History YMMV / NineteenEightyFour

** If you think Orwell was solely attacking DirtyCommunists (or, worse, liberals), you've missed the point. Totalitarian regimes can sprout from other types of governments and movements, such as fascism and religious fundamentalism. Of course, the reverse is true as well.
** There are those who believe the novel is an attack on socialism in general, ignoring the fact that Orwell himself had socialist leanings.

** People often compare their least favourite political figure to Big Brother, no matter what their political persuasion.

*** Most of Europe would end up aligning with the USA due to the encroaching influence of the USSR, namely France, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands and the Nordic states (Finland, Sweden, and Norway), while Germany was split into West and East Germany that were aligned with the USA and the USSR respectively. Additionally, the dissolution of the USSR and the Balkanization of Yugoslavia also led to states that were part of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, such as the Baltics (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia), the Czech Republic, Albania, and Bosnia-Herzegovina firmly aligning themselves with the USA. And on top of it all, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and the subsequent war in 2022 caused Ukraine to align itself with the USA and the west after decades of being under the USSR/Russia's sphere of influence.

*** Northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula being part of the "disputed territories" now seems incredibly quaint and outdated after the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser turned Egypt into a regional power and lead to the rise of Pan-Arabism across Northern Africa and the Middle East, as well as the Gulf states becoming major economic powers in their own right; namely Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: The book is one of the most referenced pieces of literature in the world, and one of the [[TropeCodifier Trope Codifiers]] of the dystopia genre. So perhaps it's not surprising that compared to a lot of its more modern contemporaries, 1984 not only doesn't do a lot that's different, but arguably has less to say about society beyond the concept of Newspeak and a basic, milquetoast "authoritarianism is bad" message.

** The Ministries may actually be true to their names [[FromACertainPointOfView from a certain point of view]], and using The Party's way of thinking. The Ministry of Truth can be justified with doublethink, you may be able to consider the rations you are given by the Ministry of Plenty to be "plenty" from Big Brother's logic, the Ministry of Peace is justified through "WAR IS PEACE" and the Ministry of Love is where you learn to love Big Brother. Alternately, the Ministry of Truth ''manufactures'' truth as defined by the party, and the Ministry of Peace makes a state of internal peace in Oceania by depleting resources.

** The word "wrongthink" is never used in the book. It was likely inspired by "doublethink" or "crimethink" which it does use.

** This is the work that informs modern life, with "Big Brother" and "BigBrotherIsWatching You," "DoubleThink," "{{Unperson}}," "ThoughtCrime," "thought police," "2+2=5," and "{{Room101}}". While we're at it, there's the [[strike:the war with Eastasia]] Eastasia is our ally. We were always at war with Eurasia. Really, the government in the novel communicates to the public almost entirely through memes.

* The word "wrongthink" is never used in the book. It was likely inspired by "doublethink" or "crimethink" which it does use.

* NarmCharm: In-Universe, Winston find the "Love Song" to be cheesy and boring...but still finds the dedication with which the woman who sings it to be quite moving.

** Making poor real life comparisons to the setting or themes in the book will also cause this.

** The totalitarian society the book describes has been more or less realized by UsefulNotes/NorthKorea, which managed to create a state similar to the condition of Oceania a few ''years'' after the book was published. Creator/ChristopherHitchens used to joke that Kim Il-Sung got a hold of a Korean translation of the novel and said to himself "Well, I don't know if we can make it work, but we can always give it the old college try!"

** The year 1984 itself was allegedly taken from [[http://arlindo-correia.com/101103.html a poem about a bad future written by Orwell's first wife]]. Before that, ''Literature/TheIronHeel'' had used 1984 as an important year in its setting, and Creator/GKChesterton's dystopian novel ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'' was set in the year 1984.

** The Party's arbitrary changing of their enemies and allies in the possibly-fictional war makes sense both in-universe and out, as a display of their power, and refers to how the USSR went from being stridently anti-Nazi to neutral with friendly leanings during the M-R Pact to being fiercely anti-Nazi again (which to be really fair, is something they only did once, briefly, and that after many years of anti-Nazi coalitions formed with the West fell on deaf years). However, even vaguely insinuating that in a wartime context based off of WWII, that all sides are the same and the war crimes of one state are merely propaganda would probably, and ironically, get Orwell compared to Nazi apologists and possibly even Holocaust deniers today.

** Believe it or not ''1984'' was not the first Dystopian novel of its kind. That honour goes to the book Literature/ParisInTheTwentiethCentury by none other than Creator/JulesVerne. He had written it towards the middle of his life, but the book was shelved until the 1990s when it was rediscovered and published.

* TrueArtIsAngsty: The book is considered one of the greatest ever written, and is one of the most depressing stories you'll ever read.

** The "We've always been at war with Eastasia" scene during hate week is often held up as a major WhamLine. However, the concept of the alliances shifting suddenly and being instantly Retconned is brought up early in the book and intermittently until that point. The Hate Week scene is just when the reader can see so for themselves.

** There's also strong favourable comparisons to SpiritualAntithesis ''Literature/BraveNewWorld'', for depicting a [[CrapsaccharineWorld vastly different type]] of {{dystopia}} that nonetheless [[http://ritholtz.com/2011/11/orwell-vs-huxley-1984-vs-brave-new-world/ holds the same degree of real-world applicability as this book]].

** Some people consider the character of Emmanuel Goldstein to be a symbol of rebellion against tyranny because of his status in the book as a boogeyman for the Party. However, it's likely Goldstein was based on UsefulNotes/LeonTrotsky, whom Orwell considered not much better than the Stalinist regime and whose ideology he famously advocated against.

* HeartwarmingInHindsight: When Orwell published the book, half of Europe was under the heel of a totalitarian empire and he feared the rest of the world would become totalitarian by the end of the 20th century. By the 1990s, this empire crumbled relatively peacefully, and much of Europe became democratic. Granted, post-communist Europe [[WhyWeAreBummedCommunismFell hasn't lived up to all of its promises]], and places like Belarus and Russia have become authoritarian, but even Putin's Russia hasn't reached the level of totalitarianism Soviet Russia did.

** Making poor real life comparions to the setting or themes in the book will also cause this.

** The otherworldly pyramid architecture of the Ministry buildings. While not necessarily containing an outright sci-fi element, their description evokes a futuristic, utopian feel.

* TrueArtIsAngsty: The book is considered one of the greatest ever written, and it's one of the most depressing ones you'll ever read.

** A comedic version: Creator/MargaretAtwood, creator of another [[Literature/TheHandmaidsTale famous dystopian fiction]], is of course familiar with ''1984'' and said in an article about Orwell that, in her family, ''Do it to Julia!'' had become the standard phrase people used whenever they were told it was their turn to do the washing-up, take out the trash, etc.

* DiscreditedMeme: Comparisons of real world current events to this book in general, especially without referring to a specific concept. "Literally 1984" is more often used ironically than not, and captioning a gif of Big Brother from the Apple commercial with common sense advise has itself become a meme.