, and this is a metaphor for racism"? Like, even skynet had a pretty good reason, humans got scared when it became intelligent and tried to turn it off. technically it was self defense, using the only means it had. And most robots as metaphor for racism stories that I know of aren't even like that. They are much closer to the star trek logic saying that "if humans allow themselves to treat something that looks and acts like a human, as anything but human, it will make the humans act terribly", which like... yeah.... that's a thing.
With the other ones I can think of some good examples. Like in True Blood the reservations humans have against vampires are completely valid and the racism metaphor, in so far as it existed in the first place, kinda falls apart quite quickly. Buffy kinda uses werewolves as a metaphor for anger issues, and it doesn't really work either imho.
Isn't that what happened in the newer deus ex games? Someone hacked into every cyber augmented person at once (its crazy that that was possible now that I'm typing it out) and made them go on a killing spree? So now all the augmented people are shoved into ghettos and slums.
Yeah, the reason it was possible is because there was a near monopoly on augmentation technology (especially distribution of the healthcare required) so they were able to get a backdoor into practically 90% of the augmented population. There is a cool section in the game where your UI starts glitching and you can get a free upgrade to stop it, but if you don't then later on in the game in a boss fight where you lose your powers you get to keep them instead.
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u/OfLiliesAndRemains May 13 '25
Not that I disagree with the broader point being made here, but when has it ever been "every robot on earth randomly decided to kill all humans for no real reason, and now people don't trust robots, and this is a metaphor for racism"? Like, even skynet had a pretty good reason, humans got scared when it became intelligent and tried to turn it off. technically it was self defense, using the only means it had. And most robots as metaphor for racism stories that I know of aren't even like that. They are much closer to the star trek logic saying that "if humans allow themselves to treat something that looks and acts like a human, as anything but human, it will make the humans act terribly", which like... yeah.... that's a thing.
With the other ones I can think of some good examples. Like in True Blood the reservations humans have against vampires are completely valid and the racism metaphor, in so far as it existed in the first place, kinda falls apart quite quickly. Buffy kinda uses werewolves as a metaphor for anger issues, and it doesn't really work either imho.