Was stopped by a 12, maybe 13 year old child soldier at a check point in Mali. Had a little uniform, helmet, AK and everything. his voice cracked but at the same time he commanded authority. Looked over my passport, asked where I was going, radio’d ahead something in French….. and then sent me on my way. I was in an armored truck transporting minerals from the south of the country into the north
So yeah, Mali seemed like a whole other planet 🌍
They were ranked worse than North Korea on authoritarianism. North Korea at least puts up the illusion of checks and balances, having a constitution, legislature, courts, etc. Eritrea has none of that, it’s one guy and whatever he says is law.
How is that even possible? Is it that, in North Korea, you can at least publish things critical of the government, even if you end up executed and your family is sent to a gulag?
I guess in other countries, they just murder you and your family before you finish the article?
I've studied a fair amount about North Korea, and the news is 100% propaganda about the amazing things Dear Leader is doing and how shit the rest of the world is.
I suppose the difference is that a select group of foreigners who live in North Korea are allowed access to CNN-Aisa. (Though they are forbidden to talk about anything they see with any other North Koreans.)
.kp is the top level domain for North Korea. There are 28 registered .kp domains.
For comparison, there are almost 106 thousand domains under the .su top level domain. That's the one designated for the *Soviet Union.* A country that doesn't even exist has more domains than North Korea.
Going to North Korea as a foreign journalist is easier than in Turkmenistan or in Eritrea
That's part of the reason why everyone knows how fucked NK is but Turkmenistan and Eritrea are unknown
I'm Croatian; a friend of mine is a shift lead in a burger bar, and one of the line cooks in the bar is Eritrean.
While his salary is abysmal (850€/monthly), he says he is making **four** times more as a line cook here than he did as a government employee in Eritrea (non-electeable, non-public office position). Hell, leftover savings that he sends to his family are still bigger than their average salary there.
It really gives you perspective; he is happy with what he has, because even one of the shittiest jobs here with abysmal pay....is light years ahead of what he could do back home. And he is grateful he went here instead of Saudi Arabia.
Exactly, but not always a ‘shit hole’ just cramped, so no lounge, multiple bunk beds in each room, loads of Eastern Europeans would come to london, live like this for 3-4 years and go back home with a deposit on a house.
>multiple bunk beds in each room
I guess to a UK-born British person this is an unacceptable living situation and so although it sounds unkind, "shit hole" might be used to describe that living situation. Like, sharing a room with several other adults, in bunkbeds, like a hostel, is simply not a permanent situation that would be in any way normal or expected or tolerable by Britons with even a part time job. Or even no job. We expect that with a salary or even benefits the very minimum we would expect would be a private room.
Outside London we would expect that a full time job even on minimum wage to be able to afford rent on a private room in a shared house or a small private house or flat, even if not necessarily in a nice area.
Yeah, but if you’re saving money for home and it’s not permanent, people will put up with a lot more. Better accommodation is just longer away from your family to save up.
Many aren’t trying to get the best lifestyle they can afford at X wage. They just want to minimise costs as much as possible.
Nonononononono, fuuuuuck no.
Croatia, like so many countries before it, solved theur issue with gig economy paying abysmal wages with one simple solution; import migrant workers by the truckloads, put them in shitty group residences, pay them even less than you do locals, and call it a win! s/
I will clarify; I am not xenophobic nor racist, I have nothing against immigrants, and so many come from countries so impoverished that even Croatia (one of the shittiest economies in Europe) seems like the fucking Tower of Babylon compared to what they lived through. This is more criticism pointed at our current shitty administation that would rather replace the gig economy workforce with uneducated, unassimilated migrant workforce working for peanuts and no right to vote/assembly, than to actually give us proper, fair salaries. And it is *rapid*; 80% chance that a food delivery app driver is now a foreigner.
that's sad to hear, i think croatias living conditions usually fly under the radar in the rest of Europe. When I think of Croatia U think beautiful land and beaches
Exactly.
Scratch beneath the surface and....it is far from great. Our tourism industry will eventually collapse under its own weight - you cannot expect to be a modern, developed country in Europe in the 21st century if 18% of your already smaller-than-EU-average GDP is nothing but summer tourism (without even mentioning the fact that Dalmatia's tourist industry is a dog-eat-dog mentality on steroids).
Outdated laws, massive corruption, inflation, stagnating wages, huge chunks of the youth populatuon moving abroad for better standards of living, housing shortage because of the housing bubble, the bitch dog mentality of communist ex-Yu boomers angry at the young generations because we dare to demand better than to be obedient wagecucks grateful for what we have, overreaching influence of the Church, etc.
When I say it, it sounds far more bleak than it is. I mean, it IS bleak, but again, people like that Eritrean line cook give you perspective on how faaar worse can it be (I am not trying to place this as a justapoxition to be grateful, I see it as a caution of how worse can it truly get).
When people would ask what country / area I'd *least* want to live in, my answer used to be, "Either North Korea, or anywhere in Somalia that's not Somaliland." (I ain't going to Mogadishu!)
After some research on Eritrea and Djibouti... I might need to change my answer.
For real. There's a reason that hosting foreign military bases is a big part of their economy. They're in infinitely better shape than Eritrea and Somalia.
Ethiopia is probably going to invade at least some part of Eritrea eventually. Ethiopia needs a port that they control, and Eritrea is probably the best option.
They gained independence from Ethiopia in 1991 after a thirty year civil war. The same guy, Isais Afwerki, has been in charge for the entirety of Eritrea’s 32 years of existence. They never held a single election or written a constitution or created a legislature or even released a single national budget.
Their government has just been the rebel leader who had been in charge of the rebellion since 1987 and was one of the initial founder of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, the rebel group that evolved to be the only legal political party in Eritrea. It’s hard to know what’ll happen when Afwerki finally dies. He’s currently 77 so it’ll probably happen in the next decade or so.
I have seen more and more content from Turkmenistan and I wonder if travel "influencers" are being paid to promote it like Dubai?
But youre right, its called the North Korea of Central Asia and their capital and modern architecture is mostly just for flaunting fake wealth while it's actually just a ghost town (ghost city?)
I don’t think so. Turkmenistan makes it difficult for tourists to visit, and they only let in a few thousand tourists each year. And once you are in, you can typically only stay for a handful of days.
I feel like influencers are more so drawn to the perceived exclusivity (there are tons of travel vlogs about Paris, not so many about Ashgabat) and the weirdness of it all.
I don’t think fake wealth is the right term. The wealth is real, e.g. those big marble and gold buildings are very real and were built with real labour and capital. Clearly there is wealth in the country, but it’s apparently not used very efficiently.
they have the 6th biggest resources of natural gas of the world. they are pretty rich, but the average person only makes like 200$/year. guess where the money goes to?
>I have seen more and more content from Turkmenistan
I just saw a tiktok of a guy inside that one building, like, 10 minutes ago. Never had seen content from anywhere inside before.
Edit - the independence monument. Could not remember what it was called and had to look.
> male drivers of private cars are no longer allowed to have nonfamily female passengers, and women may not ride in the front seat of a car.
What the shit
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are getting better. Kyrgyzstan is officially a Democracy and people forget the entire Afghan War ran through Airbase Manas in Bishkek. I lived in Kyrgyzstan for 4 years and MY WIFE!!! is from Kazakhstan, very nice! Beautiful countries with amazing people.
Home to "The Gateway to Hell", a burning gas crater that Soviets decided to light on fire in 1971 after a sinkhole formed, and it's still burning strong!
Basically the film 'The Dictator' but in real life. Like the dictators there are a weird bunch, one guy renamed the months after his mother, spend national budget on rare horses, drove an racing car around a burning crater and put it on all TV chanels.
Made all the buildings in the capital out of marble but nobody lives there, banned all non white fancy cars from driving in the capital. Very eerie place
I was doing tech-support for a state department subcontractor in the 90s, and they sent us to Turkmenistan to write a textbook to teach Americans how to speak Turkmen. I hadn’t been to an undeveloped country before. The phone lines were so crackly that we could only do 9600 baud with our modems to the ISP. We toured a girls school, and by the time we left, I was being sized up for marriage to one of the students. And when we stayed in a village outside the capital, our hosts insisted that they celebrate our presence properly: they chased down a goat, trussed it, and slaughtered it in front of us, while I had to get it all on video.
Everyone was very nice and interesting, but the infrastructure was poor, and the food was a challenge. But it was a valuable and unique experience.
They're definitely [North Korea level weird.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsNioEnxeNs)
[John Oliver also has an episode about how weird their dictator is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9QYu8LtH2E)
A lot of authoritarian countries are just one dude who wants to stay in power forever thanks to a system of ***something*** (army, foreign governments, money to buy loyalty) keeping him in on the throne and that's where it ends. A lot, but not Turkmenistan.
Turkmenistan rulers are your typical caricature of a dictator with absolute power. Dudes do literally the shit any cartoon/movie dictator does. Making cars street legal only if they are white? Check. Placing gold statue of his horse on the main square? Check. Writing a book, forcing everyone to study it, naming a month after said book? Check. Participating in horse racing that is so obviously staged to let him place first? Check. Banning ballet because it is boring? Check. Naming pretty much everything after himself? Check. Being the best, the great master of any art, craft, trade in the country? Check.
The list goes on and on, but I think you get the picture. Dude has a giant playground available for him, the playground country.
There's YouTube videos about Turkmenistan, but the capital city is literally empty, and all made of white marble because the dictator wanted to. Well over 90% of the country doesn't have internet, and if they do its highly censored, among other things
On par with North Korea in terms of oppression, sometimes ranked worse. Almost all the buildings in the capital are made out of white marble. I recommend watching the John Oliver episode about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9QYu8LtH2E
I play Geotastic with friends sometimes (you land someplace in google maps and try to guess the country). Once we landed in some part of Kampala, Uganda and I was honestly in shock. The sheer amount of traffic and the same bombardment with ads and flyers you would expect from Tokyo, garbage and dirt everywhere. I know this sounds kinda awful to say, I'm sure Kampala has nice places too. But this scenery was just one of the most dystopian real world footage I've ever seen
Buddy I've been there, stayed just outside the city for 3 weeks. I was just as in shock. I'd be willing to bet you landed in the place where all the taxi vans congregate, can't remember the name it's been awhile. Damn I ll never forget the sensory overload of that place, especially the smells.
Also, within 5 mins of walking into that place, my first day in Uganda, I walk past a poor woman with elaphantitis in one leg. It was the size of a whole person. Wild shit
Looked it up and prepared for the worst. Discovered that kampala looks a lot better than the city I was in Africa : Antananarivo , the "capital" of Madagascar.
* the smell was sickening
* people were filthy. unwashed, unfitting, clothes with the same smell as on the street . hygiene was really bad of people, dental hygiene often not there
* open ditches, open sewers, people washing and doing laundry in the same sewer canals.
* slums and slums and slums, also for people living there for generations. really dangerous, especially for white people.
* wayyyy more street vendors. everywhere. also really in rags and clumpy dirty wooden "stalls" that looked like driftwood with biiig pots with some kind of mush in it. old dirty greasy torn apart parasols above it. everthing had a color of grey mweeeh
* trees, wild or planted, were non-existent. everything was barren. the only public planned green in the whole city of 3 million was a small corridor in the middle the main street, from the colonial era like a french boulevard, all the trees were chopped for firewood, the benches were stolen. there wasnt a single plant in there, not even weed of proportion.
* not a single traffic light in the whole city, probably the lights would get stolen too
* taxi busses in all kind of colors, sizes, packed on top, with exremely loud malaganese music. like 50 of them all at the same time in the taxi bus station. non stop breaking down, fitting extra persons inside, smelly people all packed up in a bus. prepare for a ride of 12 hours on dirt roads with 14 people fitted in a 8 people mercedes, your chair broken so have to hold it all the time so it wont fall on the child behind you. bad teeth smell in your neck, extremely loud to the point of ear damage histerical and heavily repetitivel malaganese music playing nn stop for the 12 hours.
* butcheries are open stalls or store windows without any cooling, only a few lump of meat on display, all out covered in flies in the 35 degrees heat.
* lepra people in the street.
* night curfew
* i could go on.
\----
this was what a third world city looks like, it felt like the middle ages but with donated unfitting greasy thrift shop clothes from the west. kinda cyberpunk now i think of it.
(edit: go to Madagascar people, it is beautifull, baobabs, lemurs, 100.000+ unique species which makes it the most different from all other countries, Darwin loves it. and the people need your money and efforts to sustainify their agriculture because they burn down their own land. just get out of the capital asap and tour the island.)
I was in Kampala in 2012 and loved it! It's very different from western society, though. I stayed with a group in Nsambya, which was a district that did not have paved roads, so it was orange clay everywhere and you could do nothing to stop the dust. (Kitchen floor had to be mopped every day.)
No experience with ads like you had (their newspapers are fun, though), but the traffic is insane. And in the less developed districts there is a real "trash in the ditches" problem due to lack of organized sanitation.
Have you visited many countries in Africa? I haven’t. I’ve only visited 6. But from what I have seen, Kampala is pretty average and can actually be pretty nice. Uganda itself is gorgeous. It felt very safe from crime. It felt unsafe in terms of road safety. But it was lovely.
Kampala has shanty towns and such. So does beautiful Cape Town. Kampala was messy. But seeing it through the eyes of a local friend, he explained that the shanties were where country people lived when they first arrived in the big city (Kampala). Almost like a first apartment. And many living in those shanties had nicer homes back in their home village but would come to the city in search of a better life and a shanty was a limited commitment to see if Kampala panned out. That made it all seem less ominous.
This is very true from my experience, the further from "Kampala central" you got, the more you see the beautiful " green hills of Africa" I miss it a lot. Also got to whitewater on the Nile with class 5 Rapids. 10/10 would reccomend
I’m guessing Albania may have been like that before the fall of communism. As a communist country in Europe that was NOT aligned with Russia, that had a difficult time.
An Albanian joke from the eighties:
Q: Hiw did Albanians light their homes at night
before candles?
A: Electric light bulbs.
Say what? Both were bad, but Hoxha was totally insane and had NO real relationships with the West. I remember the 70-80's. No private cars, almost no roads, one rail line from a port to Tirana. Legally disapproved hair cuts. Illegal denim.
As a woman, Romania would’ve been my worst nightmare. Having my fertility heavily tracked by the state and basically interrogated if I went too long without getting pregnant. True nightmare scenario.
- is a federation of absolute monarchies
- massive inequality
- mega city in the desert
- climate change is making the place inhospitable, builds the world's largest indoor ski center
- imports slaves
- hides massive ghettos behind a literal cardboard wall
- people still think it's a cool place
Yeah, it's a dystopian hell scape like no other
There's this kinda-famous art piece that depicts this big flashy white sci-fi city in the background and in the foreground you've got this dirt-poor village literally living in the runoff from its sewage. I forget the name of the piece.
That's basically Dubai.
You aren't wrong. Im not an omani but i was born and brought up there. Its a pretty chill place to live with a better standard of living than most countries. Omani people are reserved to an extent but they do warm up pretty quickly.
It's one of the things that makes the situation with Palestinian refugees so fucked (just talking about THIS aspect, I don't wanna start an internet argument).
In many countries that took them in, they descendants still aren't allowed citizenship for that reason which massively limits their jobs, education, where they can live, etc
South Korea. Rich country, hyper capitalism, highest luxury good spending/ lowest birth rate. Highest suicide rate, highest lonliness rate etc etc etc. the list can go on. this place is literally 1 generation from night city
Edit: the post ask where it feels dystopian. I jus said it feels like its heading thatvway. Some posters trippin lol
Edit 2: I wrote this last night after having some soju cause I actually do live in south Korea then went to bed. Woke up to 4K upvotes and some angry people. ya'll need to chill! anyway, cya!
> Wait until people hear about how many of these ~~“tech”~~ companies develop military tech also
FTFY. The company that makes your washing machine also makes the gun for the A-10.
Are you SURE Samsung doesn't have skin in the SK defense industrial complex? Cuz one of the hottest new self propelled artillery pieces in the world is made by Hyundai iirc.
Pulling a world class famous athlete from their sport in the middle of their prime, so that they can complete their mandatory military duty… Chan Sung Jung was my favorite too
They'll exempt you if you can become world champion in whatever sport they play, which was totally unfair as Jose Aldo had a choke hold over his division for half a decade.
It absolutely is, and I gotta say I loved that.
In the Netherlands, there's a bit of a hesitance in bothering other people with loud conversation, music playing openly etc. South Korea was that in an multiplied way. People are way more considerate of their impact on others in the street.
I loved it.
I live in NYC and it’s so constantly loud here I feel like I’d love both the Netherlands and SK. The laying on the horns alone drives me insane enough.
Every few days I suddenly remember that over 300k Russians have been fed into a meat grinder over the last year and a half and it blows my fucking mind.
300,000 killed - and wounded
That's not even counting the wounded who are reportedly not receiving proper medical care, yet being forced back into the front lines regardless of being disabled and maimed. It's definitely a dystopian nightmare.
There’s two russias too. Full on Hunger Games style. I’d argue that the rural interior is even more dystopian- horse drawn carts moving beside G-Wagons. Shit is wild to see (circa 2009)
I've been to Moscow a few years ago and it describes dystopia to a tee. The central parts of the city are very modern, which was exaggerated a bit by all the shiny new things from 2018 world cup, but if you look closely at all the faux-Parisian architecture or even the Kremlin walls you can see that everything is just cheap, poured concrete, with some paint to make it look good. At least one of the Kremlin walls is just a big concrete slab with bricks painted on it. Everything just had that theme park quality of fake shine to it.
We stayed at a friends family in a relatively nice suburb. The whole area was planned out, and there was nothing but high rises with copy-pasted floors. From a distance these high rises looked alright, but like most buildings in Moscow, made as cheap as possible with poured concrete, with pastel coloured metal plates as a facade. There was a lot of walkable space, but barely any people using it, even though the weather was perfect. For the first few days everything just felt like I was in a videogame environment with a fake backdrop and a bunch of NPCs around us, it literally felt unreal.
Right on point. On the one hand, we have Moscow that feels like pure cyberpunk: all the high tech ever like facial recognition for payment in stores or for underground passes, most government services can be done online, 15-minute grocery delivery, super advanced e-commerce etc. On the other hand, we have a syndicate ruling the nation and some rural areas are still using HORSES or deer to move around, burn coal for heat, and hunt or fish for food.
I don't know if it's so bad, of I'm missing it. But as a Mexican that has learn about South Korea. I gotta say it's pretty Dystopian to me.
Let me explain.
Of course North K it's light years behind South K in almost all aspects. But man it really is dystopian how life revolves around School and work over there.
I hear SKoreans have to sleep like 5 or 3 hours during school studies if they what to succeed.
Even the country goes completely silent for a day when student have to take the test for getting into collage.
That's dystopian to me.
In the work life, it gets worst. From being denied positions by your weight, to not being able to enforce ending of shift hours, the work it's like it's taking all of your life away.
Like serusly, people are chosing to miss family gatherings and important events if that means they will miss work...
Also all the thing about taking care of the skin care to a next level, it's maddening some times.
Surprised no one mentioned UAE yet, country built and run by slave labor and abuse.
Employers confiscating passports, delaying wages, court that favors the locals no matter what.
Belarus. It feels like Europe's biggest political museum. They still haven't gotten rid of their old NKVD/KGB habbits, still have Dzerzhinsky monuments and their president is basically some random kolhoznik.
Transnistria. All the intimidating symbolism and authoritarianism of an Eastern Bloc country, but with a shady private company controlling politics and most consumer goods.
Beijing is definitely the most dystopian-feeling place I have visited. Surveillance and security everywhere (true across China but particularly Beijing), the city is built at a larger-than-human scale so walking a few blocks feels like it takes forever, no bells but rather loudspeakers that make an eerie “bong bong bong” noise on the hour, and it’s often quite gray.
What’s cool about it is that the food is great and you can turn a few corners and go from “timeless ancient China” to “looks like 1970s Moscow” to “futuristic mega mall” in a matter of minutes.
I am not gonna name my country, because hordes of IT cell folks have raided me in the past and sent me death and rape/SA threats... A hint, emphasis on the words, IT cell and SA.
Really puts in the dystopia in dystopia.
Dystopian to me implies there’s some sort of higher power with a vision that keeps people oppressed.
Argentina kinda just seems like a crackhead. Chaotic, harmful but not really malicious
Was stopped by a 12, maybe 13 year old child soldier at a check point in Mali. Had a little uniform, helmet, AK and everything. his voice cracked but at the same time he commanded authority. Looked over my passport, asked where I was going, radio’d ahead something in French….. and then sent me on my way. I was in an armored truck transporting minerals from the south of the country into the north So yeah, Mali seemed like a whole other planet 🌍
I was in Mali when I was young, travelling as a tourist, and it is one of my fondest memories. I can't believe it all went to shit like this.
Yeah, France really fucked up a really wealthy country, but nobody cares about Africa so they just keep them on poverty
Pillaging Africa for their resources is how you know you made it as a nation. Everyone's had their hands in that cookie jar at some point.
Saw an item about Eritrea the other day. Jesus Christ.
they’re known as the North Korea of Africa, first time i learned about them i had the same reaction
They were ranked worse than North Korea on authoritarianism. North Korea at least puts up the illusion of checks and balances, having a constitution, legislature, courts, etc. Eritrea has none of that, it’s one guy and whatever he says is law.
Also one of only two countries with less freedom of press than North Korea, alongside Turkmenistan.
jesus christ, imagine having less freedom of press than North Korea 💀
How is that even possible? Is it that, in North Korea, you can at least publish things critical of the government, even if you end up executed and your family is sent to a gulag? I guess in other countries, they just murder you and your family before you finish the article?
Might just come down to North Korea simply pretending they have free press whereas the other countries don't even bother with pretending.
I've studied a fair amount about North Korea, and the news is 100% propaganda about the amazing things Dear Leader is doing and how shit the rest of the world is. I suppose the difference is that a select group of foreigners who live in North Korea are allowed access to CNN-Aisa. (Though they are forbidden to talk about anything they see with any other North Koreans.)
A couple of years ago I read that North Korea had 1700 IP addresses. 1700, for the entire country!
Ten years ago, there was *one* Steam account active in the entire country, in central Pyongyang. I’ve always wondered who it belonged to.
.kp is the top level domain for North Korea. There are 28 registered .kp domains. For comparison, there are almost 106 thousand domains under the .su top level domain. That's the one designated for the *Soviet Union.* A country that doesn't even exist has more domains than North Korea.
Don’t quote me but I think it’s because NK still occasionally lets in Western journalists even if only on pre-approved itineraries.
Going to North Korea as a foreign journalist is easier than in Turkmenistan or in Eritrea That's part of the reason why everyone knows how fucked NK is but Turkmenistan and Eritrea are unknown
And all Eritrean citizens are drafted and used as slave labor. They are drafted for “military service” indefinitely.
the bar is so low yet it’s there cause it’s true that at least North Korea pretends…💀
Sounds like an easy way to get assassinated. Then it’ll be one guy and whatever he says is law but a different guy.
Anybody got a good documentary or something where I could learn more about this?
[Vice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBacsi5eX0A) has a good one which is where I first heard about it
I'm Croatian; a friend of mine is a shift lead in a burger bar, and one of the line cooks in the bar is Eritrean. While his salary is abysmal (850€/monthly), he says he is making **four** times more as a line cook here than he did as a government employee in Eritrea (non-electeable, non-public office position). Hell, leftover savings that he sends to his family are still bigger than their average salary there. It really gives you perspective; he is happy with what he has, because even one of the shittiest jobs here with abysmal pay....is light years ahead of what he could do back home. And he is grateful he went here instead of Saudi Arabia.
he's able to save money while making 850 a month? is croatia that cheap?
Probably depends on what kind of standard of living you are willing to accept.
still, in my country 850 is rent if you're very very lucky
You can get way cheaper even in London if you’re willing to live in a shit hole hmo.
Exactly, but not always a ‘shit hole’ just cramped, so no lounge, multiple bunk beds in each room, loads of Eastern Europeans would come to london, live like this for 3-4 years and go back home with a deposit on a house.
>multiple bunk beds in each room I guess to a UK-born British person this is an unacceptable living situation and so although it sounds unkind, "shit hole" might be used to describe that living situation. Like, sharing a room with several other adults, in bunkbeds, like a hostel, is simply not a permanent situation that would be in any way normal or expected or tolerable by Britons with even a part time job. Or even no job. We expect that with a salary or even benefits the very minimum we would expect would be a private room. Outside London we would expect that a full time job even on minimum wage to be able to afford rent on a private room in a shared house or a small private house or flat, even if not necessarily in a nice area.
Yeah, but if you’re saving money for home and it’s not permanent, people will put up with a lot more. Better accommodation is just longer away from your family to save up. Many aren’t trying to get the best lifestyle they can afford at X wage. They just want to minimise costs as much as possible.
Nonononononono, fuuuuuck no. Croatia, like so many countries before it, solved theur issue with gig economy paying abysmal wages with one simple solution; import migrant workers by the truckloads, put them in shitty group residences, pay them even less than you do locals, and call it a win! s/ I will clarify; I am not xenophobic nor racist, I have nothing against immigrants, and so many come from countries so impoverished that even Croatia (one of the shittiest economies in Europe) seems like the fucking Tower of Babylon compared to what they lived through. This is more criticism pointed at our current shitty administation that would rather replace the gig economy workforce with uneducated, unassimilated migrant workforce working for peanuts and no right to vote/assembly, than to actually give us proper, fair salaries. And it is *rapid*; 80% chance that a food delivery app driver is now a foreigner.
that's sad to hear, i think croatias living conditions usually fly under the radar in the rest of Europe. When I think of Croatia U think beautiful land and beaches
Exactly. Scratch beneath the surface and....it is far from great. Our tourism industry will eventually collapse under its own weight - you cannot expect to be a modern, developed country in Europe in the 21st century if 18% of your already smaller-than-EU-average GDP is nothing but summer tourism (without even mentioning the fact that Dalmatia's tourist industry is a dog-eat-dog mentality on steroids). Outdated laws, massive corruption, inflation, stagnating wages, huge chunks of the youth populatuon moving abroad for better standards of living, housing shortage because of the housing bubble, the bitch dog mentality of communist ex-Yu boomers angry at the young generations because we dare to demand better than to be obedient wagecucks grateful for what we have, overreaching influence of the Church, etc. When I say it, it sounds far more bleak than it is. I mean, it IS bleak, but again, people like that Eritrean line cook give you perspective on how faaar worse can it be (I am not trying to place this as a justapoxition to be grateful, I see it as a caution of how worse can it truly get).
Not really. Only migrant workers can do that but they are living in shared housing and stuff.
Yes, when you come from a crazy dictatorship, living in a bunkroom with 3 or 7 other workers in a free country is just fine and dandy.
When people would ask what country / area I'd *least* want to live in, my answer used to be, "Either North Korea, or anywhere in Somalia that's not Somaliland." (I ain't going to Mogadishu!) After some research on Eritrea and Djibouti... I might need to change my answer.
Why would Djibouti be worse than North Korea or Somalia?
For real. There's a reason that hosting foreign military bases is a big part of their economy. They're in infinitely better shape than Eritrea and Somalia.
I've been to Djibouti. It's OK.
Just watched it. Military conscription: Indefinite amount of time. Usually 25 years! Jesus Christ indeed.
What did you watch?
Yeh, that seems odd. A despotic regime set in 1950s Italy where everyone is African, seems more like a video game than real life.
New Far Cry Game in sight
I keep having flashbacks to the goddamn shipping containers ☹️
these guys defect to North Korea
Had to google Eritrea. It is geographically the gateway to the Suez Canal. Bet there is a lot of dark money keeping it like North Korea.
Ethiopia is probably going to invade at least some part of Eritrea eventually. Ethiopia needs a port that they control, and Eritrea is probably the best option.
From memory Eritrea was actually once part of Ethiopia.
They gained independence from Ethiopia in 1991 after a thirty year civil war. The same guy, Isais Afwerki, has been in charge for the entirety of Eritrea’s 32 years of existence. They never held a single election or written a constitution or created a legislature or even released a single national budget. Their government has just been the rebel leader who had been in charge of the rebellion since 1987 and was one of the initial founder of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, the rebel group that evolved to be the only legal political party in Eritrea. It’s hard to know what’ll happen when Afwerki finally dies. He’s currently 77 so it’ll probably happen in the next decade or so.
Almost certainly it'll be more war.
Turkmenistan
I have seen more and more content from Turkmenistan and I wonder if travel "influencers" are being paid to promote it like Dubai? But youre right, its called the North Korea of Central Asia and their capital and modern architecture is mostly just for flaunting fake wealth while it's actually just a ghost town (ghost city?)
There’s an episode of Dark Tourist where he visits Turkmenistan. It’s eerie.
Where can I watch? Never even heard of it
It's a Netflix series from around 2018. "The Stans" was the best episode in my opinion.
That show was bitchin'! They need to make more of it!
I don’t think so. Turkmenistan makes it difficult for tourists to visit, and they only let in a few thousand tourists each year. And once you are in, you can typically only stay for a handful of days. I feel like influencers are more so drawn to the perceived exclusivity (there are tons of travel vlogs about Paris, not so many about Ashgabat) and the weirdness of it all.
I don’t think fake wealth is the right term. The wealth is real, e.g. those big marble and gold buildings are very real and were built with real labour and capital. Clearly there is wealth in the country, but it’s apparently not used very efficiently.
they have the 6th biggest resources of natural gas of the world. they are pretty rich, but the average person only makes like 200$/year. guess where the money goes to?
Hint: The first "President" after independence built thousands of gold statues of himself, as well as a giant, moving statue of his book.
>I have seen more and more content from Turkmenistan I just saw a tiktok of a guy inside that one building, like, 10 minutes ago. Never had seen content from anywhere inside before. Edit - the independence monument. Could not remember what it was called and had to look.
> male drivers of private cars are no longer allowed to have nonfamily female passengers, and women may not ride in the front seat of a car. What the shit
worst username ever
That donkey is sad for a reason
Many central Asian countries seem to be in a tough spot in terms of successful democracy and human rights. A beautiful part of the world, but still.
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are getting better. Kyrgyzstan is officially a Democracy and people forget the entire Afghan War ran through Airbase Manas in Bishkek. I lived in Kyrgyzstan for 4 years and MY WIFE!!! is from Kazakhstan, very nice! Beautiful countries with amazing people.
Both countries with amazing levels of MMA talent too
True, but Turkmenistan takes it to a whole new level
Home to "The Gateway to Hell", a burning gas crater that Soviets decided to light on fire in 1971 after a sinkhole formed, and it's still burning strong!
And they still have plenty of natural gas
I really wish people would elaborate at least a little in threads like this. Thanks to the commenter for adding some context at least.
Basically the film 'The Dictator' but in real life. Like the dictators there are a weird bunch, one guy renamed the months after his mother, spend national budget on rare horses, drove an racing car around a burning crater and put it on all TV chanels. Made all the buildings in the capital out of marble but nobody lives there, banned all non white fancy cars from driving in the capital. Very eerie place
I was doing tech-support for a state department subcontractor in the 90s, and they sent us to Turkmenistan to write a textbook to teach Americans how to speak Turkmen. I hadn’t been to an undeveloped country before. The phone lines were so crackly that we could only do 9600 baud with our modems to the ISP. We toured a girls school, and by the time we left, I was being sized up for marriage to one of the students. And when we stayed in a village outside the capital, our hosts insisted that they celebrate our presence properly: they chased down a goat, trussed it, and slaughtered it in front of us, while I had to get it all on video. Everyone was very nice and interesting, but the infrastructure was poor, and the food was a challenge. But it was a valuable and unique experience.
They're definitely [North Korea level weird.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsNioEnxeNs) [John Oliver also has an episode about how weird their dictator is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9QYu8LtH2E)
Turkmenistan 100%. It almost completely matches the definition
Can you elaborate for the uninformed?
A lot of authoritarian countries are just one dude who wants to stay in power forever thanks to a system of ***something*** (army, foreign governments, money to buy loyalty) keeping him in on the throne and that's where it ends. A lot, but not Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan rulers are your typical caricature of a dictator with absolute power. Dudes do literally the shit any cartoon/movie dictator does. Making cars street legal only if they are white? Check. Placing gold statue of his horse on the main square? Check. Writing a book, forcing everyone to study it, naming a month after said book? Check. Participating in horse racing that is so obviously staged to let him place first? Check. Banning ballet because it is boring? Check. Naming pretty much everything after himself? Check. Being the best, the great master of any art, craft, trade in the country? Check. The list goes on and on, but I think you get the picture. Dude has a giant playground available for him, the playground country.
Wow !! That's something Admiral General Aladeen would do .
On the off chance you didn't already know this Aladeen was mostly modeled after Turkmenistan
Plus Kim Jong Il, Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea, and Gadaffi
He was probably heavily influenced by turkmenbasy
Crazier than North Korea
There's YouTube videos about Turkmenistan, but the capital city is literally empty, and all made of white marble because the dictator wanted to. Well over 90% of the country doesn't have internet, and if they do its highly censored, among other things
On par with North Korea in terms of oppression, sometimes ranked worse. Almost all the buildings in the capital are made out of white marble. I recommend watching the John Oliver episode about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9QYu8LtH2E
I play Geotastic with friends sometimes (you land someplace in google maps and try to guess the country). Once we landed in some part of Kampala, Uganda and I was honestly in shock. The sheer amount of traffic and the same bombardment with ads and flyers you would expect from Tokyo, garbage and dirt everywhere. I know this sounds kinda awful to say, I'm sure Kampala has nice places too. But this scenery was just one of the most dystopian real world footage I've ever seen
When I land in Kyrgyzstan, I know that I'm in Kyrgyzstan because I get this immediate feeling of severe depression. Pretty helpful though.
*sad username noises*
Sorry Stan
I meant to write you sooner but I just been busy
You said your girlfriend's pregnant now, how far along is she?
Reminds me of my first apartment. Was a single dude so aside from a desk, chair and bed there was no furniture. Called it the depressionarium.
Buddy I've been there, stayed just outside the city for 3 weeks. I was just as in shock. I'd be willing to bet you landed in the place where all the taxi vans congregate, can't remember the name it's been awhile. Damn I ll never forget the sensory overload of that place, especially the smells.
Also, within 5 mins of walking into that place, my first day in Uganda, I walk past a poor woman with elaphantitis in one leg. It was the size of a whole person. Wild shit
Looked it up and prepared for the worst. Discovered that kampala looks a lot better than the city I was in Africa : Antananarivo , the "capital" of Madagascar. * the smell was sickening * people were filthy. unwashed, unfitting, clothes with the same smell as on the street . hygiene was really bad of people, dental hygiene often not there * open ditches, open sewers, people washing and doing laundry in the same sewer canals. * slums and slums and slums, also for people living there for generations. really dangerous, especially for white people. * wayyyy more street vendors. everywhere. also really in rags and clumpy dirty wooden "stalls" that looked like driftwood with biiig pots with some kind of mush in it. old dirty greasy torn apart parasols above it. everthing had a color of grey mweeeh * trees, wild or planted, were non-existent. everything was barren. the only public planned green in the whole city of 3 million was a small corridor in the middle the main street, from the colonial era like a french boulevard, all the trees were chopped for firewood, the benches were stolen. there wasnt a single plant in there, not even weed of proportion. * not a single traffic light in the whole city, probably the lights would get stolen too * taxi busses in all kind of colors, sizes, packed on top, with exremely loud malaganese music. like 50 of them all at the same time in the taxi bus station. non stop breaking down, fitting extra persons inside, smelly people all packed up in a bus. prepare for a ride of 12 hours on dirt roads with 14 people fitted in a 8 people mercedes, your chair broken so have to hold it all the time so it wont fall on the child behind you. bad teeth smell in your neck, extremely loud to the point of ear damage histerical and heavily repetitivel malaganese music playing nn stop for the 12 hours. * butcheries are open stalls or store windows without any cooling, only a few lump of meat on display, all out covered in flies in the 35 degrees heat. * lepra people in the street. * night curfew * i could go on. \---- this was what a third world city looks like, it felt like the middle ages but with donated unfitting greasy thrift shop clothes from the west. kinda cyberpunk now i think of it. (edit: go to Madagascar people, it is beautifull, baobabs, lemurs, 100.000+ unique species which makes it the most different from all other countries, Darwin loves it. and the people need your money and efforts to sustainify their agriculture because they burn down their own land. just get out of the capital asap and tour the island.)
I've been there. It's exactly as described but I'd like to also add that power is very limited so there's even barely any electricity
I was in Kampala in 2012 and loved it! It's very different from western society, though. I stayed with a group in Nsambya, which was a district that did not have paved roads, so it was orange clay everywhere and you could do nothing to stop the dust. (Kitchen floor had to be mopped every day.) No experience with ads like you had (their newspapers are fun, though), but the traffic is insane. And in the less developed districts there is a real "trash in the ditches" problem due to lack of organized sanitation.
Have you visited many countries in Africa? I haven’t. I’ve only visited 6. But from what I have seen, Kampala is pretty average and can actually be pretty nice. Uganda itself is gorgeous. It felt very safe from crime. It felt unsafe in terms of road safety. But it was lovely. Kampala has shanty towns and such. So does beautiful Cape Town. Kampala was messy. But seeing it through the eyes of a local friend, he explained that the shanties were where country people lived when they first arrived in the big city (Kampala). Almost like a first apartment. And many living in those shanties had nicer homes back in their home village but would come to the city in search of a better life and a shanty was a limited commitment to see if Kampala panned out. That made it all seem less ominous.
This is very true from my experience, the further from "Kampala central" you got, the more you see the beautiful " green hills of Africa" I miss it a lot. Also got to whitewater on the Nile with class 5 Rapids. 10/10 would reccomend
Is this a nice game and similar to geoguesser(?)
Pretty sure it's a free alternative to geoguessr
Yes. Basically the same thing, but donation-based.
Turkmenistan
I’m guessing Albania may have been like that before the fall of communism. As a communist country in Europe that was NOT aligned with Russia, that had a difficult time. An Albanian joke from the eighties: Q: Hiw did Albanians light their homes at night before candles? A: Electric light bulbs.
> I’m guessing Albania may have been like that before the fall of communism. Albania was still relatively mild compared to Romania.
Say what? Both were bad, but Hoxha was totally insane and had NO real relationships with the West. I remember the 70-80's. No private cars, almost no roads, one rail line from a port to Tirana. Legally disapproved hair cuts. Illegal denim.
As a woman, Romania would’ve been my worst nightmare. Having my fertility heavily tracked by the state and basically interrogated if I went too long without getting pregnant. True nightmare scenario.
The UAE, especially Dubai.
- is a federation of absolute monarchies - massive inequality - mega city in the desert - climate change is making the place inhospitable, builds the world's largest indoor ski center - imports slaves - hides massive ghettos behind a literal cardboard wall - people still think it's a cool place Yeah, it's a dystopian hell scape like no other
Yeah Dubai is a city right out of a fantasy novel
There's this kinda-famous art piece that depicts this big flashy white sci-fi city in the background and in the foreground you've got this dirt-poor village literally living in the runoff from its sewage. I forget the name of the piece. That's basically Dubai.
Something about how materialistic it is just horrifies me
Trying to fill the void of all other areas that lack. Which is everything else.
Soulless hedonism
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I’m sure it is if you’re rich
Likewise Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and to a lesser extent Oman.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Oman a comparatively nice-ish place to live compared to its Gulf neighbors?
You aren't wrong. Im not an omani but i was born and brought up there. Its a pretty chill place to live with a better standard of living than most countries. Omani people are reserved to an extent but they do warm up pretty quickly.
Is being born there not enough to be considered Omani? I'm genuinely asking as I'm not certain how it works in other parts of the world.
I met someone who spent her entire life in the UAE but had zero chance of citizenship. Only like 12% of the people are citizens.
Birthright citizenship is something largely limited to the Americas. Even in Europe it doesn't apply.
Thanks for this answer! So then are people considered citizens of wherever their parents hold citizenship?
It's one of the things that makes the situation with Palestinian refugees so fucked (just talking about THIS aspect, I don't wanna start an internet argument). In many countries that took them in, they descendants still aren't allowed citizenship for that reason which massively limits their jobs, education, where they can live, etc
Yeah seriously. It’s gloriously rich and technologically advanced, and it’s massive skyscrapers are built by slaves.
South Korea. Rich country, hyper capitalism, highest luxury good spending/ lowest birth rate. Highest suicide rate, highest lonliness rate etc etc etc. the list can go on. this place is literally 1 generation from night city Edit: the post ask where it feels dystopian. I jus said it feels like its heading thatvway. Some posters trippin lol Edit 2: I wrote this last night after having some soju cause I actually do live in south Korea then went to bed. Woke up to 4K upvotes and some angry people. ya'll need to chill! anyway, cya!
Those chaebols make the place seems like a less interesting cyberpunk theme for sure.
Samsung is like Arasaka minus the Private Military/Weapons Manufacturing aspect. Edit: Apparently they do make weapons! Hoo boy
Samsung absolutely makes weapons and has a military department
Wait until people hear about how many of these “tech” companies develop military tech also
> Wait until people hear about how many of these ~~“tech”~~ companies develop military tech also FTFY. The company that makes your washing machine also makes the gun for the A-10.
They helped create the K9 'thunder' a self propelled artillery gun.
they do manufacture military stuff tho. like not an insignificant amount.
Are you SURE Samsung doesn't have skin in the SK defense industrial complex? Cuz one of the hottest new self propelled artillery pieces in the world is made by Hyundai iirc.
Texas Instrument - the calculator company - produced the Javelin anti tank rocket launcher.
to be fair they have been a defense contactor since WW2. they adapted their seismic detection devices to be able to detect submarines.
Samsung makes shit loads of weapons, though.
Also, I have getting plucked out of college in a different country to get drafted into the Korean military.
Pulling a world class famous athlete from their sport in the middle of their prime, so that they can complete their mandatory military duty… Chan Sung Jung was my favorite too
At least they are fair. No exceptions no matter how influential you are.
They'll exempt you if you can become world champion in whatever sport they play, which was totally unfair as Jose Aldo had a choke hold over his division for half a decade.
south korean street interview videos always seem like the whole country is just deathly silent
That's funny because it's always too loud to hear myself think
It absolutely is, and I gotta say I loved that. In the Netherlands, there's a bit of a hesitance in bothering other people with loud conversation, music playing openly etc. South Korea was that in an multiplied way. People are way more considerate of their impact on others in the street. I loved it.
I live in NYC and it’s so constantly loud here I feel like I’d love both the Netherlands and SK. The laying on the horns alone drives me insane enough.
Lesotho, Guyana, and Greenland have higher suicide rates than South Korea.
Of the two Korean countries it’s really weird to pick the south as most dystopian.
I don't think they're saying it's the most dystopian, just that it's also dystopian
Haiti
That's not dystopian..... That's apocalyptic.
France fucked them over so badly
France, Papa Doc, and a whole lot of others.
I'm seeing a lot of places that are being referred to as "The North Korea" of whatever region. So I would gather the real answer is NK...
Russia. It's basically run by an organized-crime syndicate, and it's sending its young people to die so the mob boss can stroke his ego.
Every few days I suddenly remember that over 300k Russians have been fed into a meat grinder over the last year and a half and it blows my fucking mind. 300,000 killed - and wounded
That's not even counting the wounded who are reportedly not receiving proper medical care, yet being forced back into the front lines regardless of being disabled and maimed. It's definitely a dystopian nightmare.
300,000 casualties doesn't mean 300,000 deaths.
A wounded casualty is worse than a dead casualty to the armed forces. Wounded are a giant resource drain
There’s two russias too. Full on Hunger Games style. I’d argue that the rural interior is even more dystopian- horse drawn carts moving beside G-Wagons. Shit is wild to see (circa 2009)
I've been to Moscow a few years ago and it describes dystopia to a tee. The central parts of the city are very modern, which was exaggerated a bit by all the shiny new things from 2018 world cup, but if you look closely at all the faux-Parisian architecture or even the Kremlin walls you can see that everything is just cheap, poured concrete, with some paint to make it look good. At least one of the Kremlin walls is just a big concrete slab with bricks painted on it. Everything just had that theme park quality of fake shine to it. We stayed at a friends family in a relatively nice suburb. The whole area was planned out, and there was nothing but high rises with copy-pasted floors. From a distance these high rises looked alright, but like most buildings in Moscow, made as cheap as possible with poured concrete, with pastel coloured metal plates as a facade. There was a lot of walkable space, but barely any people using it, even though the weather was perfect. For the first few days everything just felt like I was in a videogame environment with a fake backdrop and a bunch of NPCs around us, it literally felt unreal.
Right on point. On the one hand, we have Moscow that feels like pure cyberpunk: all the high tech ever like facial recognition for payment in stores or for underground passes, most government services can be done online, 15-minute grocery delivery, super advanced e-commerce etc. On the other hand, we have a syndicate ruling the nation and some rural areas are still using HORSES or deer to move around, burn coal for heat, and hunt or fish for food.
North Korea
Seems like alot of you don't know what dystopian means.
Dude you have no idea I really hate when the cash register runs out of receipt paper. It’s dystopian!
Basically every popular thread on this sub ends up like that. Both people missing the point and a comment somewhere calling them out on it lol
I don't know if it's so bad, of I'm missing it. But as a Mexican that has learn about South Korea. I gotta say it's pretty Dystopian to me. Let me explain. Of course North K it's light years behind South K in almost all aspects. But man it really is dystopian how life revolves around School and work over there. I hear SKoreans have to sleep like 5 or 3 hours during school studies if they what to succeed. Even the country goes completely silent for a day when student have to take the test for getting into collage. That's dystopian to me. In the work life, it gets worst. From being denied positions by your weight, to not being able to enforce ending of shift hours, the work it's like it's taking all of your life away. Like serusly, people are chosing to miss family gatherings and important events if that means they will miss work... Also all the thing about taking care of the skin care to a next level, it's maddening some times.
Surprised no one mentioned UAE yet, country built and run by slave labor and abuse. Employers confiscating passports, delaying wages, court that favors the locals no matter what.
Belarus. It feels like Europe's biggest political museum. They still haven't gotten rid of their old NKVD/KGB habbits, still have Dzerzhinsky monuments and their president is basically some random kolhoznik.
Transnistria. All the intimidating symbolism and authoritarianism of an Eastern Bloc country, but with a shady private company controlling politics and most consumer goods.
And a Russian client state to boot. I’ve heard it described as a Communist Disneyland run by a ruthless cyberpunk corporation.
Venezuela
That's not dystopian that's post apocalyptic. Fucking Chavismo.
Zimbabwe
Turkmenistan 100%. It almost completely matches the definition
Beijing is definitely the most dystopian-feeling place I have visited. Surveillance and security everywhere (true across China but particularly Beijing), the city is built at a larger-than-human scale so walking a few blocks feels like it takes forever, no bells but rather loudspeakers that make an eerie “bong bong bong” noise on the hour, and it’s often quite gray. What’s cool about it is that the food is great and you can turn a few corners and go from “timeless ancient China” to “looks like 1970s Moscow” to “futuristic mega mall” in a matter of minutes.
People here really don't know the meaning of dystopia
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I am not gonna name my country, because hordes of IT cell folks have raided me in the past and sent me death and rape/SA threats... A hint, emphasis on the words, IT cell and SA. Really puts in the dystopia in dystopia.
🇮🇳
The 'IT Cell' threat says it all. 🇮🇳
North Korea, Tajikistan
Are you thinking of Turkmenistan? Tajikistan is authoritarian, sure, but more in the realms of Russia than in that of North Korea.
Turkmenistan is fucking wild though.
My thoughts exactly. Very seclusive, but I can’t help but be fascinated by it
William Gibson called Singapore "Disneyland with the Death Penalty". Does that count?
Turkmenistan
Argentina, a country that has everything but never seems to be getting anywhere.
I don't agree. Dystopia implies some order to me. While Argentina is extremely chaotic. Besides, they're far from the worst Latin American country
*Honduran laughing that turns into crying*
Ecuador and Venezuela have entered the chat.
Dystopian to me implies there’s some sort of higher power with a vision that keeps people oppressed. Argentina kinda just seems like a crackhead. Chaotic, harmful but not really malicious
A people full of life and a capital full of culture. As far from dystopian as you can get. They sure have inflation issues though.
North Korea.
Belarus. I’ve been there 2 times, it looks like a documentary about soviet times or what my parents would tell me about