End thoughts, march 19th 2021
*Update MAY 6th 2021* A book version of the comic is now available! I'm self publishing for now so it's for sale here on my own little online shop.
Thanks for reading my comic to the end! Hopefully you got something out of it. I wrote some paragraphs about my motivations behind making this comic, you can read them below if you're interested, but it's not necessary. The comic stands on its own as it is. Have a good day ~ Minna Sundberg, 19th March 2021
(If you want to give feedback on the comic , good or bad, you can send an email to lovelypeoplefeedback @ gmail dot com (no spaces etc ). I don't reply because I haaate writing emails, but I'll read it!)
I first learned about the concept of a digital Social credit system a couple years ago, in the context of some budding trials in China around that time. I thought I could make an interesting short comic around that subject, told through a cast of cute bunnies for some reason. But I really wasn't in a hurry to develop that idea. I thought: maybe in a decade or two if I run out of comic ideas. Also, it's not as if anything like that could possibly be implemented in the "free" world without generations of brainwashing first, so it wouldn't really be topical during my lifetime anyway, right?
Then 2020 rolled in with its pandemic, and in late summer many people (much smarter than me) started pointing out the striking similarities between the core concepts of how a Social Credit System works and the proposed (back then still "hypothetical") health passports. The proposals were of the spirit that anyone who in the future wished to travel, attend public gatherings, use trains, buses or other public transportation, would be required to join a the new Health Passport system. Some organizations were proposing it should eventually be require even to attend university, visit libraries, banks, shopping centers or hotels, possibly even every-day grocery stores. If you refused you'd simply not be allowed to participate in society. If that were to turn from a hypothetical solution into reality it'd be very easy to turn into a full-on global Social Credit System by simply re-framing that "health passport" as a general "good citizen" passport. (*Note*:As I'm writing this the hypothetical suggestions are being made reality, the European Union just recently announced their coming "Green pass". Deciding to name it vaguely the "Green pass" instead of the "Health passport" does seem to imply an intent to use it for more than just health purposes in the future years. *End note*)
