blog post #1: how orwellian!

hey, everyone. welcome to my Utopias + Dystopias blog. 

if you're a new reader, congrats! how are you? how are you doing? 

if you're a returning reader... tricked you. none of you are returning readers, because this is the first blog post here. i'm shaking my head in disappointment. you fool. (i'm kidding.)

1984 is one of those novels that's always revived in public discourse every few years, because of how pertinent the message is-- and how easily co-opted it can be by different sides. when Trump was elected, and Kellyanne Conway coined the term 'alternative facts,' sales of the book skyrocketed. and alternatively, when Republican senator Josh Hawley had his book deal cancelled after encouraging rioters at the Capitol, he responded by calling the severing of his publishing contract "Orwellian."

so what's really "Orwellian?" what's the closest parallel we have in our modern world? for the purposes of this blog post, i'm going to lay out what i think. for one, the surveillance state depicted in 1984 is kind of close to how we live. we walk around with trackers everyday-- our phones are a big datasink for social media outlets (that, for all intents and purposes, can operate almost as their own individual entity like a government), who cultivate and track the way we live and consume media. for me, it's also arguable that the brutality and absolutionist methods of the Thought Police are similar to the political divides that we find ourselves at nowadays-- people ratting out each other, ostracizing peers based on political beliefs. 

is there anything you think is awfully 'Orwellian' and 1984-ish about how we live now? are we veering towards that society soon, or do you have faith in our regulation? my sister called me a lazy bum this morning and i profanely cursed her out in my head, does that make me a thought criminal?