It's not coffee shops, it's everything. I read an essay last year on this topic, "The age of average" by Alex Murrell ( https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-age-of-average ) and it's stayed in my mind ever since. Cars, home interiors, instagram photos, skylines, self help books, franchise movies. The design of everything in our lives has become so relentlessly optimized we have a global culture that's stuck a risk-free local maxima.
As much as I will admit the Cybertruck is ugly and don't really _want_ one, this is why I was/am tempted by them. I can barely tell the difference between a Chevy, Ford, or Dodge truck at this point. They all look the same. Cars too. But the Cybertruck actually looks different. Not here shilling for the Cybertruck... Musk sucks and it seems like the truck does as well but it looks different than this boring average we're in and I kind of dig that.
I’m unashamedly getting one pretty much for this reason. I’m bored of driving the same amorphous blob-shaped cars for the past couple of decades (including my blob shaped model Y). It will be fun to drive something that tries to push the envelope for once.
Right?! I'm excited for you and I hope you love it! I want that moment of walking out to my driveway, not really thinking about it, and seeing this thing and, for just a minute, thinking "Why is there a Warthog from Halo 1 sitting in my driveway?" haha
I dunno, this feels like it is overemphasizing. Consider the section on cities. It shows eight skylines viewed from across water. They all have tall buildings. Two have towers that have a spherical bulge element. Some buildings are glass facades and others are concrete. In one skyline the tallest building is wide and looks like some sort of hotel. In one skyline there is a large and wide white building that looks like an arena. These don't look identical to me except that they all contain tall buildings, which isn't as much a design choice as it is an economic choice about city centers. Then the text immediately pivots to cheap stick framing and small apartment buildings outside of city centers.
The discussion of interior decorating is called "interiors all look the same" but it immediately narrows focus onto just AirBnB listings (and for what its worth, I've stayed at far more AirBnBs that don't look like this than AirBnBs that do). The author describes trying to get design inspiration and getting stuck here, but there are entire magazines still in circulation about interior decor that very much cover a wide range of styles.
There is something to the article, but I feel that selecting ten similar looking things from each category is just not super compelling. There are ten books that sprung from a trend and use "fuck" in the title with a similar cover layout that were published over a period of like seven years. That's like, a normal trend that comes and goes. There are still a bazillion books that don't use this cringey title and have totally different cover design.
Comments
It's not coffee shops, it's everything. I read an essay last year on this topic, "The age of average" by Alex Murrell ( https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-age-of-average ) and it's stayed in my mind ever since. Cars, home interiors, instagram photos, skylines, self help books, franchise movies. The design of everything in our lives has become so relentlessly optimized we have a global culture that's stuck a risk-free local maxima.
As much as I will admit the Cybertruck is ugly and don't really _want_ one, this is why I was/am tempted by them. I can barely tell the difference between a Chevy, Ford, or Dodge truck at this point. They all look the same. Cars too. But the Cybertruck actually looks different. Not here shilling for the Cybertruck... Musk sucks and it seems like the truck does as well but it looks different than this boring average we're in and I kind of dig that.
Not what I heard (the truck sucks):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6WDq0V5oBg
I’m unashamedly getting one pretty much for this reason. I’m bored of driving the same amorphous blob-shaped cars for the past couple of decades (including my blob shaped model Y). It will be fun to drive something that tries to push the envelope for once.
Right?! I'm excited for you and I hope you love it! I want that moment of walking out to my driveway, not really thinking about it, and seeing this thing and, for just a minute, thinking "Why is there a Warthog from Halo 1 sitting in my driveway?" haha
Enjoy!
I dunno, this feels like it is overemphasizing. Consider the section on cities. It shows eight skylines viewed from across water. They all have tall buildings. Two have towers that have a spherical bulge element. Some buildings are glass facades and others are concrete. In one skyline the tallest building is wide and looks like some sort of hotel. In one skyline there is a large and wide white building that looks like an arena. These don't look identical to me except that they all contain tall buildings, which isn't as much a design choice as it is an economic choice about city centers. Then the text immediately pivots to cheap stick framing and small apartment buildings outside of city centers.
The discussion of interior decorating is called "interiors all look the same" but it immediately narrows focus onto just AirBnB listings (and for what its worth, I've stayed at far more AirBnBs that don't look like this than AirBnBs that do). The author describes trying to get design inspiration and getting stuck here, but there are entire magazines still in circulation about interior decor that very much cover a wide range of styles.
There is something to the article, but I feel that selecting ten similar looking things from each category is just not super compelling. There are ten books that sprung from a trend and use "fuck" in the title with a similar cover layout that were published over a period of like seven years. That's like, a normal trend that comes and goes. There are still a bazillion books that don't use this cringey title and have totally different cover design.
globohomo[geniety] as the kids call it