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The age of average

alexmurrell.co.uk

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Re: The age of average

#221

Post by titzer »

crazygringo wrote: post #123

What the article describes is correct, but I don't think the words "average" or "homogeneity" or "conformity" are the right terms, as they seem to carry negative connotations here. Rather, the right word is "convergence". The point is, people like certain things aesthetically. It used to be that artists and designers were still trying to figure out what looks good, and trying all the things. But now we've tried so ma…

> Even if those things have converged aesthetically?

But they haven't converged aesthetically any more than preferences have been absolutely overwritten, overridden, and overprinted by whatever is most easy to produce today. Your comment somewhat assumes that where we are is the ultimate endpoint of some long process, when in reality fads come and go. Tastes change. What is out there now is no more inevitable than bell bottoms might have seemed in the 1970s.

Sure, maybe its just nostalgia, but there were plenty of trends and aesthetics from my younger years that are just nowhere to be found. Why? Because when people renovate, they go with the aesthetic de jure, what's available and what the social pressures are. Hardly anyone is going to renovate a 1980s basement and put in...1980s carpet. Can't be sourced, and people think it looks ugly.

> They've converged because we think they're nice. Things don't need to be different just for the sake of being different. Because different can also be worse.

No, things have converged because lots of people with no taste[1] just ho-hummed along with the zeitgest. The zeitgeist just so happens to be a bland sameness and characterless, charmless, antiseptically clean and dead grayness that we see on all the HGTV shows and AirBnBs. Different is frigging great if you ask me. At least, different than that. Give me the inside of a 1985 McDonalds instead of this, TBH! What makes something pretty and cool and interesting is skill, thoughtfulness and some sense of composition, color, and togetherness. Today it's a thoughtless cheap imitation made at scale.

[1] Taste is subjective, always will be.

Re: The age of average

#222

Post by oh_sigh »

VancouverMan wrote: post #193
Last5Digits wrote: post #135

I'm always wary of articles like this. The feeling of things becoming mediocre strongly resonates with me, but I am aware that there could be a great many different biases at play. When I was younger, entertainment media felt magical. The complexity and depth of experiences I could get from even a second-rate story was immense. I remember staying up late at night to process the last movie I watched, or feeling that r…

[flagged]

> The effects of the rise of "political correctness", hypersensitivity, and "cancel culture" over the last three or so decades should be considered, too.

There are countless books, movies, and songs from before the rise of these concepts that OP has almost certainly not consumed. Presumably OP wasn't just talking about new media, but rather all media, and therefore is probably a them issue and not a media issue.

Re: The age of average

#224

Post by mc32 »

hgsgm wrote: post #156
ryandrake wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they had to ultra-optimize the aerodynamics so all the cars look like the same bar of soap (they don't have to), they could still at least paint the damn soap a different color. But, no. All you see coming out of the factory are white, silver, gray, black, the occasional red and the occasional blue. What's driving this? That's what the article is about. Is it actually pull from customers, or is it push from t…

Companies like selling cars, so I think they pick colors most people prefer. "Exciting" "Unique" colors look a bit silly or non-unique when your neighbors have the same color. If what you are asking for is 1000 color choices instead of 10, that's obviously more expensive to mass produce or customize.

There was a time in the aughts when nail polish colors were prevalent in (sub) compact cars for some reason. Not so much now.

Re: The age of average

#225

Post by b212 »

isk517 wrote: post #149
crazygringo wrote: post #123

What the article describes is correct, but I don't think the words "average" or "homogeneity" or "conformity" are the right terms, as they seem to carry negative connotations here. Rather, the right word is "convergence". The point is, people like certain things aesthetically. It used to be that artists and designers were still trying to figure out what looks good, and trying all the things. But now we've tried so ma…

As much as some openly oppose the idea, and others secretly do, we really are just a single species with fairly uniform tastes.

That was my first thought. It’s a hard pill to swallow as we all like to think we’re unique and special. Well…

Re: The age of average

#226

Post by yowzadave »

This effect will only be exacerbated by the ubiquitous use of AI, which by design is trained on everything humans have already produced, and will trend toward the average in the results it produces. Perhaps this is the key advantage that humans have: the ability to be different?

Re: The age of average

#227

Post by heywhatupboys »

slindsey wrote: post #5

Part of the problem within this article is the choice of pictures. The first section states, “In nearly every country all people really wanted was a landscape with a few figures around, animals in the foreground, mainly blue.” They then present 9 pictures that reinforce the concept that people all around the world expect the _same_ thing. But that's simply not true. They didn't take that description and give it to ar…

Meh, you see the Danish flag in one of them. Danish people love their flag in art, celebrations, etc. So clearly it was desired by them.

Re: The age of average

#228

Post by marcosdumay »

bumby wrote: post #209
marcosdumay wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, the reason cars look the same is that they are optimized to use the same mass-produced parts. Not really because of physical, aesthetic, or usability reasons.

Yes, they often are designed to use a common platform. But I'm speaking specifically to aerodynamic shapes. The body of a car is relatively easy to change in the design phase even with the same underlying mechanical systems, but I believe they still converge on the same basic aerodynamic shapes.

There are actually quite a lot of possible shapes that don't degrade aerodynamics. If you take a look on the conception of any modern car, you'll see that the original design is always completely different from the one it gets after it's adapted to factory.

Re: The age of average

#229

Post by pnw »

nradov wrote: post #179
ryandrake wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they had to ultra-optimize the aerodynamics so all the cars look like the same bar of soap (they don't have to), they could still at least paint the damn soap a different color. But, no. All you see coming out of the factory are white, silver, gray, black, the occasional red and the occasional blue. What's driving this? That's what the article is about. Is it actually pull from customers, or is it push from t…

Car paint colors are driven by pull from franchised dealers and the dealership financing model, as well as by push from supply chain issues. In the US at least, most mainstream consumers expect to buy a car from dealer inventory and drive it away that day. So dealers mostly order only a few bland colors because most consumers are willing to settle for those as long as the car has the options they want and they get a…

Tesla have reduced their palette to just five colors, presumably to cut costs.

Porsche is the leader in paint color choice, no doubt about that, with 14 basic colors plus custom options. And to your point, consumers are willing to wait for the Porsche factory to build their car, rather than driving one off the lot that day.

Re: The age of average

#230

Post by eagleinparadise »

This article is silly. Look at anything over the course of history. All buildings built in 1920 look the same. Everyone dressed the same.

The author cherry picks stuff that is popular in Western culture. Of course it looks similar... it's popular.

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