Pluralistic: Matt Bors's "Justice Warriors: Vote Harder" (11 Sep 2024)

doctorow · 11 September 2024 12:52

Originally published at: Pluralistic: Matt Bors’s “Justice Warriors: Vote Harder” (11 Sep 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Matt Bors's "Justice Warriors: Vote Harder": Mr Gotcha For President!
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
This day in history: 2014, 2019, 2023
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

The cover for 'Justice Warriors: Vote Harder.'

Matt Bors's "Justice Warriors: Vote Harder" (permalink)

There's no political satirist working today quite like Matt "Mr Gotcha" Bors, whose 2023 masterpiece Justice Warriors just got a timely – and brutally funny – sequel, Justice Warriors: Vote Harder:

https://www.mattbors.com/store/p/justice-warriors-ffzgn

You've doubtless seen Matt Bors's work, which has repeatedly attained viral liftoff, most notably with his Mr Gotcha strips, easily one of the most useful additions to online political debate in internet history:

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Last year, Bors, along with Ben Clarkson and Felipe Sobreiro, published Justice Warriors, a postapocalyptic cyberpunk graphic novel in the vein of Warren Ellis's classic Transmetropolitan:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/22/libras-assemble/#the-uz

Justice Warriors is the tale of Bubble City, a domed enclave walled off from the teeming masses of the UZ (which stands for "Uninhabited Zone" – see what they did there?). Bubble City runs on vibes, therapy-speak, social media nonsense, memes and garbage hot-takes. And while there's a lot of broad satire here, the thing that makes Justice Warriors stand out is how its creators do the relatively straightforward futuristic exercise of asking themselves, "What if deeply unserious nonsense was taken seriously?"

Others have done this before – Mike Judge's Idiocracy, say – but Bors, Clarkson and Sobreiro attain a density of sight gags, trenchant wordplay, and outrageous cyberpunk imagery that is just next level. Think Al Jaffee meets William Gibson, with art direction by Vaughn Bode, who's had one too many at the Mos Eisley Cantina. To that, mix in all kinds of MAD Magazine style fake ads and social media postings, layering joke on gag, all of it walking the fine line between "you gotta cry" and "you gotta laugh."

Justice Warriors did big numbers, selling out three printings, and now the gang is back together for the sequel, Vote Harder, which drops just in time for the final, all consuming election-season media apocalypse.

Vote Harder sees Bubble City facing its first election in living memory, as the mayor – who inherited his position from his "powerful, strapping Papa" – loses a confidence vote by the city's trustees. They're upset with his plan to bankrupt the city in order to buy a laser powerful enough to carve his likeness into the sun as a viral stunt for the launch of his comeback album. The trustees are in no way mollified by the fact that he expects to make a lot of money selling special branded sunglasses that allow Bubble City (and the mutant hordes of the Uninhabited Zone) to safely look into the sun and see what their tax dollars bought.

So it's time for an election, and the two candidates are going hard: there's the incumbent Mayor Prince; there's his half-sister and ex-girlfriend, Stufina Vipix XII, and there's a dark-horse candidate Flauf Tanko, a mutant-tank cyborg that went rogue after a militant Home Owners Association disabled it and its owners abandoned it. Flauf-Tanko is determined to give the masses of the Uninhabited Zone the representation they've been denied for so long, despite the structural impediments to this (UZers need to complete a questionnaire, sub-forms, have three forms of ID, and present a rental contract, drivers license, work permit and breeding license. They also need to get their paperwork signed in person at a VERI-VOTE location, then wait 14 days to get their voter IDs by mail. Also, districts of 2 million or more mutants are allocated the equivalent of only 250,000 votes, but only if 51% of eligible voters show up to the polls; otherwise, their votes are parceled out to other candidates per the terms of the Undervoting and Apathy Allotment Act).

Despite the structural advantages afforded to Mayor Prince – like the fact that residents of District 12 on floors 120-145 of the Bubble each get 2048 votes, while District 1 (floors 1-7) only get a single vote – he's not taking any chances. Officer Schitt (a humanoid poop emoji) and the lovelorn Officer Swamp (an anthropomorphic catfish) are each prowling the Uz . Swamp – suffering from a head injury and gripped by a delusion that a TV cowboy has sent him to infiltrate the Flauf Tanko campaign – is playing spy/provocateur, while Schitt hunts dangerous subversives.

What unfolds is a funny, bitter, superb piece of political satire that could not be better timed.

Hey look at this (permalink)

‘Right to Repair for Your Body’: The Rise of DIY, Pirated Medicine https://www.404media.co/right-to-repair-for-your-body-the-rise-of-diy-pirated-medicine/
Share buybacks are giving billions of dollars to bosses under the guise of returning cash to shareholders https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-share-buybacks-get-used-to-transfer-billions-of-dollars-to-senior-management-under-the-guise-of-returning-cash-to-shareholders-2019-10-30 (h/t Kim Scheinberg)
Google and Apple Face Billions in Penalties After Losing E.U. Appeals https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/technology/european-union-apple-google-antitrust.html

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This day in history (permalink)

#10yrsago Why the disgusting Red Delicious apple rules American grocery stores https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/the-evil-reign-of-the-red-delicious/379892/

#10yrsago Elizabeth Warren speaks for allowing states to limit campaign finance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBbZAMsZ-Rg

#10yrsago Meet the anti-Net Neutrality arms dealers who love network discrimination https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/09/companies-that-sell-network-equipment-to-isps-dont-want-net-neutrality/

#10yrsago Seconds, by Bryan Lee “Scott Pilgrim” O’Malley https://memex.craphound.com/2014/09/11/seconds-by-bryan-lee-scott-pilgrim-omalley/

#10yrsago John Scalzi’s Lock-In https://memex.craphound.com/2014/09/11/john-scalzis-lock-in/

#5yrsago The EU’s top trustbuster gets a surprise re-appointment https://venturebeat.com/business/eu-reappoints-top-antitrust-cop-who-led-crackdown-on-tech-giants/

#5yrsago Majority of period-tracking app share incredibly sensitive data with Facebook and bottom-feeding analytics companies https://web.archive.org/web/20190911004056/https://www.privacyinternational.org/long-read/3196/no-bodys-business-mine-how-menstruation-apps-are-sharing-your-data

#1yrago The Tamakis' "Roaming" https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/11/as-canadian-as/#possible-under-the-circumstances

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

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Albacon (Albany/remote), Sep 13-15
https://albacon.org/2024/
The Right to Read, Boston Public Library, Sep 24
https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/66cf2d8bf520192f005fcc50
TusCon (Tucson), Nov 8-10
https://tusconscificon.com/

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Recent appearances (permalink)

HC4US
https://soundcloud.com/hc4us/081224-cory-doctorow-a-canadian-british-science-fiction-author-activist-and-journalist
Tech Rights & The Future of Privacy (Synthetic Minds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD5iAV1YmO4
Enzittification with Ed Zitron & Brian Merchant
https://omny.fm/shows/better-offline/enzittification-with-cory-doctorow-brian-merchant

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Latest books (permalink)

The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

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Upcoming books (permalink)

Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025
Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay. Today's progress: 775 words (45994 words total).
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025
Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

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