Grabbing a comment I made 3 years ago, it still holds up pretty well

Imagining a better future is an inherently revolutionary endeavor. It’s step 1 of convincing society to revolt.

Roddenberry’s Star Trek, while problematic and sexist, was a vision of a better future for humanity. Our late capitalist overlords don’t like this. They love to make dystopian films about climate hellscapes, because it’s a form of manufacturing consent for the future they want. They want to make our society into a place where all we do is relive nostalgia for a past that never existed, rather than built a brighter future for humanity. Facebook Meta is following this path already, launching a few years after Ready Player One. That movie pretends it’s a dystopia, but what they really want you to think is “isn’t all this tech cool?” to prep you to consume more Facebook garbage.