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The better dystopias seem to be about how a multitude of things have gone wrong, and now here we are, surviving with as much grace as possible. It is also a practice in literature to create a dystopia through the [[Deconstruction]] of an earlier creator's [[Utopia]], showing how horrible it is to live in one. Another use is to serve as a [[Big Bad]] for [[The Hero]] and his friends to revolt against; these are more likely to be toppled, or at least escaped from, than others.
Some dystopias have its citizens living out dehumanized and often fearful lives, [[Big Brother Is Watching|feeling the government's eyes upon them at every waking moment]] and afraid to step out of line for even a moment lest they be [[Police Brutality|brutalized by the police]] or worse, taken away by the [[Secret Police]]. Other dystopias have the people as happy as any utopian world, [[Bread and Circuses|but through]] [[Government Drug Enforcement]], [[The Evils of Free Will]] or [[Happiness in Slavery]]. Some dystopias are [[Empire
Expect [[Fascists' Bed Time|curfews]] and [[Dystopian Edict|bans on "love"]] to show up early in; they're a sure-fire cue card for oppression.
Occasionally, a [[Fish Out of Water]] will seem to arrive in a [[Utopia]], only to find that it's really a dystopia for all but the elite.
May have [[Peace and Love Incorporated]] and [[Getting Smilies Painted
See [[Dystopia Is Hard]] and [[You Fail Economics Forever]] for one reason why certain Dystopias could not exist in reality (true oppression, especially of the Big Brother variety, is ''really expensive''), and how people in general are resistant to the creation of a society that they believe is against their general well-being. For when someone is actually pursuing this type of society as an end in itself, see [[Dystopia Justifies the Means]].
For more types of [[Dystopia|Dystopias]], see [[You Would Not Want to Live In Dex]]. For the game, click [[Dystopia (
{{examples}}
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* ''[[Gunnm]]'' (aka ''[[Battle Angel Alita]]'') -- highlights to Scrapyard. {{spoiler|In some ways, Tiphares is even worse. In fact, it pretty much moves up to [[Crapsack World]] . Last Order applies this to the universe. And it's ALL Alita's fault!}}
* Runessa's homeworld in ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'', as revealed in ''[[All There in the Manual|StrikerS Sound Stage X]]''. Living in a land of nationalism, racism, and pointless wars, there was a severe lack of food and daily necessities, but there were plenty of weapons to go around. Runessa mentioned that, for as long as she remembered, [[Child Soldiers|she had always slept with guns on her side]], and she had always thought that she was going to live there for the rest of her life until she was shot and an NGO rescued her. So war-torn was her land, that even during the Jail Scaglietti incident, she considered Mid-childa to be an unbelievably peaceful place.
* ''[[
* [[Texhnolyze]].
* The ''[[Blame]]'' universe certainly qualifies, with emphasis on [[Abara]] and [[
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* ''[[Watchmen]]'' to the extreme. More or less subverted in the end, when {{spoiler|there is finally world peace, though there are millions dead and one of the world's largest cities is destroyed.}} Even the peace brought about is suggested to be quite fragile, suggesting that it was all for nothing.
* Lots of comic book miniseries, many of them set in alternate versions of past history where the presence of superheroes have altered society as we know it, such as ''The Golden Age'' and ''The American Way''.
* Subverted in ''[[Transmetropolitan]]''. The future setting appears at first to be a filthy, crowded, cruel dystopia. As the story progresses, though, it becomes clear that they're dealing with essentially the same issues we deal with today, just with the volume turned up by technology and increased population. Furthermore, some of the modern world's problems have been defeated; pollution has ceased to be an issue for example, though in Spider's childhood it apparently still was a severe threat. The subversion is further driven home by the protagonist's [[Jerk
* Mega City One, home of ''[[Judge Dredd]]'', due to being a [[Satire]] on zero-tolerance policing. Actually, all of the mega cities in ''Judge Dredd's'' world qualify. And nearly all of the habitable land outside them is a wasteland, peppered with radioactive areas and populated by mutants -- the result of a series of nuclear wars. So the whole of ''Judge Dredd's'' world qualifies.
* The world of ''[[Strontium Dog]]'' is not quite so horrible as ''Judge Dredd'', but it's still pretty nasty. In the aftermath of a nuclear war, [[Mutant|mutants]] are a victimised underclass and big tycoons casually commit genocide in the name of profit.
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== Fan Works ==
* Played with in ''[[
== Film ==
* [[George Lucas]]' 1971 film ''[[THX 1138 (Film)|THX 1138]]'' takes place in an antiseptic future that seems to have combined the most self-destructive tendencies of both socialism and capitalism. Religion is illegal except for worship of the Almighty State, and the residents ''all'' work for the government, in one capacity or another, and are expected to inform on their neighbors for crimes such as computer hacking or refusing to take their medication; at the same time, though, they are encouraged to work long hours, make money, and buy as much material property as they can. (We see THX himself buying a red ''thing'' at a store that sells nothing but different-colored ''things''; he takes it home and promptly throws it down the garbage disposal, which is what you're apparently supposed to do with them.)
* ''[[
** Massive population growth combined with deforestation means that there isn't enough food or housing, and human life has very little value. Rioters are literally scooped into large trucks and taken away, never to be seen again. The plot of the movie revolves around [[It Was His Sled|finding where exactly they go...]]
* ''[[Meet the Robinsons]]'': Parodied in the world as run by bowler hats.
* Remarkably, in [[Woody Allen]]'s film ''Sleeper'', he uses the setting of a future dystopia to pay homage to the style of old silent comedies.
* ''[[Brazil (
* ''[[Equilibrium]]'' features a future where human emotion has been outlawed in an effort to stop another disastrous war from coming to pass. Emotion is kept in check by a drug called Prozium, anything inducive of emotion is destroyed ([[Culture Police|books, movies, music, art]] and even [[Kick the Dog|cute little dogs]]), and "sense offenders" who refuse to take the drug are terminated with extreme prejudice by the [[Faceless Goons|Sweepers]] and the [[Badass Longcoat|Grammaton Clerics]].
* ''[[Logan's Run]]'': You are killed when you turn thirty.
* ''[[The Matrix]]'': A dystopia brought about by [[Humans Are Bastards]], leading to the [[Robot War]].
* The world of ''[[
* ''[[Idiocracy]]'' was presented as a dystopia based on the extreme dumbing down of America. However, it also included extreme cases of mass consumerism and product placement (brought to you by Carl's Jr.). And apparently Mike Judge [[Author Tract|had an axe to grind]] about celebrities being elected into office (Wrestler, turned porn star, turned president).
* ''[[Blade Runner]]''.
* ''[[
* ''[[The Island]]'' starts as a pretty straightforward one, {{spoiler|it's later subverted in that the real world is not dystopic at all.}}
* The film adaptation of ''[[Aeon Flux]]''.
* ''[[Children of Men]]'', where only Britain "soldiers on".
* ''[[Kin
* ''[[Back to The Future]] Part II'': Biff Tannen created an alternate version of 1985 when he gave the [[Timeline-Altering MacGuffin|Gray's Sports Almanac]] to his younger self in 1955. As a result, he became "the luckiest man on Earth" by betting on everything from horse racing to boxing and always winning due to the answers in the almanac. He founded Biffco, a company that dealt with toxic waste reclamation. He bought out police departments, and even altered the state of international history, by prolonging the Vietnam War and getting Richard Nixon elected to his fifth term. As a result, Hill Valley, now heavily polluted and known as "Hell Valley", had been reduced to rubble, where biker gangs and criminals made their home.
* ''[[Pleasantville]]''. The main character, David, watched the show on TV and always saw it as a utopia. When he and his sister end up getting sucked into the TV, though, things aren't as great as they appeared. The place starts out as a nostalgic and pretty view of the 1950's, but later on the uglier side of the decade (like sexual repression and racial discrimination) start to rear their ugly heads.
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== Literature ==
* Effectively universally-recognized "[[Trope Codifier|canon]]" dystopian literature:
** ''[[
** ''[[Brave New World (
** ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]'' by [[
** ''[[The Jungle]]'' by Upton Sinclair.
*** [[The Jungle]] is a debatable example. Though the story is fictional, the setting and problems with the world were very deliberately based on the real life situation for the working poor in early twentieth-century Chicago. So much so that it inspired the creation of new laws (albeit laws around food safety rather than worker protection).
* ''[[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep]]?'' by [[Philip K. Dick]], the novel which inspired ''[[Blade Runner]]''. Nominally, the film is an adaptation.
** ''[[Minority Report]]'', also by Dick, is set in a world where the police can predict your actions, and convict you of murder simply for thinking it, even if involuntarily. The film version goes a step further in that retinal scanners track every movement of every citizen, ads call people by name by reading their identity, and mechanical spiders are used to conduct unwarranted searches, eliminating any semblance of privacy.
* ''Bend Sinister'', a book by Vladimir Nabokov in which a fictitious East European country is [[Day of the Jackboot|taken over]] by the Ekwilist [[Black Shirt|Party of the Average Man]], who want to end conflict by equalizing all personality attributes and making everyone the "average man." In reality, all they succeed in doing is ruining the lives of the country's inhabitants, murdering the family of the country's only internationally renowned figure, the philosopher Adam Krug, and driving him insane.
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* Lois Lowry's ''[[The Giver]]'', a rare dystopian novel for kids, with a society that has gotten rid of pain and conflict through "The Sameness."
* The planet Camezotz from ''A Wrinkle In Time'' is another children's lit example.
* [[Key
* In ''Myst: The Book of D'Ni'', the survivors of the fallen [[Utopia]] D'Ni discover Terahnee, which appears to be everything D'Ni was and more, but it is not what it appears. While D'Ni's Utopia was built on [[Functional Magic|semi-magical technology]], Terahnee is built on slavery. In fact, slavery of the same people the D'Ni survivors intermarried with. Time to run!
* Danish author Dennis Jürgensen wrote a book titled ''Dystopia'', which hits all the main points, and offers an interesting solution... two youths from a dystopia where the 'social issues' are xenophobia, intolerance and mistrust, are thrown into a [[Fish Out of Water]] situation in another world, literally named 'Dystopia', where the issue is apathy and defeatism. Can two different, and equally flawed, attitudes cancel each others out? Maybe so. Good luck finding a translation of that book, tho...
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* Margaret Atwood's ''[[The Handmaids Tale|The Handmaid's Tale]]''. Everything is rationed by the theocratic government - including women.
** More precisely, the fertile women; the environment's a mess.
* The People's Republic of Haven from the ''[[
* The world of ''[[Jennifer Government]]'' is an ultra-capitalist Dystopia, where everything is for sale if you have enough money. Also, at one point, the antagonist John Nike reads an old sci-fi novel ''The Merchants in Space'', and dismisses the classic notion of a big government dystopia, and is disappointed when the book turns out to be a satire of capitalism.
* Kurt Vonnegut's ''[[Harrison Bergeron]]'', a short story focusing on the problem of government forcing equality by any means possible. The beautiful must wear hideous masks, the strong and agile carry sacks of iron on their backs... So it goes.
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{{quote| Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water<br />
She thrust him down and broke his crown; it was a lovely slaughter. }}
* [[
** The villains of ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]'' are aiming to create an effectively dystopian America, but the country collapses on them because they lack both charisma and competence. Towards the end, one of the villains insinuates that the decimation of children and the elderly might be in order to prevent starvation for the rest of the people.
* The 1907 novel ''The Lord of the World'' by Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson shows Western civilization as having turned into a socialist, technologically-advanced society that persecutes those still clinging to religion and individualism, and attempts to stamp out Christianity once and for all. This is brought to a head with the arising of the Anti-Christ...
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* ''Yawning Heights'' by Alexander Zinoviev is an exaggerated picture of the Soviet society with names and key words (like "Khruschev" or "party") replaced with caricature substitutes in [[Bland-Name Product]] style (like "Boar" and "fratry"). [[Black Comedy]] with [[Fictional Document]] fragments containing scientific analysis in very plain words including his view on pop science -- he was a professor, specialist in Mathematical Logic.
* The short story ''Sam Hall'' is about a dystopian society where everything about everyone is recorded in a massive national database. One clerk creates a fake file about a fictional dissident named Sam Hall (named after an angry drinking song) into the database as a joke, who escapes all police searches due to the fact that he doesn't actually exist. The nation eventually tears itself apart trying to track down a nonexistent criminal.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Midnight World]]'' trilogy by Alexander Yang.
* The [[Delirium Series]] by Lauren Oliver is set in a future America where love is considered a disease and every citizen has to be "cured" via brain surgery at eighteen.
* The ''Sisterhood'' series by [[Fern Michaels]]: The world seems similar enough to the world in [[Real Life]], with people going about their lives. However, there are indications that the world in this series is actually a [[Dystopia]]. The courts are unable to deliver justice, because the balance of power leans too heavily towards the defense attorneys, and the prosecutors are lucky if the defendant does not get [[Off
* [[
* The online short story ILU-486 takes place in a world where conservative Christian views on birth control and abortion have become law, and follows the women that need medical assistance and the outlaw doctors that provide it. Chillingly, all the oppressive laws (apart from the return of gibbets) are based on actual submitted legislation from American politicians.
* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s "A World Called Maanerek", the Hegemony is out to force all mankind in unity, to hold loyalty only to the Cadre. They choose their mates, who are allowed contact seldom, and all children are raised in creches. Your life position is choosen when you are bred for it, and entails burning out parts of your mind if you are lowly enough. When ships sent out to find more humans to bring them into the fold, they will freely, when problems mount too high, take over part of a planet and let the men run wild with [[Cold-Blooded Torture]] and rape to release their aggressions.
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== Live Action TV ==
* The first season of ''[[
* ''[[Blake's Seven|Blakes Seven]]''. A [[Space Opera]] in which Earth is run by fascists, where the (few) good guys are criminals.
* ''[[Max Headroom]]''.
* The [[Alternate Universe]] in the ''[[
* The Alphaverse in ''Charlie Jade'', a corrupt megacorp-dominated plutocracy where chip implants are mandatory, people are divided into castes, justice is an illusion, and pollution and depletion of natural resources are so ridiculously high that the dominant megacorp plans to use its trans-universe link to steal water from a [[Utopia|utopian parallel Earth]].
* The [[Mirror Universe]] in ''[[
* Several alternate universes and/or timelines seen in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' featuring the breakdown of society, the defeat/near defeat of Earth by its enemies, etc.
* Many alternate universes in ''[[Sliders]]''.
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* [[Rush]]'s ''2112'' is in part a concept album based on ''Anthem'' by Ayn Rand. Although individual identity is not as suppressed as it is in the book, technology, and especially music, is outlawed. The main character discovers a guitar and learns to play; and when he bring it back to share with the rest of the world, the ruling elite arrest him and smash his guitar. He reacts by {{spoiler|[[Driven to Suicide|committing suicide in despair]]}}.
** Also ''Red Barchetta'' from the album ''Moving Pictures'' based on the story ''A Nice Morning Drive,'' written by Richard Foster (itself a kind of dystopia-by-over-watchfulness). The song is about a young man driving a car in a world where cars and/or driving is outlawed.
* [[David Bowie]]'s ''Diamond Dogs'' was originally intended to be a rock-opera based on [[
** ''Outside'' is the first volume in what was intended to be a trilogy set in a [[Cyberpunk]] dystopia, where murder has become an underground art form. The other two albums in the trilogy, ''Contamination'' and ''Afrikaan'', never materialized; and the project appears to have been dropped.
* A number of other artists have done songs and albums based on ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]''; most notably Rick Wakeman, Supertramp, Genesis founder Anthony Phillips, Muse, and Megadeth.
* Dystopian themes occur regularly in later albums from [[Pink Floyd]], most notably ''Animals'' (inspired by Orwell's ''[[Animal Farm]]'') and ''[[The Wall]]''; as well as Roger Waters' solo work ''Radio Kaos'' and ''Amused To Death''.
* ''Kilroy Was Here'' by progressive rock band Styx tells the story of a young rock musician in a future fascist dystopia, where music is outlawed on the order of a powerful right-wing religious group.
* [[
* ''Year Zero'' by [[Nine Inch Nails]], is about a dystopian future where the far right has taken over America and the "Bureau of Morality" has eroded civil liberties and generally act as a [[Culture Police]] against any form of expression, particularly music, that dissents against the powers that be.
* Tubeway Army, the project of noted electronica pioneer Gary Numan, produced a semi-concept album ''Replicas''; the theme of which was humans living in a society dominated by androids and machines. It draws heavily from the writings of Phillip K. Dick, particularly ''Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep''.
* The entire schtick of sludge-metal band Dystopia.
* "Brave New World" by [[
* [[Oingo Boingo]]'s ''Perfect System'' depicts a totalitarian socity ruled by a Big Brother figure.
** A number of other songs off of the album ''Only a Lad'' (which ''Perfect System'' is from) fit into such a setting as well in addition to pointing out potentially dystopian elements of modern life.
* [[Radiohead]]'s ''OK Computer'', while not having an explicitly dystopian story, does incorporate dystopian themes.
* [[Frank Zappa]]'s ''Joes Garage'' is a rock opera set in a [[Church of Happyology|semi-religious]] dystopia where music and sex are soon to be illegal, and all illegal activities are punished pre-emptively. The story is narrated by "The Central Scrutinizer", a McCarthy-like observer who is charged with detecting and punishing actions which will be crimes in the future.
* Del tha Funkee Homosapien's ''Deltron 3030'' concept album deals with the titular character's struggles to survive in a future that may have outlawed music, that has [[Fascists' Bed Time|strict, bullet-enforced curfews]], and is described via references to Neuromnancer and Akira.
* [[The Who]]'s song ''905'' (which was originally intended for a full [[Rock Opera]] by bassist John Entwistle) and the aborted ''Lifehouse'' album (which would be released decades later by Pete Townshend)
* "Control" by [[KMFDM
* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuwW9IVwZ0U Dystopia]" by [[Iced Earth]].
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** Not to mention there's a faction of [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Well Intentioned Extremists]] who are considered to be naive ''because'' of that belief. Given the setting, there's probably a kernel of truth to that.
*** Of course, [[Troperiffic|like so many other tropes]], 40k plays with the [[Dystopia]] trope: Some worlds are utter shitholes where trillions of people live in perpetual misery and poverty and/or is under perpetual attack from said manifestations of vices and just about every other alien force in the galaxy, while others are fairly pleasant and safe places to live. The big problem is that there's a lot more of the former type of world in 40k than the latter.
* ''[[Paranoia]]'' is an RPG set [[After the End]], in Alpha Complex, an underground city. The Complex is ruled by [[The Computer Is Your Friend|Friend Computer]], a supercomputer whose databases were corrupted following a disaster that wiped out human civilization.<br /><br />The Computer is quite insane and utterly paranoid, and rules with an iron fist, society being organized in a hierarchy of security clearances based on the [[Color Coded for Your Convenience|colors of the rainbow]]<ref>Infrared and Ultraviolet are represented by black and white, respectively. Rumors of a Gamma Clearance are treason.</ref> and supported by swarms of robots, omnipresent surveillance and an endless bureaucracy. Players are Red-level Troubleshooters, whose job is to [[Exactly What It Says
* ''[[
* ''[[Shadowrun]]''. One of the most famous cyberpunk RPGs set in a Dystopia, one that is played to the hilt just as described at the top of the page. Corporations are huge, often quite literally evil, and ''all'' of them employ multiple packs of criminals to do their dirty work. Racism has been given up, but only because [[Humans Are Bastards|people are such assholes]] that they'd rather focus on [[Fantastic Racism]]. Heck, there's even this one bit from the fourth edition core book, talking about the availability of medical treatment, which cites privatized health care as one of the causes of dystopia (oddly enough, using the criticisms usually leveled at socialized/universal healthcare):
{{quote| "Thanks to privatized healthcare, most people are forced to throw themselves and their ailments on the not-so-tender mercies of an overstressed public healthcare system. Spirits help you if you?re seriously sick or hurt and have to deal with a public hospital: most of them mean well, but they?re notoriously understaffed, awash in red tape, and generally a nightmare to navigate."}}
** And that's if you're a ''legal'' citizen with a proper SIN. [[It Gets Worse|For everyone else...]]
* ''[[
** Tsoka, a dreary, grey empire built from the conceptions of fascism taking over the world. Ironically, it's actually one of the safer Bardos-the Party that runs the place treats Geniuses with the proper papers as foreign dignitaries. Often uses as a recruitment ground for [[The Igor|Beholden]], who are all too happy to become slaves to the Genius if it means ''getting the hell out of there.''
** The Seattle of Tomorrow, a [[Zeerust]] vision of an Atomist utopia. As the game points out repeatedly, [[Straw Vulcan|Atomists]] frequently have absolutely no clue how people work.
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== Video Games ==
* The series ''[[
** ''[[Dystopia (
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Iron Storm]]'' is ''made of this trope''. [[World War One]] has been dragging on for a horrifying 50 years and has become a [[Forever War]]. Everything is saturated with industrial grimness and in general decay. The global economy has become dominated by greedy and ignorant [[Mega Corp|MegaCorps]] and completely dependent on [[War for Fun
* The ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' series tends to feature a dystopia [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] with each release. In [[Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots]], the dystopia is driven mainly by the mass appeal of private military services, the use of warfare as a means of economic stimulus and the growth in the application of nano-machine technology (the game's [[Applied Phlebotinum]]).
* ''[[Shaun White Skateboarding]]'', as unlikely as it may sound, is all based around how the 'Minstry' has taken control of the people, forcing them to conform to a bland unemotional state and being constantly monitored. The only way to save the city is to skate around it, as which point colours start to appear and suddenly people no longer want to wear a tie.
* [[Oni]] definitely uses this trope. The first social issue is the environment. The environment is polluted like you would not believe. The government not only does nothing to address it, apart from using Atmospheric Processors to make the cities livable, but it brands anyone who tries to bring it up as enemies of the state and will crush attempts to reveal it. The second social issue is the development of science and technology. The government keeps an eye on scientists and carefully checks to make sure any technology developed is approvable (in other words, will not threaten it). They use the Technological Crimes Task Force as a [[Secret Police]] force to enforce this.
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== Webcomics ==
* ''[[
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[
* In ''[[
** Thats not to say Fire Nation itself is not a particularly pleasant place to live, though, and unlike Ba Sing Se it actively suppresses its people rather than letting them live normal lives so long as they don't piss the leaders off. Even their colonies seem to be better and more open places, as simple things like ''dancing'' are effectively outlawed on the Fire Nation mainland, and their don't seem to be any of the celebrations or festivals seen in the first series either. History has been rewritten to paint the Fire Nation as victims rather than imperialistic aggressors (such as they heroically defeating the Air Nomad army, when they were all pacifist monks), school students make a daily pledge of allegiance to Fire Lord Ozai, and Fire Nation villages are starved and poisoned by their own armed forces who don't see a problem with setting up a highly pollutant weapons factory next door.
* The American ''[[
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