I think the Chinese have a certain “Protestant” talent. It doesn’t require an actual religion, nor churches, scriptures, or choirs. Just introduce a new term, a new gadget, a new doctrine—preferably sprinkled with half-understood foreign letters, a few dogmatic assertions, and slogans that make it seem like missing out would doom one’s life—and in no time, a fervor will sweep through the streets. Once the fervor takes hold, people are quickly sorted into ranks: the prophets, the believers, the skeptics, the laggards; those who “get it” and those who don’t; the creators and the bystanders. It’s as though the roster is set before dawn, and those who hesitate are relegated to the shadows of history.

The collage before me is biting, yet brutally honest. The upper half depicts an OpenClaw seminar, with grand slogans and even grander visions: “By 2026, humanity will no longer be divided by gender, but by creators and bystanders. Mastering OpenClaw is your ticket to the Web4.0 era.” Taken alone, such words aren’t entirely unreasonable. Who doesn’t talk about creation these days? Who doesn’t hype “tickets to the era”? Who doesn’t preach about new orders, new gateways, new ecosystems? But the lower half of the image abruptly cuts to a group of people wearing aluminum pots on their heads, captioned: “A nationwide qigong craze sweeps the country.” The collision of these two layers, in a flash of insight, exposes the underlying absurdity.

The Chinese are adept at forgetting—especially forgetting how fervently they once believed, how they elevated something to the status of a miracle. During the qigong craze, not everyone was delusional. At first, it was just about fitness, wellness, unlocking potential, unsolved scientific mysteries, the secrets of the human body, national wisdom, a new path for the times. The rhetoric was sophisticated, lofty, and utterly convincing. But by the time pots were worn on heads, spirits were summoned, and exercises flooded the streets, people suddenly realized: once something ceases to be merely “useful” and becomes a matter of “faith,” absurdity is never far behind.

Today’s OpenClaw craze can’t be simplistically equated with the qigong fever of the past. Technology is, after all, technology; code is code. Whether it works, integrates with tools, or genuinely serves people—these are objective questions. Yet the true danger lies not in the technology itself, but in the quasi-religious aura rapidly growing around it. Something that could be experimented with, refined, questioned, and polished is suddenly wrapped in phrases like “ticket to the era,” “human stratification,” and “be a creator or be left behind.” It’s no longer a tool but an identity. The debate shifts from “Is this useful?” to “Am I progressive?” “Are you obsolete?” “Who deserves to talk about the future, and who deserves to be phased out?”

This is the true chill of the image. Juxtaposing two eras isn’t to say OpenClaw is qigong, but to reveal how the fervor chasing OpenClaw mirrors the fervor chasing qigong. The same slogans, the same expressions, the same seduction of “Follow me, and you’ll no longer belong to the old world.” The upper half wears lobster hats; the lower half dons aluminum pots. On the surface, one seems trendy, the other laughable. But strip away the time and the jargon, and you’ll see the same faces: eager to shed their old selves, desperate to prove they’ve entered a new epoch, scrambling to secure a front-row seat in the latest trend.

People fear falling behind. In an era where everyone is racing against time, lagging feels more shameful than poverty. So when someone declares, “This is the next gateway,” “This is your ticket to the future,” “Without this, you’re just a bystander,” many can’t sit still. Where the ticket leads, whether the gateway opens to a hall or a pit, hardly matters. Buy the ticket first, queue up, don the hat, chant the slogans—just prove you’re not the one “left behind.” The Chinese excel at this, because what we fear most isn’t ignorance, but being seen as ignorant; not failing to understand, but failing to pretend we already do.

To dismiss this image with a laugh would be too lenient. It’s a reminder of an old truth: technology may be new, but the psychology of mass movements is often recycled. Yesterday it was qigong, today it’s AI; yesterday it was paranormal powers, today it’s Web4.0; yesterday it was the “human universe,” today it’s agents, workflows, and the creator class. The jargon grows ever fresher, but the rhetoric feels familiar. First, conjure a grandiose future; then declare who’s worthy of it. First, draw the battle lines; then let the anxious rush in. Soon, everyone is running on the same invisible track, shouting “creation” but thinking less about creation itself and more about not being left behind.

I’m not against OpenClaw or any new technology. If something truly serves people, expands their capabilities, or simplifies life, it’s worth exploring, using, and developing. The problem is never the tool, but those too eager to deify it. The healthiest fate for a tool is to be tested, tweaked, and critiqued; the most dangerous is to be hailed as a stairway to heaven the moment it appears, as though those who won’t kneel and climb deserve to be trampled by the times.

The power of this image lies in its simplicity. By juxtaposing “lobster hats” and “aluminum pots,” it exposes the absurdity lurking beneath lofty declarations. People think they’re embracing the future, only to catch an echo of history in the collage. The echo isn’t loud, but it’s jarring: you believe you’re creating a new era, but perhaps you’re just repeating an old frenzy; you think you’re on the side of the creators, but maybe you’ve only swapped for a trendier hat.

If this image can jolt even a few into clarity, it’s done a great service. What’s truly worth vigilance isn’t any specific technology, but the impulse to turn tools into totems, learning into loyalty tests, and participation into factionalism. At that point, lobster hats and aluminum pots differ only in material—the feverish desperation beneath them remains the same.

Progress is inevitable, and technology will keep evolving. But if every time something new emerges, a society’s first instinct isn’t to understand, experiment, or question, but to sort people into “advanced” and “backward,” “noble” and “bystander,” then no matter what’s worn on the head—be it lobster or pot—we haven’t strayed far from the old path.