There’s a particular smell to rot when it sets in quietly — not the drama of collapse, but the slow hollowing-out of things that once mattered. What we’re circling here isn’t nostalgia or grievance; it’s discernment. Across industries, institutions, and narratives, something once rooted in craft, coherence, and responsibility has been replaced by theater, abstraction, and extraction. The object no longer needs to work, the story no longer needs to hold, and the system no longer needs to justify itself — only to persist. This is an attempt to name that pattern clearly, without romance or apology.