Evil Fish Domain

Silksong is very in your face about its criticism of capitalism and the exploitation of workers, in a way that probably makes you think back to Hollow Knight with its much more generous economy and see it more favorably, but Hornet herself spells it out: what she's looking at in Pharloom is probably what was beneath the foundation of her own kingdom. It's meant to make you consider the costs behind the grandeur of any given god's great empire, not just pin down Pharloom as uniquely evil.

And when you get back to Hollow Knight, it shows in so many little things. Sure, the pilgrims weren't trampled on the same way as in Silksong, but their entire culture is still founded upon absolute veneration of the Pale King: the importance of the King Idols, how his image was exaggerated to increase the reverence of his subject, the fountain with a huge statue of him where you're asked to drop all your mortal possession for the sake of the realm (wonder who these money are going to, uh), how there was an entire caste of richer, more important bugs closer to him than common citizens who kept sucking up to him, many of which he brought with him when he secluded himself in a different dimension with his entire palace. Not talking about how much more technologically advanced the White Palace seems to be in comparison to everything else, as if he personally controlled the extent of that advancement (that line about how never traveled via stag, implying that maybe the trams, which are a lot fewer in the game, were perhaps meant for bugs of higher status. not a coincidence one of them connects straight to the territory where his Palace is).

He also seems very arrogant in general - from the very start of the game there's the boast of Hallownest being the "only" and "last" kingdom, which was already a ridiculous claim back in the days when we knew both Ze'mer and the Weavers came from the outside and that the Mantis tribe and Moths already lived there before his arrival so it's not like all life comes from him, but after Silksong it's outright delusional. Another message says that there's "nothing" beyond the wastes, and everyone who does not listen to him and goes away loses their memory. It all seem designed to keep the bugs there confined within his realm, so that they can keep worshipping him while never learning about the world beyond. His hubris was believing he could really build the perfect, eternal kingdom, not much different by how the high caste of Pharloom thought it could achieve immortality through Silk, just like how Hornet calls him a fool for believing he could control the void.

Even the White Lady, who's generally seen by part of the fandom as better than him, still went and claimed territories there were once of Unn's people for herself. Even after everything she had already witnessed with the Hollow Knight and the great sacrifice that was paid, almost for naught, she still implores the Knight to take their sibling's place as the eternally suffering Omelas Kid, in stark comparison to Hornet offering them a choice multiple times, and even hoping they could instead avoid it by overcoming the Radiance.

Hallownest is better than Pharloom because it didn't have the time or advantages to be as bad as pharloom before the radiance hit the nuke button

If I remember correctly, the weaver settlement of deepest predates the pale king's arrival, or at least the foundation of hallownest proper.

By the time these weavers fled Grand Mother Silk, pharloom was likely an established kingdom (or at least a group of territories) comparable with hallownest at its peak, with weaver structures littered all across the territory and a number of already old societies in the Order of Karak, Verdania, the Skarr and likely others.

Pharloom's ailing state with the creation of the citadel to feed and contain GMS begins, at the absolute earliest and being generous, a generation or two before hallownest birth, when the weavers that manage to scale settle in deepnest.

It took likely a millennium equivalent or two for hallownest of founding, recruitment, building, expanding, infection 1.0, devising a plan, creating and training the perfect vessel, sealing the radiance, rebuilding and resuming as usual, the vessel failing, infection 2.0, full fall of the kingdom and the infected stasis before the knight arrives and finally pulls the plug.

In that whole life cycle of hallownest (plus however long took between the end of the infection and hornet getting captured, maybe a week maybe a century), those devoted to GMS had the time to create the citadel (if it wasn't already there at least in part) to substitute the weavers keeping the silk and song churning along, with the explicit advantage of plentiful metal in the bell veins and the abundant heat of the running magma bellow to grow to require the evils we see first hand.

Putting the nuke that the radiance was out of the equation, how long do you thing it would take for something similar to occur to hallownest as it happened to pharloom.

How long before PK's slow but steady expansion crosses the line with the mantises or the bees like it started to do with the spiders right before the debacle?

How long before he becomes an even farther figurehead, turning a blind eye as the mortal high caste or the sanctum scholars assume more power than they already had and turn the city of tears into another citadel that chokes the life around it?

Or before the injustices of those outcast and disillusioned bugs like xero pile enough to chip away at his benevolent facade and pale bright promises and decides to tighten his grim like GMS did with the weavers?

Maybe his hubris in tinkering with intrinsically uncontrollable forces unleashes a calamity the likes of which makes the infection look quaint