While anti-colonial discussion is at its peak, I just took a shower in a shopping mall... And it felt like proof that the West has quietly colonized itself. On one bike ride through (any) city I cross two Europes: the ungentrified, human-centered streets that look frozen between the ’90s and 2000s, and the hyper-modern, anonymized convenience of a compact mall where you can live your whole day without speaking to anyone. That jump-cut says more about our century than most history books. This is happening across the West and its 'periphery'. In this critique and video essay, I rant and slavicsplain on how Western self-colonization works: why certain aesthetics, markets, and governance models spread inward (not just outward), how malls still thrive in Eastern Europe, how this all mirrors older colonial city splits so, “native town” vs. “European quarter” - from xx century Cairo to today’s Dubai. I compare Poland’s rapid gentrification that I am living through with Belarus’s state-driven cultural policies (including language that I speak daily and try to develop + preserve). also one touch on France’s earlier internal “standardization,” and i ask on what we trade when convenience replaces contact. #colonialism #culturalcritique #opinions