People aren't romanticizing it in a positive way, they are mostly fascinated by the bleakness of it- and shocked that something they thought was relegated to fi

People aren't romanticizing it in a positive way, they are mostly fascinated by the bleakness of it- and shocked that something they thought was relegated to fiction actually existed in real life. Much of HN grew up as nerdy kids on cyberpunk SciFi like Blade Runner, Johnny Mnemonic, and the Matrix and this looks exactly like that, which is no coincidence, because that aesthetic was largely based on Kowloon Walled City itself, unknowingly to the people consuming it. The cyberpunk author William Gibson was aware of and inspired by Kowloon Walled City. Cyberpunk is characterized by "high tech low life" - it is seen as awful and dehumanizing, something people might want to read a book or watch a movie about, but not live themselves. In hindsight, the whole Cyberpunk aesthetic being based on real world inhumane living conditions that actually already existed might be inappropriate by modern standards. It is making an amusing fantasy or spectacle out of other peoples suffering- however Gibson, etc. were using this setting mostly because they had a negative view about the impacts of technology on humanity, and were writing fiction to express and warn people about these concerns.