Not long ago, I visited a shopping mall where a newly opened “VR center” sat upstairs.

I was curious at first until I realized this so-called VR didn’t even require goggles. It was just a large screen playing forced 3D visuals, asking you to pretend you were inside. It felt like an early, makeshift version of VIVID, something that should have stayed in the past.

They advertised a 90-minute experience. I bought a ticket. Ten minutes later, I was already back outside. Not because I lacked patience but because it simply couldn’t hold up.

Years ago in Shanghai, I’d seen far more advanced immersive experiences for a fraction of the price. Those technologies had already evolved, been replaced, and left behind. Yet here they were again years later repackaged overseas as something “new.”

I stood there watching parents happily taking photos and videos with their children, as if they had stepped into the future. All I could feel was how cheaply my senses had been treated.

The surrounding mall was filled with so-called novelty souvenirs, 3D-printed mini-me figures, and long-outdated gimmicks. I was so drained I didn’t even want to complain anymore.

Because this wasn’t just bad entertainment. It felt like a forced assault on the senses.

It reminded me of the cheap playground rides I’d seen in parks before animal cars with distorted eye proportions, plastic colors clashing at maximum saturation, everything screaming, “Look at me! I’m fun!”

I couldn’t help wondering: Why are these things allowed to flood a so-called civilized society?

What unsettled me more was the children. They see these things every day. They don’t question them, they imitate them. And taste is quietly shaped through imitation.

Do these things really need to exist? I also tried to be fair. Maybe it isn’t malice, maybe it’s ignorance.

Perhaps those quick-money businesses genuinely don’t know these things are ugly. After all, you only recognize ugliness after you’ve seen beauty.

And that made me pause. Was I doing the same thing again, forcing my standards onto someone else’s world?

Even so, I couldn’t fully let it go.

Because civilization doesn’t advance by saying “never mind.” It advances when someone dares to ask: “Can we please stop doing this?”

Not to look refined but to stop feeding the next generation’s eyes with outdated, counterfeit versions of the future.



—— XC Scribbles · 捌拾陸 LXXXVI 🥽