June 20, 2024:
Every mall is a Potemkin Village.
The public side is manicured and painted and as vibrant as money can maintain. The flip side is rusting dumpsters and gang tags on the loading docks.
Commerce as illusion. Not the supposed fetishism of commodities but outright fraud, where no sales happen without manufactured glamor. Or "glamour", as certain vampires might have it. Where the public side is simply and significantly false.