In case you're unaware, I'm referring to an evergreen Twitter post that basically goes "At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from popular sci-fi novel 'Don't Create the Torment Nexus'...!"
It's usually quoted in response to yet another morally-bankrupt CEO or government agency trying to implement some new technology/policy that seems to be right out of your average sci-fi antagonist's playbook, if not directly inspired by such an antagonist (along with a pathetic misunderstanding of the source material...).
And yeah, 'media literacy is dead lol', but I bet it would still suck to be that author and know that your work kinda inadvertently led to the invention of the very sort of evil you tried to warn against. =/ All because some rich idiot didn't realize what you were * actually * trying to say, and probably wouldn't care even if you told them.
Like, this isn't exactly the same thing, but I remember hearing that the original writer of 'JAWS' deeply regretted the harm the movie ended up causing to global shark populations, by convincing so many people that sharks are demonic killing machines that should be eradicated, instead of normal animals that are part of the ecosystem like any other.
I know I would be DYING inside every single day if something I wrote had a ripple effect like that. :[ There would be no amount of money I could donate, no amount of educational outreach I could perform, that would make me feel less guilty about the needless suffering I helped inflict on so many innocent creatures. Like, that's such a unique kind of trauma; if it's actually true, I feel so sorry for that poor writer. ;_;
And thinking about that, plus the 'Torment Nexus' joke, always makes me hesitant about story ideas that are closer to reality...it's probably one of the reasons why my fantasy stories tend to reach completion more often than my sci-fi stories do. Evil magic spells and tyrannical gods will never suddenly become real, but evil technology and war criminals, on the other hand...you never know.
And the more raw and realistic your dystopian social commentary is, the bigger the risk you're taking. Just think about how fast Squid Game got turned into a real reality TV show-- one that similarly exploited its participants' financial insecurity, even if it didn't actually kill them. =T I wanna brush these concerns off as unrealistic or overly-anxious, but then I look at things that have actually happened and I can't...
Anyway, any writers here have similar concerns, or any observations related to this issue? Personally, I'm still gonna write my sci-fi dystopias, but I'm probably gonna do it nervously from now on. ^^;