^
I agree. I think it is in our wiring to some degree. Even in non-dystopian fiction, the "juicy" part is almost always the part where everything goes wrong.
Recently, a facebook friend (who is a brilliant artist and animator) asked "do you ever get the feeling we're living in a dystopian society?" I replied that if you can question whether you're living in a dystopian society without troops breaking your door down and dragging you away, you're probably not living in one. She replied back that I didn't know what dystopian meant, although she never said what she thought it meant. I always associate it with "Big Brother" and the idea that criticizing the society is not acceptable. I mentioned this discussion to another friend, who asked "What about 'Brave New World'?" but I had already thought of that and had an answer ready - "Well, maybe they wouldn't arrest you, but they would at least spray you with some 'soma.'"
Dystopian stories explore what it might be like if our current problems are carried out to their worst possible conclusions. I think they're best viewed as cautionary tales, not to be taken literally, although some people do. On YouTube, I ran across an old propaganda cartoon from the 1940s, in which a salesman selling "ism" (which could represent fascism or communism) corrupts America. The poster of the cartoon claimed that it accurately predicted how things are today. One of the cartoon's claims was that the media would be replaced with a repeating record saying "Everything is fine. Everything is fine." Which, to me, is the exact opposite of what the news media is like today.
The recent Disney film "Tomorrowland" addressed the idea that being obsessed with our own destruction is what actually winds up causing it. Unfortunately, I don't think it was a very good film for various reasons, but it was an interesting concept. The film also suggests that the future was viewed more optimistically when George Clooney's character was younger, in the 1960s. However, if you watch "The Twilight Zone" or read science fiction from that period, you'll see that they often focus on the threat of nuclear war. The more optimistic view, represented in "Tomorrowland" by the '64/'65 New York World's Fair and the song "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow", was basically a response to the grimmer possible future that many people believed was going to happen. While the threat of nuclear war is still around, it doesn't have the grip on our cultural consciousness that it did back then. In some ways, environmental worry has taken its place. The (terrible) remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" replaced the nuclear commentary of the original with an environmental message.
Another facebook friend of mine recently wrote a post that started out defending the younger generation against criticism, and somehow wound up arriving at the phrase "our dying planet." While I said nothing, I was thinking, "call me when it's about to explode, then I'll accept that as an accurate description."
Just speculating, but here's another possible reason that the end of the world remains such a popular idea - I think some people are uncomfortable with the idea that the world will keep going on without them after they die. So in a way, the idea that it will end along with them is a sort of comfort to them.
