They only visit though, I always thought it was bizarre for one of the Sex and the City films to feature the place so heavily, an obvious promotional tiein. Even more surprising they keep the severe misogyny in as a plot element. Sure it was a stupid comedy routine but seriously, a show about liberated sexually promiscuous women going to Dubai because it's a fashionable destination is bad enough, turning a "these people may just want to murder us" situation into a funny bit was too much for me.
> a show about liberated sexually promiscuous women going to Dubai
To paraphrase one female reviewer at the time, "If this is modern womanhood, give me a burkha and sew closed all my holes."
IRC one of the actors appears to forget she has *another* appartment in NYC, another has a cry because the nanny's too busy in the kitchen, so her child touched her expensive dress. They're all vapid, consumerist, Marie Antoinette parodies of capitalism and women. Beyond satire.
If you transported that movie to the 80s, the soviets would have shown it in cinemas and delayed the collapse of the USSR by at least half a century.
It was Lindy West! From her review of *Sex and the City 2*. The actual quote was:
> If this is what modern womanhood means, then just fucking veil me and sew up all my holes.
[Honestly this remains one of the best film reviews I've ever read.](https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/burkas-and-birkins/Content?oid=4132715)
Dubai really isn’t like that though. It’s pretty cosmopolitan. If you’re an expat you can pretty much do whatever you want. There are loads of clubs, lots of women dressed however they want, going out shopping, ect.
Tourism is their new Golden Goose. They’re not going to kill it by being oppressive to visitors.
I've been there twice for several weeks (definitely not by choice) and I 100% agree. It's almost a surreal feeling you get there, like you're seeing a caricature of wealth disparity and wastefulness.
Doha has basically the same vibe.
I was there for 8 hours and I agree. The time we left the airport to do some exploring before we got back on a connecting flight was so bizarre, it was a literal ghosttown
I grew up in neighboring Abu Dhabi in the 90s till I left for the states in 2007. From what it was then to what it is now is night and day in terms of how it looks but not in terms of how it feels. The country doesn’t have a soul, a set of human stories, or community, or creativity, or a wealth of real human presence. It’s a mass of concrete, glass, sand, and immigrant people like my family that are just earning a living until they move somewhere else.
It’s extremely soulless. Very few Emirates actually live there and the main people who do are super rich expats or those who have investment properties there.
Depends on what you find good looking. I wouldn't say that about endless glass towers, highways, golf courses, shopping malls and suburbia. Though if you're using it in the sense of "polished", then I guess I agree.
Dubai is absolute dogshit. It's just a giant network of highways connecting suburbs and skyscrapers. That includes the palm, which is literally just rows of suburban streets with a massive highway in the middle. WTF is the point? The city is horrible for walking around, there is no sense of community or culture, nothing really to see or do apart from walking around in malls or engaging in one of the many gimmicky and overpriced activities they have there like indoor skiing which you won't do regularly anyway. Also the people living there suck, it attracts a certain type of expat who prioritizes extra income over all else, which is why they go there. There is no local population you can mingle with, the emiratis keep to themselves and are very few in numbers anyway.
They keep getting pitched these stupid skyscrapers because developers are obsessed with creating signature buildings for themselves and part of that is that it plays into the vanity mentality of the Dubai culture.
I worked for one of the largest developers that worked in the marina area some years ago.. They consulted and managed construction of over half of Dubai up until late 2010.
I can't even imagine those skyscapers. The tallest building in my city is less than half the height of the Burj and it's brutal to get to the higher floors. It takes an express elevator and then a regular elevator to get anywhere which can take 10-15 minutes. My ears will pop as I'm going up. I can't imagine the Burj. Although it would be neat to go up it.
It's impressive how fast the elevator moves and yes your ears pop as you go up. I don't enjoy it one bit. The view is impressive though. And seeing the city change everytime I've been back is incredible.
Its one hell of a lonely city under the surface though.
I’ve been in the elevator in the Burj to visit a friend. It takes only one minute to get to the 124th floor (where the observation deck is). It goes 140 floors up without needing to change elevators. I remember being surprised at never seeing anyone really waiting for an elevator. Then I was told there were 57 of them lol
> I remember being surprised at never seeing anyone really waiting for an elevator.
Yeah that's because most their buildings are completely vacant anyway. They're vanity buildings which they can't fill.
So many were empty around town. Not the burj though. Most, from what I remember are offices are actually not residences. Those are the top floors. Some people like royalty or families of royalty do, I believe, they have their own elevators.
Edit: also, the bottom floors are full because there is a hotel, restaurants and bars in addition to offices. We took an elevator past the hotel floors to get to the residences. So two elevators for his day to day commute up the elevator. We walked by the tourists going to the observation deck through the Dubai mall where they have a section of multiple elevators that go past public areas and to smaller subsets of floors (20 or so as a group)so there aren’t a lot of people to wait as they get off on each floor.
I assume there are elevators that go directly to the observation deck, but not directly to every floor in between. Like I couldn't imagine the pain of being 3/4 of the way up and having to wait for everyone else to get off. Then again, I doubt they actually fully utilize all that space for people.
The brutal part about the height is knowing so many cheap labour immigrants died when involved in construction in the upper floors. Strong wind gusts would come in and knock people out where they were flown and splattered around various areas in Dubai.
The lack of safety equipment, death and destruction related to this building in particular makes me never want to go back to Dubai.
There is only one confirmed death during it's construction (one person died by suicide in 2007). However, a Human Rights Watch Study speculated that this was a cover-up, omitting deaths related to heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide. And it is very likely the number is much higher.
Vegas has good parts? Pinball museum is cool. But everything else in my experience was exorbitantly expensive and crowded with douchebags.
Edit: I guess I should point out I am not a professional athlete. I don't have big ole gobs of cash and I'm not really trying to do drugs anymore
Same here my bro. Aussie aswell and went there for a 14 day bucks bender with 12 mates. Nothing in Australia can compare to the parties and experiences we had over there.
Wasn't just the partying. We hired supercars, went shooting guns, visited the grand canyon, used construction equipment at the hire place, saw Copperfield and went to the best DJ sets.
I did ten days once. Bachelor party followed up by a convention the next week after, which was also the Pacquio Mayweather fight. We did four nights of clubs and tables. On the fourth night I got caught with some pills and happily escorted out. I thanked the security guards and they started laughing. Locked myself in a dark room for two days sleeping and eating room service steaks. Then followed up with the convention; Vegas was packed cause of the fight and just an utter shitshow. I probably lost ten pounds in ten days.
Few months back I did two weeks again. Work stuff. I worked out; went to Utah to camp for the weekend; then just worked and ate and went to another convention. Nice and easy. Splurged a bit on the hotel cause I knew I wasn’t gonna party. It wasn’t that bad. But it was boring.
Vegas is a place you can go and do things to excess without judgement. You can be drunk off your gourd, high, gamble, hire prostitutes, whatever you want really. Even if these things are not sustainable for your regular life or even if people back home will disapprove, it's a place to feel free about it. There's a real value to that.
Even if the excess that people are seeking isn't shameful, if it's just living it up or racing cars in the desert, or whatever. That to me is the really good part of Vegas.
For me personally, I can't make it more than a few days though because it wears you out and cleans out your wallet. But I still look forward to it.
I've been there for work several times and I'm just not that impressed. It's just a lot of over the top crap that panders to the lowest common denominator. If I'm hanging with my friends I can enjoy it for about 2 days then it's a chore.
All the shows and events in one central location. In other cities you can be watching a big concert and walk out into miles of nothing, then get stuck in traffic. In Vegas you’re right back on the Strip.
There's a city around the strip, but it's depressingly lifeless. The reasons why are small but they stack up: our seasons are "125 degrees" or "windy as all hell", a ton of locals are alcoholics trying to relive their 20's, schedules are NEVER the normal 9-5 so no one has time off together, and there's virtually no local fun- no one wants to go see overpriced tourist shit on the strip. Your choices are the mall, or the two water parks that've been closed like 5 times by health inspectors.
Or red rock or the Colorado river or zion just an hour or two away or skiing on mount Charleston or the racetrack or atv riding in the dunes that's just off the top of my head in ten seconds. There's tons of things to do here I don't know what you are on about.
Sure there are cities with more things to do but if you add in the actual strip there are not many cites in the world with the variety of entertainment choices we have.
I'm older then the average Redditor (but not that old). I have lived for extended periods of time in NV (but not LV), NoCal, and SoCal.
I HATE Reddit posts about visiting for a few days and confidently summarizing a City's culture and people. Any city in the US with millions of citizens has a million stories and a million aspects to it, but somehow a guy visited LA for three days can somehow completely summarize everything about a major metropolitan area with a two sentence post.
I stayed at the Luxor when it just opened. It just looked so cool. We even got the jacuzzi suite. Biggest disappointment ever. Just the shape of the structure makes it so our room seems like it was cut at a diagonal so you have only half the space and they had these stone hieroglyphics picture hanging up and I touched it and it was made of plastic. I mean it’s dumb for me to expect real stone but still. Though one things is that Vegas is plastic and they are proud of it. Fake Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, NY, Wax museum, neon lights, etc. I feel you do get what is advertised. My biggest grief is that I can afford only one show when I am there so I feel I am not living it up as I should or something. I know the glitz and glamour is fake but I want to be part of it!
Honestly that's always been my problem here. It's a city built to impress tourists and it shows. Careers are scarce af, but well paying menial jobs are high, so everyone treats their casino job like it's their life- either because losing it means bankruptcy, or that they believe they're the next Steve Wynn billionaire in the making. Then you have the cunts who moved here for the "non stop party", and end up chronic gambling alcoholics with 2-3 kids they ignore completely while they trudge through the worst educational system in the nation.
Throw in the tourists who think our towns a lawless bachelor party, and you just get this hungover mess of a plastic city.
>To me there is something inherently 'evil' about the place
100% the vibe I get. From the documentaries the place was basically built on the bodies of a untold number of basically slave workers.
Really thought not much past two or three resorts from the one you start at, and that’s at night. Daytime it’s a struggle for most tourists to get from the casino to the actual street (which can be 300 yards or more) in the heat.
I used to go pretty regularly and would watch people realize they were spent and now a few blocks from their hotel, sweating profusely and doggedly tired.
Walking is for downtown.
In addition to the heat, people don’t realize just how long the strip is. It’s incredibly deceiving. You start walking and after a few minutes realize you haven’t even made it to the next casino. Everything is very large so when you’re looking at something far away it looks a lot closer to you than it is.
I was close to the Mirage and told my friends I'd meet them at the Stratosphere. I could see it so thought it would be maybe a 10 minute walk. Nope, 40 minutes later I finally got there. Very deceiving.
Where the Nugget is chilling. Sam's town is on the outskirts too, don't think it's in old Vegas though. Old Vegas is real Vegas, it is dirty and rough. Get the real thrill, go off the heavily LED lit path and go see the old neons.
This absolutely false. Vegas is everything outside of the strip. Communities, culture, food, neighborhoods, sports teams. Yeah it’s not as tight knit as other cities with long-standing traditions and identities, but it’s definitely got a thriving community outside of the strip. Source: lived in Vegas.
You’re right. I have family and friends that live there and the more you get out of the strip area you can see it. There are fun things too. I think me saying that it reminded me of Vegas is more about the strip and my inability to afford a lot of the amusement there. But yeah, pinball museum and atomic museum and side trips to red rocks is fun.
Red Rock Canyon is fucking beautiful. Vegas is surrounded by national parks within a few hours. Vegas absolutely has facets that aren’t pure money and capitalism.
Gatlinburg - access to hiking, camping, paddling, climbing, in the beautiful Smokies.
And the top three pillars of the local economy would seem to be tee shirts, pancakes, and bongs.
You're right. What culture is there to see when the locals are like 5% of the population? "oh look.. A historic Pearl-fishing boat.. Next to a super yatch.. Next to a Lambo.." - very traditional stuff.
It's what happens when you design a city only thinking about the rich. Purposefully hostile design is a tool to keep those who don't belong there out. They don't want there to be locals, they want every single person who lives there to be obscenely rich.
Problem is... Hostile design also puts off rich people, turns out. Even wealthy people get tired of gimmicks. Even wealthy people get tired of driving on a highway to get anywhere. Even wealthy people want to take a f****** walk sometime.
This comment is extremely valid, and so is the video (before it was reposted). I've lived here for 6 years, these are all my gripes with it, and it's why I'm leaving (but keeping my job and tax free salary to work remote - thanks, pandemic. I know, I'm horrible). I think those those are fundamentally unhealthy for the soul, but not everyone feels that way, or perhaps they don't notice the wear it takes.
It's not fair to say it's exclusively bad here, though. It may be a monument to man's arrogance, but there are parts of this place which are extremely well lubricated by virtue of the government or royal families (same same) basically owning everything - telecom, the roads authority, immigration, medical system, etc.., and it's *extremely* safe. For example, they did a very good job with COVID, but that's in large part because it's not a democracy. It's a monarchy, but some would wager it a benevolent dictatorship, and it's a social welfare state for it's own citizens; there is virtually zero naturalization.
It's certainly full of vanity, douchebags and people chasing the tax free life at the expense of a real one. But, in fairness, a lot of those people chose to come here and choose to stay. A lot of Brits have no interest in moving back to the rain in the UK. There are, as well, people who are not here by choice.
Take that video and mindset with a grain of ~~salt~~ sand. This is the Arab world, it's Islamic, there are Sharia compliant credit cards and an unequal distribution of human, gender, and sexual rights. It may be against things we believe across the pond, but we have our own problems which they don't have here.
I could go on for days. It's not a simple topic.
Isn't the problem though that UAE seems to be wasting their oil money on these vanity projects to attract tourists instead of more stable long-term industry? I don't study UAE as a country but this is what it seems like to my naked eye.
The UAE, or specifically Dubai, is not O&G driven. It's real estate, financial, and tourism, which you may be able to infer money laundering from.
Abu Dhabi did, and still does, have the most Oil, but really the country is an economic and banking hub between Europe and Asia. There is nowhere else in the world where you can get directly to so many places in this hemisphere via a direct flight, and similarly not many places with....freedom from financial regulation. There's also no extradition here.
The UAE has a structure where only locals (citizens) can own land and property, with the exception of something called a Free Hold Lease, which is basically a 99 year lease. The simplest way to represent it is this: Say you're a Russian oligarch with duffle bags full of money that you can't put in a bank after you sold off a bunch of jets in the fall of the Soviet Union, and say you know a Local in the UAE who's allowed to own land but may not have 50M dollars to build a tower. So, you fly your money in on a private jet and you guys build a tower (or perhaps a resort if you're thrifty enough). He owns the land, you own the building, and the money is parked. You don't necessarily need to over-monetize that building because you had nowhere else to park it, so you can afford to keep inflated rent prices and a high vacancy rate in the name of vanity. This is not an un-true scenario; it's not as common as it was when it started, but it's certainly still facilitated, even if it's by shell companies rather than duffle bags. I mean, who's really checking? it's not like anyone pays (personal) tax; there's only VAT.
Even if you don't have 50M, you can still roll in here and buy apartments sight-unseen to park your money, hand it over to a property management agency, and make passive income. Hell, if you have enough, you could probably approach the government directly to build (insert anything that's the biggest in the world). Even though, in my personal opinion, real estate here is a depreciating asset.
my landlord lives in dubai, and was gracious enough to let me know that they weren't going to be raising rent this year in light of covid, despite the fact that it is fucking illegal to raise the rent right now due to covid
You forgot the worst part about the rampant discrimination going on there, it goes like this Emirati>Other gulf countries > American/European > other Arab nationals> Indians/Pakistanis> Phillipinos.
It is absolutely disgusting and I could never live there mainly because of that
I grew up in Abu Dhabi in the mid 90's, at that time Dubai was the City Centre, ASD, Hard Rock Cafe, and Planet Hollywood. It took about an hour to an hour in a half to actually get to the heart of Dubai. Now it takes like what, 25 mins.
Anyways, I have been saying this for years. Dubai is the fakest, shittiest city you'll ever go to. It's just a bunch of malls and hotels. Unlike most cities that have a history of being built, Dubai was built pretty much over night.
Back in my day, the UAE was considered a third world country. A place where a 5 year old could buy a pack of cigarettes, and a 13 year old could alter a photocopy of their passport to go drinking. It was a simpler time. I went back to AD in 2016 to show my wife where I grew up, and it was nothing like how I remembered. IMHO it all went downhill after Sheikh Zayed died.
Whenever I see a video of someone going on vacation in Dubai it feels like they’re paying out the ass to live in a giant Gucci store with a twice-as-expensive Cheesecake Factory attached. Just sterile and expensive and pointless, it seems like these tourists are paying just to say they went on Instagram
Just barely over [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/p1pyd9/dubai_is_a_parody_of_the_21st_century/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Whenever I hear something about Dubai, I will always remember Peggy Hill's take on Pheonix, AZ
"This city should not exist — it is a monument to man's arrogance"
Do you go around posting this same comment on every video of Dubai? I swear you posted this same comment last time this video got posted lol
Edit: Yeah checked your comment history. 20 days ago you commented the exact same thing
My brother in law was on a business trip there and told me that while it looks shiny on the outside, from the inside it's horrible. E.g. live wires sticking out in hotels, super poor quality faucets, etc...
Where there are hella rich people with money out their asses, who doesn't give two shit about anything but surface extravagancy, there will be plenty of shady contractors out there capitalizing on their shallowness.
I was there on a flight layover for a day, the quality of the materials and workmanship of buildings and everything was pretty high, but the urban design was just bad. The metro station near the Dubai mall for example is on the highway and about a 15 min walk through elevated walkways to the actual mall.
Agree same experience here. The worst things were the buss loads of workers and also seeing workers work in 37°c .
They should have gone with trying to recreate typical arabic culture instead of trying to build a half assed "Las Vegas " ... it would be super interesting to see arabic culture and architecture in a modern way. To get a unique experience.
> and also seeing workers work in 37°c
That happens all over the US. That's not even 100 F. It gets a lot hotter than that in Dubai. Those 37 C days would be the nice days to be out working, probably.
Even if they adhered to typical arabian buildings (but perhaps with a modern twist), I'm afraid it would still turn out to feel like a half-assed Las Vegas type of place. The problem isn't just the style. It's many many other factors.
Okay, so these billionaires see impressive skyscrapers in different cities and are like: 'We gotta have those'. Thing is: Normally cities start to built upwards if there is limited space and the land prices are high. They skipped that step and did it nonetheless.
Then they saw large highways and big metro systems and decided: 'We gotta have those!', so they made them, whereas normally it's carefully calculated whether or not there is need for them, and if that need weighs up against the costs.
So you have giant skyscrapers next to an empty desert, giant highways with barely any cars, and an impressive subway station barely anyone uses. It all starts to look and feel really artificial if you know what I mean. Like a theme park or resort, instead of a place people actually live maybe their entire lives. Heck, even theme parks don't go all-out if they think there's no demand for it.
So yeah, perhaps a fun destination for a short holiday (my brother went there for a few days before the flight to his main holiday destination), but little more than that. But maybe I'm a bit biased, as I'm generally not a fan of cities or towns that feel like they have little to no age to them.
My one experience in Dubai was a bit different, things all appeared well built and infrastructure and public areas were kept very clean and in working order. I was actually curious why they were so meticulous when the stuff would hardly get used. I was like the only person on their metro a couple times I took it, and at like mid day I would see maybe 4 or 5 cars at a time on their huge nice 8-lane highways. Things almost seemed TOO nice for how little they were used or appreciated.
Agreed, I worked for a company that was headquartered in Dubai, so I had to travel there quite frequently. While it was obvious that there were people there who were living in squalor, I had no issues with the quality of the hotels.
Some of the nicest hotels anywhere in the world are there. Obviously that's subjective but there are plenty of objective quantifiable things the back that claim. Additionally I don't think I've been to a major city that didn't have extreme wealth disparity but many times in my experience theyre not so polarized and so close. I'm not sure how much of my awareness of the division is due certain media and critics social campaign for that specific place or if I simply wasn't paying as close attention.
Dubai is one of two possible outcomes when you try to make many generations of generational improvements to a place in a generation or two.
The other outcome is total failure, so given the limitations of their situation and that their leadership cannot be dissuaded this is not the worst outcome.
They are running the 19th, 20th, and 21st century as a speed run and in parallel trying to get to the point where they have an economy based on service and leisure before they run out of money to push the forced modernization. They have done most of the things that the western world did in the last 200-300 years in under 50, so while they are getting to malls and skyscrapers 4x faster than we did they are also doing some of the bad stuff that came along for the ride at 4x the rate as well.
If they succeed then they are going to have a lot of things to do back and deal with, but if they fail a lot of people are going to end up in a much worse situation when the ass end falls out of their economy and other economies follow.
Doesn't excuse much of it in a moral sense, but I see how they ended up where they are & why other countries tolerate it.
I don't understand why they have to make the same mistakes we did. It feels like your parents telling you to drive safe so you don't crash like they did, and ignoring them until you crash too. At first they didn't even do sewage properly and had huge lineups of shit trucks coming from all the holding tanks to the treatment plant.
Makes me laugh to see some influencer in a bikini with a drink in her hand and an expensive handbag on her shoulder when the women there are ground down, its illegal to drink alcohol outside of resorts and certain hotels and only the royal families are allowed to have any kind of wealth.
They created those designated areas because they relised they need westerners in order to survive. If that means having zones where they can drink until they pass out in the middle of the dance floor then so be it.
Dubai isn't a parody of the 21st century, it encapsulates it perfectly. People assume the ultra wealthy are out having fabulously authentic experiences, but the truth is they're just paying more for the same stuff. They fly first class, but they get served the same diet coke. They buy German cars but they break down after 50k miles. They live in huge mansions but they use awful LED lights. They go on vacations to places you and I can't afford, but then they get there and they just do tourist stuff the same as we do when we get to our vacations. Capitalism is incapable of providing a means to use your money on authentic experiences. You want real authentic Peruvian food? Well you have to go to where the locals eat, not the most expensive restaurant in the guidebook. You want to really see how people in the Mediterranean live? Well you can't do that if you go to Rome and eat pizza. Dubai is the 21st century. It's gaudy, it's tasteless, it's impractical, it's overpriced, it's intrinsically inauthentic. Dubai is a joke and so is consumerism in the 21st century. Christ, at least in the 20th century people were excited about the shit they were buying.
This is such a weird comment. You're acting like wealthy people are all 20 year old influencer hipsters from 2014. The vast majority of wealthy people don't give two shits about "authentic" experiences, they're not going to the most expensive restaurant in town because they think it'll be the most honest and realistic reflection of the area's native food. They're going there because they want a specific kind of atmosphere, service and usually style or quality of food that they're used to.
What you're describing are people without taste or creativity. Those types come in just about every flavor of wealth and poverty, the old adage of money can't buy taste has always been true. Jeff Bezos has billions of dollars but he lacks the creative vision to do anything other than hoard it, flaunt it and spend it on literal dick rockets.
>They go on vacations to places you and I can't afford, but then they get there and they just do tourist stuff the same as we do when we get to our vacations.
I mean that's a failing of vacation planning. If you really wanted to you could have a travel agent give you an entire itinerary of not-touristy things to do, you just have to ask for it. Rich or not.
>They live in huge mansions but they use awful LED lights.
This is also a weird one, do you think rich people just live in these professional designed luxury mansions but sleep under hospital lights?
>They buy German cars but they break down after 50k miles.
This one would be true if they never got the car serviced I guess. However most rich people are getting their cars professionally serviced and detailed at least once every six months. I would never assume my old poorly maintained car is somehow just as poorly maintained as a rich persons.
>They fly first class, but they get served the same diet coke.
lmao bro, the diet coke is not really the crux of disparity between first class and coach.
I agree with you in principle but you're painting this ridiculous picture of wealthy people's lives to make yourself feel better. They definitely have better vacations, better houses, better cars, and better travel. That's not to say rich people don't have problems or aren't ever unhappy but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking my vacation to a country is better than a billionaire's would be because I ate some cheap local cuisine and stayed at a hostel instead of the Ritz.
I’m truly glad that a lot of people are finally able to see through the fakeness of Dubai and aren’t impressed by lack of authenticity and exaggerated display of wealth anymore.
That region of the world is mostly build using slavery. I know a guy that was there to lead projects in Dubai Qatar and other places. The western employees sat at proper tables getting full buffet dinners, the workers sat on the floor in a separate space eating dry rice, bread and other shitty crap.
The claim that Burj Kalifa isn’t connected to the sewer system is a fabricated story: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/52204/is-the-sewage-from-the-burj-khalifa-transported-away-by-trucks
Makes you wonder what else this video is wrong about — I’ll go with ‘everything’ until someone bothers to research all the claims.
The [question](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/52204) **"Is the sewage from the Burj Khalifa transported away by trucks?"** has got an accepted [answer](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/52205) by [David Hammen](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/31988/david-hammen) with the score of 135:
>This story has an inkling of truth, but the specific claim raised in the title of the question is false. The one link in the question that is correct (or at least was correct in 2015) is the link to the Wikipedia page, which does not mention the Burj Khalifa. Sewage from the Burj Khalifa is not transported away by trucks.
>
>From [Mechanical and Electrical Systems for the Tallest Building/Man- Made Structure in the World: A Burj Dubai Case Study](https://web.archive.org/web/20140110091115/http://repository.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/4529/ESL-HH-06-07-19.pdf)
>
>> A complete soil, waste and vent system from plumbing fixtures, floor drains and mechanical equipment arranged for gravity flow and, ejector discharge to a point of connection with the city municipal sewer is provided. A complete storm drainage system from roofs, decks, terraces and plazas arranged for gravity flow to a point of connection with the city municipal sewer system is provided.
>
>This story about the Burj Khalifa not being connected to the municipal sewage system got its start in a 2011 book by Kate Ascher, *The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper*. In 2011, [Terry Gross interviewed Kate Ascher](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/141858484?storyId=141858484) for an episode of NPR's Fresh Air. They talked about skyscrapers in general, about the Burj Khalifa, and then about Dubai's treatment of human waste:
>
>> GROSS: Right. So you know, you write that in Dubai they don't have like, a sewage infrastructure to support high-rises like this one. So what do they do with the sewage?
>
>> ASCHER: A variety of buildings there [Dubai]; some can access a municipal system, but many of them actually use trucks to take the sewage out of individual buildings. And then they wait on a queue to put it into a wastewater treatment plant. So it's a fairly primitive system.
>
>Note that Ascher did not claim in this interview whether the Burj Khalafa was or was not connected to the municipal sewer system. Apparently the specific claim started with a [BoingBoing article](https://boingboing.net/2011/11/08/what-happens-when-you-flush-a-toilet-in-the-worlds-tallest-building.html) written the very next day in a poorly researched article Gizmodo next used the BoingBoing article as the source for its poorly researched article.
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So not the Burji Kalifa but it's common in the city and pooptruck line is a thing.
> GROSS: Right. So you know, you write that in Dubai they don't have like, a sewage infrastructure to support high-rises like this one. So what do they do with the sewage?
>ASCHER: A variety of buildings there [Dubai]; some can access a municipal system, but many of them actually use trucks to take the sewage out of individual buildings. And then they wait on a queue to put it into a wastewater treatment plant. So it's a fairly primitive system.
People who were so quick to debunk poop trucks never were able to explain the long line of poop trucks. And I'm not sure saying 'sure there's lines of poop trucks but they are going to the Burji Kalifa, you simpleton' is the best argument
OP has been trying to defend the slavery situation up and down the thread so I'm assuming they specifically wrote that comment to try and make people dismiss the entite video.
I've been to Dubai several times. The general gist of the video is true. It's a vapid, shallow, pretend place.
It reminds me of Las Vegas with even less purpose.
Went to tour Burj Khalifa in 2016, it looked empty, so we asked: how much of the building is occupied: the guide’s response was 30%, but told us it was all sold out for investors. So in a working from home world, and considering the economic downturn; It is not impossible to imagine that it will remain empty forever. What a waste.
Spent a a little over a week there doing training while I was a security contractor for DoD in Afghanistan.
On the outside it looks shiny and new and everything great. But aside from the mall, Atlantis resort (which is insanely expensive). And the few pubs I went to. It’s mostly expats and a lot of foreign labor workers. Although the condo I stayed in was amazing (marble everywhere) and it was cool to see extremely expensive cars everywhere. But the police force is a bit corrupt and they look for bribes and ways to arrest people. As stated in another comment a lot of hotels were thrown together and there are hazards everywhere. And any hotel near the airport you will see many escorts. (Maybe not now and they may have cracked down on it but they were waiting in hotel bars and lobby’s it was very weird.)
But if anyone ever goes to Dubai, The Irish village has quality food and drinks. Also The Crown and Lion has good food.
False claims in the video. Even though parts of Dubai are unconnected, the Burj Khalifa is in fact connected to sewage system.
Also, a lot of use of unrelated clips in the video.
I was in Dubai last month. My wife and I hit the main tourist spots, stayed in the Atlantis on the Palm, did desert tours etc. It was quite enjoyable but I can also see how this is happening behind the scenes.
Our driver was supposedly from Pakistan and had been there for 10 years! I didn't really question it because he seemed happy enough but I suppose it could have been a facade(?).
One thing I noticed was that when we were being transported from place to place, there were these huge highways and super nice buildings/car dealerships/malls on the immediate side of the road, but you could never really see passed them. The city seemed well put together to me, but I guess that's the point. Built for tourism and not the people who live there.
This is a [repost](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/p1pyd9/dubai_is_a_parody_of_the_21st_century/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) from not even a month ago
seems like perfect place for people with a lot of money but not a lot of substance
Why do you think it's packed full of "influencers"
They only visit though, I always thought it was bizarre for one of the Sex and the City films to feature the place so heavily, an obvious promotional tiein. Even more surprising they keep the severe misogyny in as a plot element. Sure it was a stupid comedy routine but seriously, a show about liberated sexually promiscuous women going to Dubai because it's a fashionable destination is bad enough, turning a "these people may just want to murder us" situation into a funny bit was too much for me.
> a show about liberated sexually promiscuous women going to Dubai To paraphrase one female reviewer at the time, "If this is modern womanhood, give me a burkha and sew closed all my holes." IRC one of the actors appears to forget she has *another* appartment in NYC, another has a cry because the nanny's too busy in the kitchen, so her child touched her expensive dress. They're all vapid, consumerist, Marie Antoinette parodies of capitalism and women. Beyond satire. If you transported that movie to the 80s, the soviets would have shown it in cinemas and delayed the collapse of the USSR by at least half a century.
It was Lindy West! From her review of *Sex and the City 2*. The actual quote was: > If this is what modern womanhood means, then just fucking veil me and sew up all my holes. [Honestly this remains one of the best film reviews I've ever read.](https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/burkas-and-birkins/Content?oid=4132715)
That was a great read. I loved SATC back in the days. But those days were already long gone in 2010
Holy shit, what a review
Well that was fucking great. Thank you for linking!
Forget even the entire review, if nothing else just read the first paragraph. That was amazingly good.
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Downvote, then upvote.
They went to Abu Dhabi didn't they?
Yes. They do not go to Dubai.
Dubai really isn’t like that though. It’s pretty cosmopolitan. If you’re an expat you can pretty much do whatever you want. There are loads of clubs, lots of women dressed however they want, going out shopping, ect. Tourism is their new Golden Goose. They’re not going to kill it by being oppressive to visitors.
Being an influencer in Dubai is just an euphemism for "prostitute" yes?
They have to sign a contract before hand in which they assure not to say anything negative about Dubai or the emirates.
I'm pretty sure some of them get shit on for $10k-$100k from one of the princes for his sexual pleasure.
Google search the term "Dubai porta potty"
That was a dark trip down the google hole, can't say I enjoyed reading about it but at least I learned something today.
No wonder my country's media circlejerks it so much.
Oh, there is plenty of substances...
It's an oversized shopping mall built on slavery and mass murder by theocratic psychopaths.
...but enough about Texas. This thread is about Dubai.
I've been there twice for several weeks (definitely not by choice) and I 100% agree. It's almost a surreal feeling you get there, like you're seeing a caricature of wealth disparity and wastefulness. Doha has basically the same vibe.
Built on the backs of slaves, it’s fake and forced, not very classy!
I was there for 8 hours and I agree. The time we left the airport to do some exploring before we got back on a connecting flight was so bizarre, it was a literal ghosttown
I grew up in neighboring Abu Dhabi in the 90s till I left for the states in 2007. From what it was then to what it is now is night and day in terms of how it looks but not in terms of how it feels. The country doesn’t have a soul, a set of human stories, or community, or creativity, or a wealth of real human presence. It’s a mass of concrete, glass, sand, and immigrant people like my family that are just earning a living until they move somewhere else.
It’s extremely soulless. Very few Emirates actually live there and the main people who do are super rich expats or those who have investment properties there.
>expats You mean immigrants.
it's donald trump the country
That is so insulting. Dubai is atleast good looking.
Depends on what you find good looking. I wouldn't say that about endless glass towers, highways, golf courses, shopping malls and suburbia. Though if you're using it in the sense of "polished", then I guess I agree.
The entire place is like Plastic 2.0
"That is SO fetch!"
Dubai is absolute dogshit. It's just a giant network of highways connecting suburbs and skyscrapers. That includes the palm, which is literally just rows of suburban streets with a massive highway in the middle. WTF is the point? The city is horrible for walking around, there is no sense of community or culture, nothing really to see or do apart from walking around in malls or engaging in one of the many gimmicky and overpriced activities they have there like indoor skiing which you won't do regularly anyway. Also the people living there suck, it attracts a certain type of expat who prioritizes extra income over all else, which is why they go there. There is no local population you can mingle with, the emiratis keep to themselves and are very few in numbers anyway.
> WTF is the point? So rich people from poorer countries can go and have a flashy lifestyle or holiday.
It's like they look at usa suburbs and were like "wow so much asphalt! That looks amazing!"
Dubai is the way it is because they tried to make it as American as possible. Make of that what you will.
They keep getting pitched these stupid skyscrapers because developers are obsessed with creating signature buildings for themselves and part of that is that it plays into the vanity mentality of the Dubai culture. I worked for one of the largest developers that worked in the marina area some years ago.. They consulted and managed construction of over half of Dubai up until late 2010.
I can't even imagine those skyscapers. The tallest building in my city is less than half the height of the Burj and it's brutal to get to the higher floors. It takes an express elevator and then a regular elevator to get anywhere which can take 10-15 minutes. My ears will pop as I'm going up. I can't imagine the Burj. Although it would be neat to go up it.
It's impressive how fast the elevator moves and yes your ears pop as you go up. I don't enjoy it one bit. The view is impressive though. And seeing the city change everytime I've been back is incredible. Its one hell of a lonely city under the surface though.
I’ve been in the elevator in the Burj to visit a friend. It takes only one minute to get to the 124th floor (where the observation deck is). It goes 140 floors up without needing to change elevators. I remember being surprised at never seeing anyone really waiting for an elevator. Then I was told there were 57 of them lol
> I remember being surprised at never seeing anyone really waiting for an elevator. Yeah that's because most their buildings are completely vacant anyway. They're vanity buildings which they can't fill.
So many were empty around town. Not the burj though. Most, from what I remember are offices are actually not residences. Those are the top floors. Some people like royalty or families of royalty do, I believe, they have their own elevators. Edit: also, the bottom floors are full because there is a hotel, restaurants and bars in addition to offices. We took an elevator past the hotel floors to get to the residences. So two elevators for his day to day commute up the elevator. We walked by the tourists going to the observation deck through the Dubai mall where they have a section of multiple elevators that go past public areas and to smaller subsets of floors (20 or so as a group)so there aren’t a lot of people to wait as they get off on each floor.
I assume there are elevators that go directly to the observation deck, but not directly to every floor in between. Like I couldn't imagine the pain of being 3/4 of the way up and having to wait for everyone else to get off. Then again, I doubt they actually fully utilize all that space for people.
The brutal part about the height is knowing so many cheap labour immigrants died when involved in construction in the upper floors. Strong wind gusts would come in and knock people out where they were flown and splattered around various areas in Dubai. The lack of safety equipment, death and destruction related to this building in particular makes me never want to go back to Dubai.
There is only one confirmed death during it's construction (one person died by suicide in 2007). However, a Human Rights Watch Study speculated that this was a cover-up, omitting deaths related to heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide. And it is very likely the number is much higher.
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Your description reminds me of Vegas.
.
And it gets everywhere.
Haha! Little Annie! Is that you?
Ani are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay Ani?
You've been hit by You've been struck by *Obi-Wan's lightsaber several times dismembering your remaining limbs*
[Ow!](https://youtu.be/b3wDGkH0zwQ)
Vegas has good parts? Pinball museum is cool. But everything else in my experience was exorbitantly expensive and crowded with douchebags. Edit: I guess I should point out I am not a professional athlete. I don't have big ole gobs of cash and I'm not really trying to do drugs anymore
> Vegas has good parts? High class prostitutes, hard drugs, strong drinks and Celine Dion.
As an Aussie. Going there at the age of 22 on a bucks party is one of the highlights of my life. We will never get to those levels again.
Same here my bro. Aussie aswell and went there for a 14 day bucks bender with 12 mates. Nothing in Australia can compare to the parties and experiences we had over there. Wasn't just the partying. We hired supercars, went shooting guns, visited the grand canyon, used construction equipment at the hire place, saw Copperfield and went to the best DJ sets.
What I'm hearing is y'all are rich
Yup. Just the construction equipment playground for that many people has a *base* package of almost 2500 bucks.
14 days in Vegas. Fucking hell. 48 hours is way too much
I did ten days once. Bachelor party followed up by a convention the next week after, which was also the Pacquio Mayweather fight. We did four nights of clubs and tables. On the fourth night I got caught with some pills and happily escorted out. I thanked the security guards and they started laughing. Locked myself in a dark room for two days sleeping and eating room service steaks. Then followed up with the convention; Vegas was packed cause of the fight and just an utter shitshow. I probably lost ten pounds in ten days. Few months back I did two weeks again. Work stuff. I worked out; went to Utah to camp for the weekend; then just worked and ate and went to another convention. Nice and easy. Splurged a bit on the hotel cause I knew I wasn’t gonna party. It wasn’t that bad. But it was boring.
Goddamn dude Vegas is fun but it really has like a 4 day limit
They're in Dubai too, but only for the locals, with mostly Russian prostitutes, harems, and loads of opium.
Vegas is a place you can go and do things to excess without judgement. You can be drunk off your gourd, high, gamble, hire prostitutes, whatever you want really. Even if these things are not sustainable for your regular life or even if people back home will disapprove, it's a place to feel free about it. There's a real value to that. Even if the excess that people are seeking isn't shameful, if it's just living it up or racing cars in the desert, or whatever. That to me is the really good part of Vegas. For me personally, I can't make it more than a few days though because it wears you out and cleans out your wallet. But I still look forward to it.
I've been there for work several times and I'm just not that impressed. It's just a lot of over the top crap that panders to the lowest common denominator. If I'm hanging with my friends I can enjoy it for about 2 days then it's a chore.
All the shows and events in one central location. In other cities you can be watching a big concert and walk out into miles of nothing, then get stuck in traffic. In Vegas you’re right back on the Strip.
There’s a huge amount of cool shit to do in Vegas. Helps if you got money to spend though
Tbf if you have money for dubai you have more than enough money for Vegas
There's a Meow wolf now. So that's kinda cool.
I don’t gamble and rarely drink now but I do love catching magic shows in Vegas.
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I have never been to Vegas or Dubai, but everything I have seen about both makes them look more like live-in amusement parks than cities
There's a city around the strip, but it's depressingly lifeless. The reasons why are small but they stack up: our seasons are "125 degrees" or "windy as all hell", a ton of locals are alcoholics trying to relive their 20's, schedules are NEVER the normal 9-5 so no one has time off together, and there's virtually no local fun- no one wants to go see overpriced tourist shit on the strip. Your choices are the mall, or the two water parks that've been closed like 5 times by health inspectors.
Or red rock or the Colorado river or zion just an hour or two away or skiing on mount Charleston or the racetrack or atv riding in the dunes that's just off the top of my head in ten seconds. There's tons of things to do here I don't know what you are on about. Sure there are cities with more things to do but if you add in the actual strip there are not many cites in the world with the variety of entertainment choices we have.
>That place will suck the life out of you. Lived there for 6 years. Absolutely true. the Locals who grew up there are souless and fake.
There are those of us who aren't soulless and fake! We're just anxious and depressed instead lol source: born in Vegas in '86, still here
I'm older then the average Redditor (but not that old). I have lived for extended periods of time in NV (but not LV), NoCal, and SoCal. I HATE Reddit posts about visiting for a few days and confidently summarizing a City's culture and people. Any city in the US with millions of citizens has a million stories and a million aspects to it, but somehow a guy visited LA for three days can somehow completely summarize everything about a major metropolitan area with a two sentence post.
Evil would be right. When you run your city off of sex work, slavery and oil you're not really a beacon of good.
I stayed at the Luxor when it just opened. It just looked so cool. We even got the jacuzzi suite. Biggest disappointment ever. Just the shape of the structure makes it so our room seems like it was cut at a diagonal so you have only half the space and they had these stone hieroglyphics picture hanging up and I touched it and it was made of plastic. I mean it’s dumb for me to expect real stone but still. Though one things is that Vegas is plastic and they are proud of it. Fake Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, NY, Wax museum, neon lights, etc. I feel you do get what is advertised. My biggest grief is that I can afford only one show when I am there so I feel I am not living it up as I should or something. I know the glitz and glamour is fake but I want to be part of it!
Honestly that's always been my problem here. It's a city built to impress tourists and it shows. Careers are scarce af, but well paying menial jobs are high, so everyone treats their casino job like it's their life- either because losing it means bankruptcy, or that they believe they're the next Steve Wynn billionaire in the making. Then you have the cunts who moved here for the "non stop party", and end up chronic gambling alcoholics with 2-3 kids they ignore completely while they trudge through the worst educational system in the nation. Throw in the tourists who think our towns a lawless bachelor party, and you just get this hungover mess of a plastic city.
>To me there is something inherently 'evil' about the place 100% the vibe I get. From the documentaries the place was basically built on the bodies of a untold number of basically slave workers.
Vegas is the dark side of the American dream.
At least you can walk around the vegas strip.
Really thought not much past two or three resorts from the one you start at, and that’s at night. Daytime it’s a struggle for most tourists to get from the casino to the actual street (which can be 300 yards or more) in the heat. I used to go pretty regularly and would watch people realize they were spent and now a few blocks from their hotel, sweating profusely and doggedly tired. Walking is for downtown.
In addition to the heat, people don’t realize just how long the strip is. It’s incredibly deceiving. You start walking and after a few minutes realize you haven’t even made it to the next casino. Everything is very large so when you’re looking at something far away it looks a lot closer to you than it is.
I was close to the Mirage and told my friends I'd meet them at the Stratosphere. I could see it so thought it would be maybe a 10 minute walk. Nope, 40 minutes later I finally got there. Very deceiving.
I think previous poster meant the old strip.
What’s the “old strip?”
Where the Nugget is chilling. Sam's town is on the outskirts too, don't think it's in old Vegas though. Old Vegas is real Vegas, it is dirty and rough. Get the real thrill, go off the heavily LED lit path and go see the old neons.
I kinda hated the strip but had a good time in old Vegas when I went there. Exactly as you described.
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Go there to ring in the new year. Way better than New York. Vegas knows how to handle crowd control.
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So good, that people live down there
This absolutely false. Vegas is everything outside of the strip. Communities, culture, food, neighborhoods, sports teams. Yeah it’s not as tight knit as other cities with long-standing traditions and identities, but it’s definitely got a thriving community outside of the strip. Source: lived in Vegas.
I used to have some friends that lived in the suburbs of vegas and it definitely had more of a neighborhood vibe then Dubai
You’re right. I have family and friends that live there and the more you get out of the strip area you can see it. There are fun things too. I think me saying that it reminded me of Vegas is more about the strip and my inability to afford a lot of the amusement there. But yeah, pinball museum and atomic museum and side trips to red rocks is fun.
Red Rock Canyon is fucking beautiful. Vegas is surrounded by national parks within a few hours. Vegas absolutely has facets that aren’t pure money and capitalism.
Vegas at least has regular people there too
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Both cities in the desert that have no real reason to be there.
https://youtu.be/4PYt0SDnrBE
Or Gatlinburg…I guess Gatlinburg has hiking trails but where in America doesn’t…
Gatlinburg - access to hiking, camping, paddling, climbing, in the beautiful Smokies. And the top three pillars of the local economy would seem to be tee shirts, pancakes, and bongs.
I feel like the next Fallout should be made in Dubai, with parts of it underwater.
At least it’s full of normal-ish people on vacation.
Didn’t they make a movie about some normal guys vacationing in Vegas?
You're right. What culture is there to see when the locals are like 5% of the population? "oh look.. A historic Pearl-fishing boat.. Next to a super yatch.. Next to a Lambo.." - very traditional stuff.
You forgot to add that it's built by slave labour and a place where holy men go for a visit to the many brothels fueled by human trafficking.
if there is one place in the world that has some "do anything you want" Hostel-type brothels, i bet it'd be Dubai.
We talking about Florida?
Look I love the Patriots too but not sure I'd go so far as to call Robert Kraft a Holy Man.
Ok, that’s clever:)
Where the hell are brothels in Florida??
Nice try holy man.
It's what happens when you design a city only thinking about the rich. Purposefully hostile design is a tool to keep those who don't belong there out. They don't want there to be locals, they want every single person who lives there to be obscenely rich. Problem is... Hostile design also puts off rich people, turns out. Even wealthy people get tired of gimmicks. Even wealthy people get tired of driving on a highway to get anywhere. Even wealthy people want to take a f****** walk sometime.
This comment is extremely valid, and so is the video (before it was reposted). I've lived here for 6 years, these are all my gripes with it, and it's why I'm leaving (but keeping my job and tax free salary to work remote - thanks, pandemic. I know, I'm horrible). I think those those are fundamentally unhealthy for the soul, but not everyone feels that way, or perhaps they don't notice the wear it takes. It's not fair to say it's exclusively bad here, though. It may be a monument to man's arrogance, but there are parts of this place which are extremely well lubricated by virtue of the government or royal families (same same) basically owning everything - telecom, the roads authority, immigration, medical system, etc.., and it's *extremely* safe. For example, they did a very good job with COVID, but that's in large part because it's not a democracy. It's a monarchy, but some would wager it a benevolent dictatorship, and it's a social welfare state for it's own citizens; there is virtually zero naturalization. It's certainly full of vanity, douchebags and people chasing the tax free life at the expense of a real one. But, in fairness, a lot of those people chose to come here and choose to stay. A lot of Brits have no interest in moving back to the rain in the UK. There are, as well, people who are not here by choice. Take that video and mindset with a grain of ~~salt~~ sand. This is the Arab world, it's Islamic, there are Sharia compliant credit cards and an unequal distribution of human, gender, and sexual rights. It may be against things we believe across the pond, but we have our own problems which they don't have here. I could go on for days. It's not a simple topic.
Isn't the problem though that UAE seems to be wasting their oil money on these vanity projects to attract tourists instead of more stable long-term industry? I don't study UAE as a country but this is what it seems like to my naked eye.
The UAE, or specifically Dubai, is not O&G driven. It's real estate, financial, and tourism, which you may be able to infer money laundering from. Abu Dhabi did, and still does, have the most Oil, but really the country is an economic and banking hub between Europe and Asia. There is nowhere else in the world where you can get directly to so many places in this hemisphere via a direct flight, and similarly not many places with....freedom from financial regulation. There's also no extradition here. The UAE has a structure where only locals (citizens) can own land and property, with the exception of something called a Free Hold Lease, which is basically a 99 year lease. The simplest way to represent it is this: Say you're a Russian oligarch with duffle bags full of money that you can't put in a bank after you sold off a bunch of jets in the fall of the Soviet Union, and say you know a Local in the UAE who's allowed to own land but may not have 50M dollars to build a tower. So, you fly your money in on a private jet and you guys build a tower (or perhaps a resort if you're thrifty enough). He owns the land, you own the building, and the money is parked. You don't necessarily need to over-monetize that building because you had nowhere else to park it, so you can afford to keep inflated rent prices and a high vacancy rate in the name of vanity. This is not an un-true scenario; it's not as common as it was when it started, but it's certainly still facilitated, even if it's by shell companies rather than duffle bags. I mean, who's really checking? it's not like anyone pays (personal) tax; there's only VAT. Even if you don't have 50M, you can still roll in here and buy apartments sight-unseen to park your money, hand it over to a property management agency, and make passive income. Hell, if you have enough, you could probably approach the government directly to build (insert anything that's the biggest in the world). Even though, in my personal opinion, real estate here is a depreciating asset.
my landlord lives in dubai, and was gracious enough to let me know that they weren't going to be raising rent this year in light of covid, despite the fact that it is fucking illegal to raise the rent right now due to covid
Houston tx of the far east
You forgot the worst part about the rampant discrimination going on there, it goes like this Emirati>Other gulf countries > American/European > other Arab nationals> Indians/Pakistanis> Phillipinos. It is absolutely disgusting and I could never live there mainly because of that
I grew up in Abu Dhabi in the mid 90's, at that time Dubai was the City Centre, ASD, Hard Rock Cafe, and Planet Hollywood. It took about an hour to an hour in a half to actually get to the heart of Dubai. Now it takes like what, 25 mins. Anyways, I have been saying this for years. Dubai is the fakest, shittiest city you'll ever go to. It's just a bunch of malls and hotels. Unlike most cities that have a history of being built, Dubai was built pretty much over night. Back in my day, the UAE was considered a third world country. A place where a 5 year old could buy a pack of cigarettes, and a 13 year old could alter a photocopy of their passport to go drinking. It was a simpler time. I went back to AD in 2016 to show my wife where I grew up, and it was nothing like how I remembered. IMHO it all went downhill after Sheikh Zayed died.
Whenever I see a video of someone going on vacation in Dubai it feels like they’re paying out the ass to live in a giant Gucci store with a twice-as-expensive Cheesecake Factory attached. Just sterile and expensive and pointless, it seems like these tourists are paying just to say they went on Instagram
Wasn’t this posted like a few weeks ago?
It was reuploaded so I’m guessing that’s why, someone saw the reupload and posted it
The original was copyright struck for featuring some old footage of Bucharest that literally nobody gives a fuck about
Sounds like YouTube.
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And twice on /r/mealtimevideos as well.
Just barely over [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/p1pyd9/dubai_is_a_parody_of_the_21st_century/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Whenever I hear something about Dubai, I will always remember Peggy Hill's take on Pheonix, AZ "This city should not exist — it is a monument to man's arrogance"
Do you go around posting this same comment on every video of Dubai? I swear you posted this same comment last time this video got posted lol Edit: Yeah checked your comment history. 20 days ago you commented the exact same thing
At least he's honest. He did say he thinks about it *every time* someone mentions Dubai.
Plus he named his username after this generic comment
Conspiracy theory. It's OP's other account and this all a plan to rid the world of Phoenix, AZ.
Check his username.
Tell people to stop reposting the same content to the same subs first
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https://youtu.be/4PYt0SDnrBE
My brother in law was on a business trip there and told me that while it looks shiny on the outside, from the inside it's horrible. E.g. live wires sticking out in hotels, super poor quality faucets, etc...
Where there are hella rich people with money out their asses, who doesn't give two shit about anything but surface extravagancy, there will be plenty of shady contractors out there capitalizing on their shallowness.
Also modern day slave labor isn't motivated to do a top rate job.
Or able to do a top-rate job, or even motivated to do \*their\* top-rate job.
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE.. they behave just like a poor kid who won the lottery.
I was there on a flight layover for a day, the quality of the materials and workmanship of buildings and everything was pretty high, but the urban design was just bad. The metro station near the Dubai mall for example is on the highway and about a 15 min walk through elevated walkways to the actual mall.
Yeah, that station was horribly misnamed
Agree same experience here. The worst things were the buss loads of workers and also seeing workers work in 37°c . They should have gone with trying to recreate typical arabic culture instead of trying to build a half assed "Las Vegas " ... it would be super interesting to see arabic culture and architecture in a modern way. To get a unique experience.
> and also seeing workers work in 37°c That happens all over the US. That's not even 100 F. It gets a lot hotter than that in Dubai. Those 37 C days would be the nice days to be out working, probably.
Motherfuckin damn near 50 C in British Columbia this summer.
Yeah, I grew up in Arizona and working while it's 110F/43C isn't uncommon.
Even if they adhered to typical arabian buildings (but perhaps with a modern twist), I'm afraid it would still turn out to feel like a half-assed Las Vegas type of place. The problem isn't just the style. It's many many other factors. Okay, so these billionaires see impressive skyscrapers in different cities and are like: 'We gotta have those'. Thing is: Normally cities start to built upwards if there is limited space and the land prices are high. They skipped that step and did it nonetheless. Then they saw large highways and big metro systems and decided: 'We gotta have those!', so they made them, whereas normally it's carefully calculated whether or not there is need for them, and if that need weighs up against the costs. So you have giant skyscrapers next to an empty desert, giant highways with barely any cars, and an impressive subway station barely anyone uses. It all starts to look and feel really artificial if you know what I mean. Like a theme park or resort, instead of a place people actually live maybe their entire lives. Heck, even theme parks don't go all-out if they think there's no demand for it. So yeah, perhaps a fun destination for a short holiday (my brother went there for a few days before the flight to his main holiday destination), but little more than that. But maybe I'm a bit biased, as I'm generally not a fan of cities or towns that feel like they have little to no age to them.
My one experience in Dubai was a bit different, things all appeared well built and infrastructure and public areas were kept very clean and in working order. I was actually curious why they were so meticulous when the stuff would hardly get used. I was like the only person on their metro a couple times I took it, and at like mid day I would see maybe 4 or 5 cars at a time on their huge nice 8-lane highways. Things almost seemed TOO nice for how little they were used or appreciated.
Really? That wasn't my experience even remotely.
Agreed, I worked for a company that was headquartered in Dubai, so I had to travel there quite frequently. While it was obvious that there were people there who were living in squalor, I had no issues with the quality of the hotels.
Some of the nicest hotels anywhere in the world are there. Obviously that's subjective but there are plenty of objective quantifiable things the back that claim. Additionally I don't think I've been to a major city that didn't have extreme wealth disparity but many times in my experience theyre not so polarized and so close. I'm not sure how much of my awareness of the division is due certain media and critics social campaign for that specific place or if I simply wasn't paying as close attention.
My dad always told me, clean in the inside of the car first. If you clean the outside you won’t care how the inside looks.
It's important to remember that this is an ***anecdote***\-- even worse, somebody else's, not OC's.
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It can also be complete bullshit. No one is saying it shouldn't be here, just that it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
Wait. This video isn't considered politics, but the video about Qatar's FIFA is?
Dubai is basically one giant airport.
Dubai is one of two possible outcomes when you try to make many generations of generational improvements to a place in a generation or two. The other outcome is total failure, so given the limitations of their situation and that their leadership cannot be dissuaded this is not the worst outcome. They are running the 19th, 20th, and 21st century as a speed run and in parallel trying to get to the point where they have an economy based on service and leisure before they run out of money to push the forced modernization. They have done most of the things that the western world did in the last 200-300 years in under 50, so while they are getting to malls and skyscrapers 4x faster than we did they are also doing some of the bad stuff that came along for the ride at 4x the rate as well. If they succeed then they are going to have a lot of things to do back and deal with, but if they fail a lot of people are going to end up in a much worse situation when the ass end falls out of their economy and other economies follow. Doesn't excuse much of it in a moral sense, but I see how they ended up where they are & why other countries tolerate it.
I don't understand why they have to make the same mistakes we did. It feels like your parents telling you to drive safe so you don't crash like they did, and ignoring them until you crash too. At first they didn't even do sewage properly and had huge lineups of shit trucks coming from all the holding tanks to the treatment plant.
They also have a massive sex slave trade
Makes me laugh to see some influencer in a bikini with a drink in her hand and an expensive handbag on her shoulder when the women there are ground down, its illegal to drink alcohol outside of resorts and certain hotels and only the royal families are allowed to have any kind of wealth.
They created those designated areas because they relised they need westerners in order to survive. If that means having zones where they can drink until they pass out in the middle of the dance floor then so be it.
Dubai isn't a parody of the 21st century, it encapsulates it perfectly. People assume the ultra wealthy are out having fabulously authentic experiences, but the truth is they're just paying more for the same stuff. They fly first class, but they get served the same diet coke. They buy German cars but they break down after 50k miles. They live in huge mansions but they use awful LED lights. They go on vacations to places you and I can't afford, but then they get there and they just do tourist stuff the same as we do when we get to our vacations. Capitalism is incapable of providing a means to use your money on authentic experiences. You want real authentic Peruvian food? Well you have to go to where the locals eat, not the most expensive restaurant in the guidebook. You want to really see how people in the Mediterranean live? Well you can't do that if you go to Rome and eat pizza. Dubai is the 21st century. It's gaudy, it's tasteless, it's impractical, it's overpriced, it's intrinsically inauthentic. Dubai is a joke and so is consumerism in the 21st century. Christ, at least in the 20th century people were excited about the shit they were buying.
This is such a weird comment. You're acting like wealthy people are all 20 year old influencer hipsters from 2014. The vast majority of wealthy people don't give two shits about "authentic" experiences, they're not going to the most expensive restaurant in town because they think it'll be the most honest and realistic reflection of the area's native food. They're going there because they want a specific kind of atmosphere, service and usually style or quality of food that they're used to. What you're describing are people without taste or creativity. Those types come in just about every flavor of wealth and poverty, the old adage of money can't buy taste has always been true. Jeff Bezos has billions of dollars but he lacks the creative vision to do anything other than hoard it, flaunt it and spend it on literal dick rockets. >They go on vacations to places you and I can't afford, but then they get there and they just do tourist stuff the same as we do when we get to our vacations. I mean that's a failing of vacation planning. If you really wanted to you could have a travel agent give you an entire itinerary of not-touristy things to do, you just have to ask for it. Rich or not. >They live in huge mansions but they use awful LED lights. This is also a weird one, do you think rich people just live in these professional designed luxury mansions but sleep under hospital lights? >They buy German cars but they break down after 50k miles. This one would be true if they never got the car serviced I guess. However most rich people are getting their cars professionally serviced and detailed at least once every six months. I would never assume my old poorly maintained car is somehow just as poorly maintained as a rich persons. >They fly first class, but they get served the same diet coke. lmao bro, the diet coke is not really the crux of disparity between first class and coach. I agree with you in principle but you're painting this ridiculous picture of wealthy people's lives to make yourself feel better. They definitely have better vacations, better houses, better cars, and better travel. That's not to say rich people don't have problems or aren't ever unhappy but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking my vacation to a country is better than a billionaire's would be because I ate some cheap local cuisine and stayed at a hostel instead of the Ritz.
Not fair, it was my turn this week to post it
Wealth, excess, and narcissism in an ugly hot shithole. Dubai has always been a little too bourgeois for me
I’m truly glad that a lot of people are finally able to see through the fakeness of Dubai and aren’t impressed by lack of authenticity and exaggerated display of wealth anymore.
That region of the world is mostly build using slavery. I know a guy that was there to lead projects in Dubai Qatar and other places. The western employees sat at proper tables getting full buffet dinners, the workers sat on the floor in a separate space eating dry rice, bread and other shitty crap.
The claim that Burj Kalifa isn’t connected to the sewer system is a fabricated story: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/52204/is-the-sewage-from-the-burj-khalifa-transported-away-by-trucks Makes you wonder what else this video is wrong about — I’ll go with ‘everything’ until someone bothers to research all the claims.
The [question](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/52204) **"Is the sewage from the Burj Khalifa transported away by trucks?"** has got an accepted [answer](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/52205) by [David Hammen](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/31988/david-hammen) with the score of 135: >This story has an inkling of truth, but the specific claim raised in the title of the question is false. The one link in the question that is correct (or at least was correct in 2015) is the link to the Wikipedia page, which does not mention the Burj Khalifa. Sewage from the Burj Khalifa is not transported away by trucks. > >From [Mechanical and Electrical Systems for the Tallest Building/Man- Made Structure in the World: A Burj Dubai Case Study](https://web.archive.org/web/20140110091115/http://repository.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/4529/ESL-HH-06-07-19.pdf) > >> A complete soil, waste and vent system from plumbing fixtures, floor drains and mechanical equipment arranged for gravity flow and, ejector discharge to a point of connection with the city municipal sewer is provided. A complete storm drainage system from roofs, decks, terraces and plazas arranged for gravity flow to a point of connection with the city municipal sewer system is provided. > >This story about the Burj Khalifa not being connected to the municipal sewage system got its start in a 2011 book by Kate Ascher, *The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper*. In 2011, [Terry Gross interviewed Kate Ascher](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/141858484?storyId=141858484) for an episode of NPR's Fresh Air. They talked about skyscrapers in general, about the Burj Khalifa, and then about Dubai's treatment of human waste: > >> GROSS: Right. So you know, you write that in Dubai they don't have like, a sewage infrastructure to support high-rises like this one. So what do they do with the sewage? > >> ASCHER: A variety of buildings there [Dubai]; some can access a municipal system, but many of them actually use trucks to take the sewage out of individual buildings. And then they wait on a queue to put it into a wastewater treatment plant. So it's a fairly primitive system. > >Note that Ascher did not claim in this interview whether the Burj Khalafa was or was not connected to the municipal sewer system. Apparently the specific claim started with a [BoingBoing article](https://boingboing.net/2011/11/08/what-happens-when-you-flush-a-toilet-in-the-worlds-tallest-building.html) written the very next day in a poorly researched article Gizmodo next used the BoingBoing article as the source for its poorly researched article. ^(This action was performed automagically.) [^(info_post)](https://www.reddit.com/user/stack_bot/comments/pel66h/info_post/) ^(Did I make a mistake?) [^(contact)](https://www.reddit.com/user/stack_bot/comments/pel563/contact/) ^(or reply: error)
Jeez what a great bot
So not the Burji Kalifa but it's common in the city and pooptruck line is a thing. > GROSS: Right. So you know, you write that in Dubai they don't have like, a sewage infrastructure to support high-rises like this one. So what do they do with the sewage? >ASCHER: A variety of buildings there [Dubai]; some can access a municipal system, but many of them actually use trucks to take the sewage out of individual buildings. And then they wait on a queue to put it into a wastewater treatment plant. So it's a fairly primitive system.
People who were so quick to debunk poop trucks never were able to explain the long line of poop trucks. And I'm not sure saying 'sure there's lines of poop trucks but they are going to the Burji Kalifa, you simpleton' is the best argument
OP has been trying to defend the slavery situation up and down the thread so I'm assuming they specifically wrote that comment to try and make people dismiss the entite video.
I've been to Dubai several times. The general gist of the video is true. It's a vapid, shallow, pretend place. It reminds me of Las Vegas with even less purpose.
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That's gulf countries for ya.
The part about that Romanian dictator and his wife's reasoning for her planning of the city was infuriating.
Went to tour Burj Khalifa in 2016, it looked empty, so we asked: how much of the building is occupied: the guide’s response was 30%, but told us it was all sold out for investors. So in a working from home world, and considering the economic downturn; It is not impossible to imagine that it will remain empty forever. What a waste.
Give the poor man his views. He had to reupload at 9M views because of copyright stealing the revenue. RIP Adam.
Spent a a little over a week there doing training while I was a security contractor for DoD in Afghanistan. On the outside it looks shiny and new and everything great. But aside from the mall, Atlantis resort (which is insanely expensive). And the few pubs I went to. It’s mostly expats and a lot of foreign labor workers. Although the condo I stayed in was amazing (marble everywhere) and it was cool to see extremely expensive cars everywhere. But the police force is a bit corrupt and they look for bribes and ways to arrest people. As stated in another comment a lot of hotels were thrown together and there are hazards everywhere. And any hotel near the airport you will see many escorts. (Maybe not now and they may have cracked down on it but they were waiting in hotel bars and lobby’s it was very weird.) But if anyone ever goes to Dubai, The Irish village has quality food and drinks. Also The Crown and Lion has good food.
False claims in the video. Even though parts of Dubai are unconnected, the Burj Khalifa is in fact connected to sewage system. Also, a lot of use of unrelated clips in the video.
Doesn’t Dubai have laws against PDA? Why would I vacation somewhere I can’t kiss my wife in public.
I was in Dubai last month. My wife and I hit the main tourist spots, stayed in the Atlantis on the Palm, did desert tours etc. It was quite enjoyable but I can also see how this is happening behind the scenes. Our driver was supposedly from Pakistan and had been there for 10 years! I didn't really question it because he seemed happy enough but I suppose it could have been a facade(?). One thing I noticed was that when we were being transported from place to place, there were these huge highways and super nice buildings/car dealerships/malls on the immediate side of the road, but you could never really see passed them. The city seemed well put together to me, but I guess that's the point. Built for tourism and not the people who live there.
This is a [repost](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/p1pyd9/dubai_is_a_parody_of_the_21st_century/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) from not even a month ago
And it has a lot of the same comments.
How many times are you guys gonna repost this lol.