This is the fate of striver globalism. In Paris you used to be able to get up at 5am and walk the beautifully designed streets and lose your soul staring at an ornate fixture on one of the buildings before stumbling into a boulangerie to be smacked in the face with the scent of butter and freshly baked croissants. Baker responds to you in a series of nods and grunts before brusquely shoving your order in your face as the queue forms. Get rudely treated by a waiter asking for a breakfast omelette and be told that they only serve coffee till lunchtime. Hear the city beginning to wake up. People watch as the workers rush off for their affairs and the shops slowly open as the day breaks. Watch a street painter set up his wares and station and begin to craft art upon an empty canvas. Instead now you have striverist peasants from bloodlines that should have never left the central plains of China enacting their genetic memories upon the world without knowing it. Instead of the deeply roasted, nearly burned French style coffee, it’s a grassy oxidized matcha that tastes like a yeast infection. Instead of a respectable tailor, its oversized garments to hide a stick insect figure and weak constitution. Instead of feasting upon veal sweetbreads in brown butter with slices of fresh bread, it’s a hipster cafe with a vegan owner. And even though the cafe owner says he loves Japan the only city pop song he knows is Plastic Love. God I hate globalism.