If you follow motorsports you’ve probably seen the word “Neom” somewhere. It’s pretty prevalent in trackside billboards, and it is the title sponsor of McLaren’s Formula E and Extreme E efforts. You might not, however, have known what Neom is. Aside from another avenue for Saudi Arabia to sportswash its horrific reputation, Neom is a region of the Middle East nation “built from the ground up as a living laboratory.” Put another way it’s a dystopian surveillance state, a giant waste of money, and a dictator’s pipe dream.
Here’s what McLaren’s website says about Neom:
NEOM is an accelerator of human progress and a vision of what a new future might look like. It is a region in northwest Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea being built from the ground up as a living laboratory – a place where entrepreneurship will chart the course for this new future. It will be a destination and a home for people who dream big and want to be part of building a new model for exceptional livability, creating thriving businesses and reinventing environmental conservation.
NEOM will include hyperconnected, cognitive cities, ports and enterprise zones, research centers, sports and entertainment venues and tourist destinations. As a hub for innovation, entrepreneurs, business leaders and companies will come to research, incubate, and commercialize new technologies and enterprises in groundbreaking ways. Residents of NEOM will embody an international ethos and embrace a culture of exploration, risk-taking and diversity.
A South African TikTok influencer who recently moved to Neom posted a video—from her now-deleted account—showing what an evening in their life is like living in the connected future city, and it looks not only boring as shit, but none of this is particularly futuristic or exciting. Everything is branded and wears an absurdist architectural “greige” aesthetic.
Neom was pitched as a region which features futuristic cities called The Line, Oxagon, Trojena, and Sindalah. The Line is a 110-mile long hollow skyscraper with a population of nine million (a quarter of Saudi Arabia’s current population) by 2030. Oxagon is a city built half on the water that will “learn to anticipate your needs before you need them.” Trojena is a man-made ski city in the mountains, where snow will be manufactured for three months every year, a thing that will definitely happen. Sindalah is planned to be an island resort effectively run by Marriott with three luxury hotels opening this year.
Some of that might sound pretty good. Saudi is trying to remake itself as an international resort destination and futuristic locale without cars or character. That’s all well and good, but the results that appear in the above TikTok video are abysmal and hideous. Do you want to live in a tub of plain yogurt? Maybe Neom is for you.
It’s difficult to find out any backstory for TikTok user @jessica.ashley.herman, but it doesn’t seem all that far-fetched that the city would invite well-to-do white influencers to help hype up Neom, and make it more palatable and desirable to Westerners. What do you think? Are you ready to move to Neom?
