I don’t think this is anything special. It’s just fancy room decoration. Better than a painting of the outside. (Well, depending on the quality of the painting,

I don’t think this is anything special. It’s just fancy room decoration. Better than a painting of the outside. (Well, depending on the quality of the painting, I guess. But I guess you won’t find any good ones in cheap cruise ship rooms.) It’s not lying, it’s not dystopian, it’s nothing of that kind at all. When they board up actual windows with screens, then you can start complaining. Before? Not really, no. That’s completely ridiculous. Those rooms didn’t have a view of the outside before. Now they have one. It’s in many ways imperfect but (depending on the implementation) better than nothing. (I guess their cameras could be awful, noisy and low-res, the screens could be awful, so in practice it might just be a kitschy room decoration, but I was assuming the best-case scenario.) The ridiculous elevation of all things “real” is frankly one of those disgusting status games the rich and privileged like to play. Travelling to faraway places is probably in most cases a better experience than seeing images of that place on a screen (depending on what you actually do) but not everyone is privileged to be able to do that. Screens make our world smaller and more accessible for more people. That’s great, not dystopian.