Dubai is impressive, no doubt. It’s a feat of engineering, wealth, and ambition. But idk why it feels like a simulation of a city, just looks good on paper. Everything is curated, polished, optimized for image. There’s no grit, no tension, no imperfections, nothing that gives a place its humanity.
I’ve just been there, and the feeling was immediate, like I’d stepped into a luxury showroom or a concept city built for a brochure, not for actual living. Everything is gleaming, massive, and meticulously designed, but there’s this strange emptiness underneath it all. It’s like someone asked, “What do rich people like?” and then built an entire city out of that answer.
I see that there’s no natural layers to the place. Cities usually carry a mix of yk grit, history, chaos, and identity that slowly form over time. But Dubai feels like it was dropped from the sky, prepackaged and ready to impress. It’s all presentation and skyscrapers, malls, luxury cars, artificial islands and none of it feels lived in. It’s like you’re walking through a simulation of wealth.
That’s not to say people aren’t building lives there, or that it doesn’t have its appeal. There’s efficiency, cleanliness, and ambition. But it’s ambition with no roots. The kind that grows up fast but doesn’t know why it’s growing in the first place.
Am I off? Or have others felt that too,that sense of being somewhere that looks impressive but doesn’t feel real? It’s just really hard for me to explain.
Comments
Because it is
What you feel is the cognitive dissonance… it’s a city built on slave labor, a lot of oppression that is hidden from your views.
Places built on oppression and denial have this stiffy feeling.
Have you seen the people that go to Dubai? Their requirements are restaurants, sun, cars and food. They’d spend two weeks at their local outlet village if they could
All most Americans know is that it’s Insta-worthy. Nothing beyond surface level.
To be honest as a tourist you will only experience the tourist aspects of Dubai which are inherently designed to suck as much money out of you as possible. For people living here, it’s what you make of it if you wanna continue with all the soulless crap you could, but if you wanna connect with people from literally all over the world then you can too.
You said it all already. It’s a city-sized mall dedicated to conspicuous consumption. It has no soul. It’s just glitz. Also it’s built on essentially slave labor.
Dubai exists solely to milk tourists of every last cent they have. If you aren’t the target audience getting milked then you simply won’t like it there
I feel the same way when I visit Las Vegas.
You’ve accurately described it lol
It’s primarily driven not by any kind of artistic or purposeful drive to create but rather to just blow of cash to make something that looks expensive for the sake of being ostentatious. Basically if the annoying soulless rich people of Crazy Rich Asians was a country.
> It’s a feat of engineering
You mean like opting out of building sewers so they have to daily truck out their human waste?
You’re going as a tourist, so you’ll experience tourism. The point of a holiday, for most people, is to escape the everyday struggles to experience luxury, and Dubai capitalises on that.
There are smaller areas where the citizens live, they lead regular lives, have small businesses, don’t have extravagance or luxury that you see in the tourist areas, the citizens represent and preserve the past. You just don’t get to see it, and no one records it to post it on social media.
I was born there. I moved to a different country when I was 6 years old. I go back there and experience the journey of a tourist and also the life of an average person when I’m with extended family.
Because it is an artificial, soulless place
Try going to Old Dubai – Karama Deira Al Satwa. You will feel the interconnectedness of different cultures there.
Well, Dubai just like most cities have different sides to it. There is the fancy zillion dollar malls and then you have the Deira creek and the old souks where you can see the Old Dubai and the real charm of the city. It’s like going to Times Square and saying New York is just LED screens and bukake of capitalism.
Granted Dubai is relatively is a modern city and the fancy developments came about in the last 30-40 yrs, so it hasn’t aged enough to be remembered as classic destination like London on Paris. London was build on slave trade and colonialism and enough time has passed for people to forget the dark history to find it charming.
Miami in the Middle East my man/woman. Two artificial cities
Sold their souls for slave labor, and backstabbing the entire region for personal wealth. Doesn’t help they’re funding a genocide in Sudan either. Terrible govt, the people deserve better
Well, youve just described how it is.
Althrough I have my reservations, it still has its qualities. They had very limited ressources and created something to create wealth which they thought people would like. They used their good position to become a tourism and air travel hub.
Its bloated, fake and built on the back of cheap labor, but some people just care about the looks and the conforto.
All the things that youve described about what makes a real city is considered meaningless and ugly by many people.
no local business
I mostly agree with you, it’s a tourist centered place but there’s still non-touristy things you can find and do…. But it’s something you’ll mostly only find by going around with people who have lived there for a long time or if you get information about the places from others online. My family moved to Dubai when I was very young since my dad got a job, I’ve lived there almost my whole life and I’ve barely visited or done the touristy stuff(I haven’t been to the top of Burj Khalifa) because of how expensive all of it is and how I’m from a middle class family and this is the same experience for majority of my friends from Dubai in the same situation. Online you only see the fancy and expensive tourist places that they heavily advertised and everyone thinks that’s all Dubai is. If you go to the expat residential areas it’s all going to be tall apartment buildings, restaurants, mosques and parks. A majority of my core childhood memories come from sneaking onto rooftops, going to different restaurants trying to find the best shawarma for 5 dhs or winning football games with my friends. Now that I’m out of Dubai, I miss the people I found in Dubai more than the place itself.
Cities used to be built around where humans naturally survived better around natural resources, protection etc. Now we just teleport everything to where we want to.
you’re also not mentioning the slavery of indian workers. there is a palpable spiritual impact when a society accepts that kind of brutality. the people at every level become more stupid and violent and cruel
You’re right! It’s fake city, attracts all the
A city that is a copycat of European cities – what a joke!
Never been to Dubai, but the place looks like a copy of expensive and soulless locations created in the West — towering skyscrapers so high they block out the sun, luxury shopping malls made of metal and glass, modern football stadiums that have replaced old brick and wooden buildings, and intercontinental airports where one can function and transfer without interacting with locals. Dubai represents intellectual poverty — sponsors saw the commercial architecture of London and New York and replicated it on a large scale.
Look at youtube, there are many videos on why the place is a shithole.
Because It is. It was sand 30 years ago
Couple of things.
1: slave labor. You can feel it.
2: it is not a city designed to be lived in, it is a city designed to sell things.
3: you’re feeling the lack of culture. Even the most touristy of tourist towns had a culture they were built on, at one point. Take the famed touristy town, Miami. The main cultural influence you’ll feel is that it’s a complete mix of heritages and backgrounds that come to live in a unique expression not found anywhere else. Dubai’s culture is money.
4: it’s reputation proceeds it. Dubai is known for it’s repressive religious laws, horrific hypocrisy, and violent abuse of slaves and women.
Don’t support Dubai. Don’t support artists that play in Dubai. Don’t support viral “trends” from Dubai.
Welcome to the middle east, try Riyadh next
I visited there twice to stay with friends, as a 2day stopover. The first time they took me to ‘old Dubai’, when I said it all looked new they told me that the real old part had been totally flattened and rebuilt recently. Like a Disney version. Says it all. It’s a horrible soulless place.
Yeah that’s obviously gonna be your experience if you only go and explore the shiny new areas..
Go take a walk by Dubai creek and have some peanuts sold by random street vendors. Take a stroll by the big Satwa Mosque and see everyone throw their bikes and cars in the middle of the street to catch Friday prayers. Go shopping in Naif for some second hand furniture or really fancy fabrics. Pass by for an unlimited paani puri session in Meena Bazar, or step out to Diyafah street for some nice shawarma. Chill in Al Wasl Park and the beautiful mosque next to Irani Hospital.
Time stands still in these areas. Try visiting Burdubai, Jafiliyah, Satwa, Deira, Naif, Rigga etc. That’s where Dubai’s soul is, that’s where we > the workforce behind the glamour stay and thrive. This is where we all grew up.
The capital of degeneracy, unhinged opulence and excess, there does not exist a city more worthy of a nuke than this one.
A man walks into an artificial plants store, says: “Why do these plants feel so artificial?”.
Built by slave prisoners
that would be the slave labor methinks
Between the slave labor and sex trafficking, I wouldn’t set foot there.