So hear me out…
I was lurking in the Reddit Pluribus subsection; it was interesting to see that so many people were on the side of the Hive. I will not go into the whole 'media literacy is dead' shebang and people choosing the polite person despite them being toxic over the loud person who is an honest firecracker, just like how they do it with people in real life.
Those have their own space, and this post is not about that.
[Fiction exists to evoke. If something makes you feel something, that's not for me to comment on, but just a reminder, I am a former book editor, so please do not start that debate in my comment section. I spent a decade doing those; I am tired.]
I was more interested in the why of it.
Likewise, I wanted to understand the why of its appeal.
Why is the hive so appealing to its in-universe survivors even if they have not consented to the Stem Cell research and, particularly, to us, the viewers?
We never debate this badly when the bad guys are zombies or another alien race coming in UFOs to take over Earth.
Understanding the appeal was very important to me. So went deeper. I lurked some more in other subsections and kept reading what people had typed. The reasons were very logically explained by a few of them.
And the answer hit me like a volleyball. It is so obvious.
It is a fucking reaction to the exhaustion caused by post-pandemic late-stage capitalism. Real-life people are tired of being powerless when everything for sure is going down the drain. I am one of them who is mentally exhausted. I am highly qualified with considerable work under my name and still unemployed because AI took my job.
People who are citing world peace, the end of racism, equal distribution of resources, health care for all, the end of animal cruelty, harmonious co-existence, freedom from forceful AI and environmental conservation, are exhausted and burnt out like me.
Despite doing everything in this real world, 2,781 billionaires are fucking with the future and well-being of 8.3 Billion humans and the planet. They are speedrunning the planet's doomsday clock.
That inability to fix anything, and being fucked over and over again, has finally found an outlet of rebellion. Not destructive zombies, not viruses, not wars, but a peaceful colonization. People don't exactly vibe with the hive, but the naught it brought to the unchecked human greed of the few is truly appealing.
If the Hive is what it says, a safe refuge where no one is struggling and everyone is working with each other, then it will be very tempting. If it can sustain itself for a few years and crumble the old systems down, why not?
Sometimes burning things down and beginning from scratch is a more doable solution than fixing the existing systems. If the hive is offering that option in the story, people will vibe with it.
This is the hard reset people want, a total forceful peace.
Those comments in the Reddit subsection are cries, pleas, and desperate prayers born of real-life anguish.
