This artist imagined what it would look like if Google and Facebook died in a retail apocalypse

Andrei Lacatusu

What if Facebook, Google, and other tech giants were going through the same collapse experienced in recent years by retailers such as Sears, Macy's, and Walgreen's?

That was graphic artist Andrei Lacatusu's starting point for a new project. He imagined what it would be like if today's tech titans were actually subject to the same urban decay as defunct retailers with aging storefronts in abandoned towns. In Lacatusu's series "Social Decay," paint fades from the tech companies' signs, and letters fall off some buildings all together.

Lacatusu is based in Bucharest, Romania, where he works as a computer-generated imagery artist at Carioca Studio. He created the works in "Social Decay" using a mix of Adobe Photoshop and a pair of 3D rendering programs called Autodesk 3ds Max and V-Ray.

The tech companies' signs may be fabricated but they look all-too-real. As such, they offer a new perspective on companies such as Google and Facebook, which given their current dominance, seem immortal. But as Lacatusu's work suggests, as societies change, so do the companies with the most money and power.

Here's what Lacatusu sees when he imagines the end of the titans of tech:

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