Everything Is Fine: Mass Media in Neo Vegas

With the balkanization of the internet, the heritors of the former United States of America were able to carefully control what information went into and out of their corporate domains. While the corps themselves were multinational, it was in their best interests to cultivate variable viewpoints on reality, rather than letting individuals determine it for themselves. Chief among these manipulators of perception and reality, ResTech has had the market cornered on spinning the masses exactly the way they want them for decades. The average citizen in Neo Vegas knows exactly what the corps want them to know about life in the Cascadian Accord, and a citizen of Lower Angeles has had their idea of what Neo Vegas is precisely crafted for them by a ResTech subsidiary that provides news, radio shows and VRXPs to deliver that exact viewpoint.   Within each major corporate zone, teams of spin doctors, analysts and PR executives analyze incoming memes, news stories and trends to determine the best way to deliver this to their markets… if they choose to deliver it at all. A mass shooting could be spun as a rebellious stand against Company X’s aggressive market overreach if Company Y is willing to sponsor the spin, for example, while the successes of a neighbouring metroplex should be downplayed or even suppressed entirely. As far as the consumers are concerned in each corporate zone, life is as good as it’s ever going to get, and every other area is a violent hellhole riddled with even worse poverty and crime.   This is how the world works… unless, of course, the corporations decide to make some maneuvers of their own. If extra labour is needed one could, for example, start spreading rumours about bountiful opportunities in a nearby metroplex, prompting the lower classes to look at moving there of their own accord (and expense!) Things may not necessarily be better, but now the spreadsheets look much more balanced and all it took was some targeted ads.   But, inevitably, reality does creep its way in, which is why the media is so good at offering a small galaxy of mind-numbing entertainment to soothe and pacify. The advent of VRXP would’ve killed off the movie and TV industry completely if the hazardous side-effects of prolonged exposure to “perfect” sims wasn’t so devastating, forcing the designers of the XPs to introduce enough uncanniness to ensure a VRXP could never be mistaken for the real thing. Nevertheless, the popularity of VR persists; when the weight of the worlds starts to fall squarely on your shoulders, its never been cheaper to come home, plug in and drop into another world, even if you know in your heart that it’s a cheap facsimile.   But for those who seek the real real, you’ll have to dig. Independent journalism died a long time ago, but there are still seekers out there trying to broadcast their unfiltered version of events to the masses, without corporate sponsorships (and more importantly, without corporate censorship.) You can find them on street corners and night markets, but the easiest place to find an unfiltered look at the world is on the Black Net, where no one is there to adjudicate what should and should not be known.