I’ve always been puzzled by one thing: why has even something as basic as a restroom become so hard to understand?

A place meant for urgency, when you least want to think has somehow been turned into a puzzle designed to be solved.

At first, I tried to play along. A giraffe 🦒 and an elephant 🐘. I stood there wondering: is it about size? necks? some symbolic gender metaphor?
My brain was working harder than my bladder. Then came H and D.
If you don’t know German, you’re simply left guessing. It’s not that you’re uneducated, the world just quietly assumes you should know.

And then there were a rooster 🐓 and a cat 🐱. That was the moment I gave up entirely. This wasn’t classification anymore, it was creative writing. (With no user manual attached)

I understand the argument: using skirts and pants is considered outdated or offensive. Fine. I respect that. But here’s the real question: when even basic recognition disappears, who exactly are we respecting?

Design was meant to reduce cognitive load, not to prove how clever the designer is. Yet somehow, we’ve reversed that logic. The simpler the need, the more complex the solution. The more intuitive the function, the more it’s wrapped in “high-end aesthetics.”

We’re told complexity looks sophisticated. And sophistication can be monetized.

So now we solve riddles just to use the restroom. We decode symbols to get through daily life. We question our own intelligence instead of questioning the design.

Sometimes I really wonder: are we creating these problems ourselves?

Turning what could be a sentence into a thesis. Turning what could be a glance into a secret code.

If even using a restroom requires cultural capital, then maybe the world itself is just… tired.



—— XC Scribbles · 捌拾壹 LXXXI 🚻