The Importance of User Centered Design

I was seeing a lot of projects that were touting themselves as being user centered because it was a very big buzzword at the time. And they were not doing UX. They were doing theatrics. So we were kind of perpetuating this design theatrics instead of actual design. I'm wondering, is it the case that the normal state is that we're performing theatre? And the exception is when we're doing good design. Is that too depressing a question? You're breaking my heart all over again.