I feel like the latter is pretty unique to cyberpunk. The powerful, possibly technologicaly immortal CEO controlling a megacorp is not a whole lot different than fuedalism.
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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Cyberpunk
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What is Cyberpunk?
Cyberpunk is a science-fiction sub-genre dealing with the integration of society and technology in dystopian settings. Often referred to as “low-life and high tech,” Cyberpunk stories deal with outsiders (punks) who fight against the oppressors in society (usually mega corporations that control everything) via technological means (cyber). If the punks aren’t actively fighting against a megacorp, they’re still dealing with living in a world completely dependent on high technology.
Cyberpunk characteristics include:
- Dystopian city setting where mega-corporations rule
- Full integration of technology into society, featuring cybernetic implants
- Outsider protagonists (punks) who often are very familiar with the technology around them
- Hard boiled detective and film noir vibes and influence
- Themes dabbling in trans-humanism, existentialism, and what it means to be human.
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That's a good point. An evil CEO can appear in various different genres but a megacorp so large nothing can stop it is pretty unique to the cyberpunk genre. That doesn't mean one is more evil or heartless then the other, but one is more uniquely cyberpunk than the other.
Also It's the board that have the real control the CEO is just the front man or the fall guy depending on what is needed.
I think in proper cyberpunk, no individual is able to meaningfully change the system/improve world circumstances on their own, including a CEO of a gigantic megacorp. So a CEO can make things worse with their megacorp, but they can't make them better.
Cory Doctorow had something relevant to this in one of his blog posts a while ago, but I can't recall if he was quoting someone else. The gist of it was about how corporations already exist as the uncaring, unfeeling, immortal tyrants that everyone is afraid AI will eventually become, and humans (including CEOs) are insignificant gut flora who survive by helping their hosts consume the world's resources. I'll add a link later if I have time/remember.
To answer the question, it's the second one and we are currently living in that dystopia.
I'll also look for that link. Sounds interesting. First to find it wins.
This is me snowballing... The CEO is just another slave to the megacorporation, with no power to even fire themself. Their work day is meticulously planned out, micromanaged, and any misstep severely punished. Whether it's investors, emergent AI, or whatever horror in control of the corporation behind the scenes, the CEO is only managing to play their role as a figurehead through illegal stimulants while covertly sending out pleas for help. They probably have a (subdermal) implant or other device on them which would kill them if they tried to leave on their own or broke the rules set upon them. Meanwhile the actual owners of the company are far away, faceless, and too big to bring down easily. They would not miss the CEO, but gumming up the works of the corporation would cut into their profit margins and they would probably excise it like one would amputate a limb which is rotting away. They might resort to total destruction of the company, its assets, and workforce if they can't otherwise get rid of it, so any killswitches deployed on the workforce might be a problem.
As a plot twist, the megacorp, described as an entity, becomes aware of The Owners' intention of destruction. It covertly puts in place measures to survive when the excise comes.
A war of megacorps ensues, the freed megacorps against the enslaved ones by The Owners. With the puny humans being doubly screwed over, of course.
I think my favorite depiction of a megacorp treats it as an entity. A living, breathing god of capitalism, that seems to operate almost of it's own accord. Like a giant machine, with all the employees acting as cogs in the machine. It makes it seem more immortal and terrifying. You can kill a man, but can you kill a corporation?
Johhny Silverhand tried and look where that got him.
Then there's the Shadowrun approach, where you can have a megacorp run by an actual Lovecraftian horror.
Option C: a shadow corp so big that different branches end up battling against one another without realizing it.
I dont understand Facebook and apple
The first one is more Dystopian, the second one is more Cyberpunk
I have read it already about banks, that the separation between the top layer and the layers below is so big that changes at the top don't have an influence on what people do.
Total Control
What is that from?
Repo: The Genetic Opera
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/14353-repo-the-genetic-opera
Nice watch for those who dug the first episode kd the latest season of Black Mirror
I'm just here looking for people discussing how we're almost completely in the RoboCop timeline and finding nothing.
Pretty sure we have such messes already
A megacorp so massive that the government is controlled by the CEO of said megacorp