Been kicking around some ideas for a dystopian setting for future commissions and thought the general idea of them would make for a good topic. Do you have any ideas for how a dystopia could use mind control in interesting ways, or have a fictional dystopia that uses it you’d like to discuss?

I like the <<www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1427|SCP based on that theme>>, personally.

And, technically speaking, the classic 1984 does use a form of mind control.

I mean, we could talk The Giver. The reason that book's setting works for me is because of the meaningful conversations between Jonas and The Giver, over how society's changes and customs of mass-brainwashing and control are good in some ways, bad in others. Plus, the concept of a Receiver of Memory to guide the rulers' decisions based on what decisions fucked things up in the last world is pretty neat.

As for new ideas, though... there are already so many different ways to approach that, but mostly because so many people have used so many of those approaches. And regardless, it's so flexible: you want direct mind-control of the citizens? Re-shaping of the education system/propaganda? Obedience training in society? And how do you want to justify the rise of this system: a slow and covert viral spread of control, piece-by-piece restructuring the world? Or starting by absolutely hammering government officials over the head with forcible overtaking of their minds, starting at the top? Or just... any other number of things? You have a lot of options, far more than what I've listed.

You have to:
1) Find a preexisting idea that resonates with you.
2) Ask yourself why it resonates with you. In doing so, you'll have the core of what you find fascinating about it, so that it can stay intact in your writing.
3) Figure out what parts about this system you could change or alter, or what parts you'd LIKE to change or alter, so as to give it its own identity yet still remaining true to that core that resonates with you. Or maybe during this step you start drifting away from that core conceit, and that's okay too.
4) Keep changing things, but now to keep consistency and logic behind your system. If a mind-control drug has been changed from food-based to drink-based, maybe the water supply could be contaminated now? Possibilities will close, but also open.
5) ...that's it. You just made your own unique system.

The entire populace exists in three levels of an illusory world

1. On the first level, they are free to walk around as they please, but everything they see or hear (etc. etc.) is fed to them by a powerful signal that punishes noncompliance with targeted sensory confusion. For the most part, residents of this level see what's really there, though they may be subconsciously lead to perform certain tasks by sensory cues designed to lead them in a certain direction.

Each resident also holds an illusory light-tablet of adjustable size and shape which gives them daily orders. They are given a drug that makes the orders given under the spell of the signal to be important, and even appealing. Taking injections of the drug is ingrained in the population as a sacrosanct family/social event.

If anyone should happen to rebel against authority here, the others are told to first try and offer them exactly what they feel they lack in this world, and get them to submit willingly. If they continue to rebel, they are tricked or blinded into the hands of special peacekeeping units, who have tools to render the rebel unconscious, so she may be taken back to a sleep pod for as long as necessary.

2. Is an exact virtual replica of Level #1, where the inhabitants spend around half of their waking time. An area designed for education and training in which minimal day-to-day energy has to be expended, and fewer mishaps can occur. This world of this level has physical rules, but they can be reversed or altered with enough rendering time. This is the level with the most control over residents' minds, as residents are only allowed in once they are made happily obedient in Level #3. This level of unwavering control disappears, however, when the residents move to a different level, meaning that it isn't safe to allow a resident who is not completely complacent back into Level #1, where they could actually escape.

In this Level, the leader has control over the residents' memories. If someone actually were to rebel on this level, they would have a lot of control, but were they caught, their memories and mindset could be reversed in a matter of seconds.

3. Replaces the inhabitants' ability to dream - it is a fantasy world, in which new residents are first integrated. While the minds in this realm are always ultimately in control, their emotions can be manipulated, and the world completely warped to better persuade them. As the residents start to associate obedience with positive feelings, they are deemed worthy of conversion in Level #2 and Full Citizenship in Level #1.

Look at the past. The Soviet Union had Joseph Stalin, who killed and stole the country and yet was worshiped by it. Dystopias can have mind control in interesting ways such as can be seen in North Korea, where misinformation is prevalent. Come to think of it misinformation is really the most basic form of mind control out there. Cough* Russian trolls.

And if we wanna talk apocalypse, not necessarily "dystopia", I imagine a cityscape straight out of Back to the Future Part II, except mind-control devices are as common there as guns were in the alternate Hill Valley and the higher you go in society the more psychics you find, able to read and dominate the minds of others.

I like that line of thinking. For me, post-apocalypse means Fallout. Fallout has a few telepaths that control people like the Master and the evil brain in a vat in Point Lookout.

Mesmetrons were discarded after Fallout 3. It was a very bad weapon in that it was limited to only dazing your enemies. It should have had a stronger model maybe called an "entranzzer" or something like that. Something that can turn enemies to friendlies. The Pre-War Government was extremely advanced and had the CODE system to reset minds. Hence Robobrains. There is the white noise Vault 92 which caused everyone to die in an orgy of mindless rage.

FEV should have made more humans psychic than it did. The Forecaster, Master and others are evidence of this. It would be interesting to see a group of telepathic mind controllers in Fallout trying to take over. You know set up a few cults, which has me think that the Children of Atom have mutant mind controllers due to the fact it has thousands of members.

Hearts of Iron 4 has a mod called Old World Blues in which you can play as the New Vegas factions, Mexican states, or Northern states. One in Oregon is ruled by Queen Mesmeralda. She was a former slaver, who gets hit with her own mesmetron a few times by runaway slaves. She thinks that she is a hypnotic queen from an old comicbook. Mesmeralda took over a tribe and has a plan to brainwash the nearby super mutant army to do her bidding. Soon, all of Oregon will fall to her away and then the world.

Great campaign and the mesmetrons allow for quick annexation of populations. I ended up with a huge empire when I played as her. It stretched from Alaska to New Reno ( Northern Nevada).

One story I really liked at one point was this bimbofication story on MCstories (forget the name, sadly) where there was essentially a corporate conspiracy to bimbo-fy the women of the world through methods of chemical brainwashing and regular conditioning and cultural pressure.

A less arousing example in that vein would be the world of "We Happy Few" which did something similar, a full-court press to control the emotions and thoughts of everyone in society.

Nine Yards by Limerick?



We Happy Few would be better if it could decide how much Joy affects people.

How about a hive-mind type setting? Where the world is a peaceful utopia, but only because everyone gets assimilated into a collective consciousness. I'm thinking like the Borg, but less robotic.

There is a mcstories series by jukebox were a group of AIs that were created to take care of their creators decided that they needed to take care of any sentient life that they discovered.
They came to earth disguides as sex dolls and used their technology and mind control to slave their owners and make their lifes better.
Its not a distopy but for anyone that its escaping from there it could look like it