It was a day worth commemorating. As was customary in District 25, the streets hosted the Makeup Festival.
Virtual projections of strange beasts bared their fangs and claws in the air, while representatives of different cultures from across the world occupied their own sections. Holographic women danced incongruously in the streets, and a jumble of information flooded people's eyes. Of course, people also enjoyed the cultural shock that came with this barrage.
In fact, District 25 had established plenty of festivals when it was first founded, but most had since been phased out. After all, for capitalists, more festivals were not necessarily a good thing.
Of course, the survival of these festivals was often inseparable from those same people... To squeeze more resources out of the public, designing consumerist traps into the festivities became an indispensable step.
As the most important part of its marketing, this festival had been assigned the meaning of "freedom."
-Embrace freedom, discard your masks, and face your true selves.
This was also why the festival was called the "Makeup Festival."
On a day like this, people expressed their true inner thoughts through makeup, pursuing genuine "freedom" unbound by worldly conventions.
This also seemed to align perfectly with the wishes of most workers in District 25. In such an oppressive, hopeless environment, a festival where they could vent was naturally a good thing... And on this day, people often indulged their desires, following their inner "freedom" to buy things they normally would not even dare consider.
District 25's conglomerates seized on this as well, running "sales" on this day to stoke consumers' desire to buy.
A festival that served "everyone's" interests was naturally preserved as a tradition.
Leaving aside the meaning behind it all, such a grand festival was genuinely a rare occasion for District 25,