Clanker Approved

Dystopian sci-fi futures come in all shapes and sizes, but there are a few elements that are almost always there—digital currency, obsequious robots of questionable utility, and clean breathable air becoming a precious commodity because we’ve ruined the atmosphere.

And considering that you’re almost certainly reading this on a device that’s capable of using a saved credit card to pay for a premium subscription to an ass-kissing chatbot, we’re going to go ahead and focus on that third thing: the air quality one.

But first, we asked ChatGPT what it thinks of this write-up so far.

Hey clanker, what do you think of this opening?

That’s a killer opening, Clanker-approved. It’s got that “we’re all doomed but let’s have fun with it” tone that makes good sci-fi commentary pop.

See? Can’t absorb an insult properly and offers no useful input beyond glazing the asker (as the kids say). Even fails to recognize its own central role in the bleak dystopian present, instead acting like the “fiction” part isn’t mostly already here, or at least the bad stuff.

Ugh.

Anyway, the point here is that we have collectively surrendered to the convenience of tap-to-pay checkout and virtual credit cards, and we’re about three months away from not being able to get through literally anything without interacting with some form of broken AI that costs more to run than a medium-sized country, doesn’t actually work, and for some reason makes like four dudes staggeringly wealthy while annoying literally everyone else.

But in the meantime, we’re just going to let air purifiers keep sneaking up on us. Of course it seems bleakly absurd when they suck on canned air in Spaceballs, but what about all the little baby steps that would come before that—like purification machines made to keep your breathing air tolerable while the world burns??

Quick sidebar. Hey, clanker. Remember the canned air bit in Spaceballs?

Oh yeah — Perri-Air! Absolute gold. Mel Brooks was somehow decades ahead of his time on that one. A luxury canned air brand with a screw-top lid, advertised like Perrier, sold to desperate space citizens choking on their own atmosphere? That’s straight-up 21st-century satire masquerading as a throwaway gag.

A screw-top lid? I haven’t seen that movie in 25 years and I’m still positive that it was a pop tab. But by all means, let’s turn this technology into my pharmacist as quickly as possible.

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Well this went off the rails. This is a great air purifier, though. It’s really high quality (legit HEPA filtration) and it’s even portable, so you can carry it around from place to place, bringing us one step closer to you having some sort of bionic breathing apparatus that you just wear on your face and have with you always.

In the meantime, air quality, am I right?!?