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When I was young, I used to delight in going to the mall. The mall was the cultural center of our reality. You’d go to the arcade, the novelty t-shirt store, and find a few girls to flirt with as you walked past the fountains and other displays. Eventually, you’d get an overpriced piece of pizza, then maybe head to a movie.

Those were simpler times.

Last week I took my own children to the mall. Perhaps I was hoping for a bit of nostalgia, but what I got was an unhealthy dose of desolation. Many of the lots were empty, and the ones that were occupied sold products that I couldn’t conceive would ever make much of a profit.

In my youth, the two stores I liked the most were the book store and the record store. Most malls had at least one of each, some had several. The two biggest mall bookstores were B. Dalton and Waldenbooks.

It wasn’t quite like going to the library, and to be honest those stores had more than their fair share of trash books. There was always one rack containing the classics. It was in one of those stores that I picked up my first copy of “The Three Musketeers.”

I grew up in a small town with a single stoplight, two thousand inhabitants, and twenty taverns. We didn’t have a bookstore, we barely had a library. The library we did have didn’t offer the new releases. Anything printed before 1950, wasn’t considered a “real” book.

But our family made semi regular trips to the big city two hours away and we spent a lot of time crawling the mall. The book store called to me, and I found stories there that were unavailable to me anywhere else. I liked reading modern fantasy. The antiquated viewpoint of Edgar Rice Burroughs and L. Frank Baum didn’t appeal to me. Even though their works contained talking animals and space travel, their words are permeated with the viewpoint of a cruel age.

When secondary characters make matter-of-fact comments that drip with misogyny, you know you’re reading something out of date and potentially harmful. Even as a child, I knew.

But at the mall bookstore with the trash books I found modern fantasy which was much more attuned to my sensibilities. These books were not enduring classics, but they were mine and they at least represented the work of true artists wrestling with the complexities of the world.

The last time I went to the mall, those stores were gone. The only thing you find are overpriced boxes of something called Labubu, and a T-shirt station with a lot of insulting conservative slogans.

I miss the record store too. The book store was where our middle aged modern thinkers offered their comments on reality, the record store was for the expression of our kids.

Young women and men used to stand on stages and scream about the injustices of our world. The people would come and listen. There would be seventy thousand fans holding flames in their hands demanding more. When the concert ended, that army would be unleashed and the world would be transformed.

We don’t have that now. That’s gone. The only “musicians” who get any airplay are the ones who have gone through gatekeeping mechanisms on television. Before they’re even allowed to open their mouth and sing, they must meet a certain beauty standard.

The era of the garage bands is over. There’s simply no space to discuss injustice or abuse or how things might be better one day.

Our children have been deprived of choice. Once you wake up and see it, it can’t be unseen. It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that this is exactly the result that conservatives have wanted all along.

Decades ago, young people could change the world with their energy and frustration.

Today, they’re directed to “first amendment areas” that are safely tucked away where nobody can see.

Our children don’t walk through the malls anymore. They don’t casually thumb through dozens of scandalous album covers designed by their peers. Instead, we have algorithms that make those choices for us. Or, more accurately, we have algorithms that provide us with the illusion of a choice.

You can scroll through endless options. It doesn’t matter how long you scroll, you’ll never find anything good.

It’s always been a primary tactic of narcissists to provide you with the illusion of a choice. Whatever option you choose ends up serving them. When you ask, “Is there a door number three?” the narcissists fly into a rage.

Our children have learned not even to ask these days.

There are no record stores in the malls. Today, kids don’t debate whether the best guitarist is Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, or Brian May.

The concept of the guitar god has been slain.

They’ve been replaced by Joe Rogan, Erika Kirk, and scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

Choice has been captured by the oligarchs who recognized that free speech could change the world. Our right to choose has been eroded over decades. Now, we can barely distinguish between modern music and the news. It’s lifeless. There’s no message. It’s banal. Listening to that is a passive form of abuse.

Conservatives have already taken the book stores and record stores from the mall. Video stores are long gone. They’re working on defunding libraries too. Where will all the books go?

When I was young, you could walk into a massive room that was overflowing with diverse perspectives. There were dynamic covers to grab your attention. There were stories written from other cultures that believed other religions. You had endless worlds to explore.

Now, everything is curated by an AI entity that provides you six identical choices on a screen. On streaming services, no matter whether you select drama, romance, or comedy, all the options are the same.

Narcissists bludgeon you with the illusion of choice, then they wear you down over time.

These days, the only way our children can experience choice is to write something for themselves. Encourage them to do so. Celebrate with them by putting words and color and thoughts and feelings on a page.

Then share, but not through some malicious malware. Share in person. Read on the street. Don’t let them think that this AI generated dystopian wasteland has to be our reality.

We used to celebrate humanity.

Today, the malls are empty.

Our choice has been stolen from us.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

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