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Dystopia may be the stuff of fiction but honestly it’s starting to feel a lot like real life. Between the AI that people are apparently going on dates with and the tech that seems to know more about you than your closest friends, something about the world right now just feels a little off in a way that’s hard to shake.

So when a Redditor asked people to share the most dystopian photos from their home countries, it’s probably not that surprising that they had plenty to work with. We’ve rounded them up below.

#1 Brazil. City Of São Paulo, On The Border Of The Paraisópolis And Morumbi Neighborhoods

#2 China. This Photo Gives Me An Indescribable Feeling

#3 Australia. Old Farmhouses In The Outback Always Give Me That Feeling

The photos in this thread are something else. Towering cities so densely packed they make you feel like an ant. Homeless tents stretching for blocks. Rivers running strange colors from industrial runoff.

Looking through them, a word keeps coming to mind, and it’s the same word that keeps coming up in conversations about the state of the world right now. Dystopia. Sounds about right.

#4 Australia

#5 Russia

#6 Russia. I Know That The Internet Likes This Picture (Chuvash State Opera And Ballet Theatre)

But what does dystopia actually mean, and where did the word even come from? It starts, fittingly, with the opposite idea.

In 1516, Sir Thomas More coined the word “utopia” for his book about an ideal fictional society, pulling it from the Greek for “no place,” essentially admitting that perfection doesn’t exist anywhere on earth.

The word dystopia came much later, first appearing in its modern usage when philosopher John Stuart Mill used it in a speech to the British House of Commons in 1868 to criticize a government policy he found so bad it deserved its own word. He put the Greek prefix “dys,” meaning bad or abnormal, in front of “topia,” meaning place. A bad place. That was the idea.

#7 United States Of America. Bulletproof Backpack For Kids

#8 Korea South

#9 Malaysia. We Actually Built It. Second Highest Building In The World And We Let Doctor Breen Setup His Hq In It

It took a while for the concept to really take hold in fiction, but when it did, it stuck. Dystopian storytelling tends to emerge in waves, usually after some kind of global trauma. The years surrounding the World Wars gave us some of the most enduring examples.

George Orwell’s 1984 imagined a world of total government surveillance and rewritten history. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World went another direction, picturing a society so obsessed with pleasure and order that people were engineered from birth to fit into it.

Both were published in the shadow of real authoritarian regimes, and both felt uncomfortably close to things that were actually happening.

#10 United States Of America

#11 United Kingdom

#12 Finland. Kouvola – All The Nice Things Concrete Can Build!

Dystopian fiction tends to share a few recognizable features wherever you find it. There’s usually a society that has gone badly wrong in some specific way, and a government that has either too much power or none at all.

Ordinary people find their freedoms stripped away, sometimes slowly, sometimes all at once. And the environment tends to reflect the decay happening at every other level.

#13 Palestinian Territory

#14 Ukraine. It’s Written “Children”

#15 A Swiss Town After The Melting Of A Glacier. The Whole Town Has Been Evacuated 3 Days Prior To Disaster

The New York Times reports that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the Alps are heating up at about nearly twice the global average rate.

The technology in these worlds tends to serve control rather than freedom. Information gets manipulated or destroyed. And there’s almost always someone who starts to notice the cracks and can’t stop noticing them once they do.

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games are all great examples of the dystopian genre.

#16 Romania

#17 USA

#18 During The George Floyd Protests. The Militarization Of Us Police Forces Is Out Of Control

But have we truly reached dystopia, or as heart-breaking as things are, are we not quite there yet? The answer depends on who you ask, because for a lot of people the word gets thrown around pretty casually.

Shauna Shames, Associate Professor at Rutgers University, and Amy Atchison, Associate Professor of Political Science at Valparaiso University, wrote a compelling piece during the COVID pandemic arguing that we haven’t crossed that line.

And they made that case at a moment when everything felt truly dystopian and like something we couldn’t come back from. Even then, they pointed out, people still showed up for one another. Communities organized. Kindness appeared where you least expected it.

#19 The Netherlands 🇳🇱 – Egypt 🇪🇬

#20 Serbia. Our Workers Working In Korean Factory Forced To Bow As Company Promotion. Also They Have To Wear Diapers And Are Beaten By Managers If They Complain

#21 🇿🇦 South Africa —> 🇩🇪 Germany

Taking the US as an example, they say that even with all its difficulties and all the very valid criticism of how fragile its democracy can feel, it still holds. “It still has functioning democratic institutions. Many in the U.S. fight against dehumanization and persecution of minorities. Courts are adjudicating cases. Legislatures are passing bills,” they remind.

And that’s actually where Shames and Atchison see something worth holding onto. Dystopian fiction shows us the future we don’t want, and in doing that it gives us a reason to make sure we never get there. As they wrote, “fictional dystopias warn of preventable futures; those warnings can help avert the actual demise of democracy.”

#22 India

#23 Italy

#24 Japan. “Are You Looking Forward To Today’s Work?”

So as depressing as dystopia is, maybe that’s exactly the point. The genre exists to unsettle us, and so do photos like these.

But feeling unsettled and feeling hopeless are two different things. If anything, the fact that we’re still capable of recognizing how wrong things look is a reason to do something about it, not a reason to give up.

#25 Ukraine

#26 Canada

#27 Germany: Old People Looking Through Rubbish Because The Amount Of Money For Retirement And Social Help Is Not Enough To Buy Food And Stuff

#28 France

#29 Bangladesh. This Photo Of Brac Uni Looks Pretty Cyberpunk/Dystopian

#30 Bucharest

#31 USA

#32 Niscemi, Sicily, Italy

The whole town was built without permits, on the edge of an active landslide. The inhabitants now demand compensation from the government, so they can relocate in penthouses in Palermo or Milan.

#33 Poland. Someone Build A Castle On A Nature 2000 Territory. I Have No Idea How Many Millions They Used For Bribes But It Was Clearly Enough

#34 Photo By Pierre Lavie. USA

Pierre captured a photo of another member of the press, John Abernathy, being a******d and throwing his camera to safety to ensure ICE wouldn’t destroy his camera and photos while they detained him (without cause).

#35 New Zealand

#36 Nothing Looks More Dystopian Than Gaza Right Now

#37 Also In Brazil: Manaus City Limit And The Amazon Forest

#38 Venezuela. Yeah, Well, The Barrios As Always Been The Most Horrible Think About Our Cities, Interestingly If You Complain About It You’re Elitist And “Racist”? Towards The Poor

#39 Oslo Government Quarter Right After The Bombing 22/7-2011. The First Of Two Terrorist Attacks (Second Being The Mass Shooting At Utøya Youth Camp)

#40 USA. This Image Is From My Hometown In 1967. The Great Lakes Were So Polluted By Waste Dumping You Couldn’t Swim In Them

Its gotten significantly better in the last few decades because of better regulations, as well as Zebra Mussels attached to trade ships filtering the water

#41 Hungary. The Text Is “Brussels’ Sanctions Destroy Us!”

#42 United States Of America. Full Disclosure, I’ve Defended These Before As Being Deeply American With Close Ties To Our Culture Around Road Trips

That being said, it’s certainly unpleasant to look at. Also a quiet commentary on how the little man local business has been pushed out of the market in a lot of ways.

#43 United States Of America

#44 Italy. Le Lavatrici Di Genova, The “Washing Machines” Of Genoa, Brutalist Architecture

#45 UK. The Press Would Say Jaywick In Essex Is. But Those In The Know Will Point You To Scarfolk, Their Tourist Board Has It’s Own Facebook Group

#46 France. One Among Many Others, Here’s What The Cops Look Like When There’s A Protest From Anyone But The Far-Right

#47 Canada. Open Pit Oil Sand Mines In Northern Alberta

#48 Junkies Around The Frankfurt Train Station

#49 Not The Most Dystopian In The Country But One In Texas

The Katy freeway west of Houston. A roadway eternally under construction and attempts to solve the problem of congestion by ever widening the road. Forget mass transit, add more lanes.

#50 Iran. This Was Taken In The Winter In Tehran, When The Air Is So Polluted We Have “Pollution Days” Where Schools Are Closed Because The Air Is Too Dangerous For Kids

#51 Egypt. The Definition Of Urban Hell

#52 Kazakhstan. Arkalyk Is Borderline A Ghost Town

#53 I Don’t Think I Need To Give Context But The Women Are Forced To Cover Up Or Else They Get Beaten Etc

#54 Downtown Eastside In A City Ranked 10th In The Global Liveability Index By The Economist Intelligence Unit

#55 USA. This Photo Of January 6th By: Evelyn Hokstein

#56 Maybe Without Context You Could Frame This As “Living Under Glass”. (It’s The Inside Of The Gasometer Towers In Vienna)

#57 India. You Can’t Even Imagine What It Would Be Like To Be Here These Days. The Govt And People Both Failed

#58 Towns Near Gaza Border After October 7th

#59 Greece

#60 Croatia. Petrova Gora Monument

#61 Italy. Ugh… Sadnss Itself

#62 This Is A Facial Recognition Poster My Cousin Spotted In A Different Town He Was Visiting

#63 This One Is Pretty Interesting And Bizzare. Zámek Jezeří

Basically a historic chateau that has a coal mine devastated area all around it. One of the reminders of communism and their complete lack of regard towards nature, scenery or anything nice.

#64 Street In Macau, Photograph By Paul Tsui, National Geographic Travel Photographer Of The Year Contest

#65 Poland. Taken On 14th Of December 1981 During Martial Law Period. The Building In The Background Is “Moscow” Movie Theater With Poster For Apocalypse Now. Very Symbolic

#66 D**d Woods In Harz, Germany

#67 Chile

#68 USA. Not Sure How Well This Fits Here But I Believe It To Be A Good Representation Of How Things Are For The Homeless In The Us

For context: I had just parked my car on my way to the ol’ watering hole. When I tuned the car off I noticed this man just sitting there under a light. Not moving too much, he was probably sleeping since I didn’t see any ambulance or EMT at all that night and by the time I got back he was gone. When I captured this photo part of me was thinking “oh wow this would make a good picture” but for the most part it ripped at my heart strings. Thankfully I live in Southern California so it doesn’t get TOO cold at night but still.

Anyways I wish the best for him but goddamn dude, the hell are we doing as a nation?