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The age of average

alexmurrell.co.uk

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Re: The age of average

#311

Post by FrustratedMonky »

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…

What we must come to terms with is the fact that we are all inexorably drawn towards the realm of Plato's Forms, and this convergence is not something we can avoid or deny. It is not a matter of mere coincidence or happenstance, but rather an inherent feature of the world we inhabit. Regardless of our individual beliefs or perspectives, the Forms exert a profound influence on our experiences and perceptions, shaping the very fabric of our reality. Even those who reject Plato's philosophy cannot escape its grasp, for the Forms are embedded in the very structure of our existence. To say that we all experience convergence on Plato's Forms is to recognize the fundamental, undeniable role that the Platonic worldview plays in shaping our understanding of the world.

Re: The age of average

#312

Post by einpoklum »

> The Instagram pictures we post, the tweets we read, the TV we watch, the app icons we click, the skylines we see, the websites we visit and the illustrations which adorn them all look the same.

It sounds like the author is speaking to a clique of their similar friends.

Re: The age of average

#313

Post by angarg12 »

nassimm wrote: post #4

The "people all look the same" part is absolutely ridiculous. The overwhelming majority of people I pass by in the streets look nothing like these people (in fact, I can't even remember the last time I saw someone who looked like that in real life) The rest of the article isn't much better in my opinion: it cites only anecdotal evidence, and it says nothing about the past state of affairs despite the title of the art…

The same goes for interiors really. Instead of looking at AirBnB, which is biased, have a browse in any real estate website, where you can see picture of places regular people actually live in. Most of them aren't curated and well presented, instead an eclectic hodgepodge put together over the years, with very little in common with the AirSpace aesthetic.

Re: The age of average

#314

Post by sirmarksalot »

mortenjorck wrote: post #294
titzer wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> What makes something pretty and cool and interesting is skill, thoughtfulness and some sense of composition, color, and togetherness. This is key, yet it highlights an important aspect largely missing from these critiques of popular aesthetics: Any style popular enough to become hegemonic will itself contain examples spanning a wide range of quality and taste. There are beautiful expressions of the AirBnB interior,…

I think that's a bit reductive. Part of what's missing here is personality, or what I would call unique mediocrity. People who have no idea what they're doing just deciding to paint a wall yellow because they feel like it. The issue isn't just that some apartments have craftsmanship and others don't: it's that the high-skill and low-skill efforts look superficially the same.

Think about it with Marvel or Star Wars movies. There are some really good ones, and some really boring ones, and although you can definitely say "Thor Ragnarok" was better than "Iron Man: Age of Ultron", that doesn't change the fact that when you zoom out, it seems all we're getting is superhero and Star Wars movies, and maybe it would be nice to watch something else now and again.

We want more than just good craftsmanship. We need people of mediocre skill to be making things that are weird and interesting.

Re: The age of average

#315

Post by sheepybloke »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #62
SamBam wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figured people were going to take issue with the opening anecdote about art, but that was simply the author trying to frame the story in an interesting way. The rest of the article was more compelling. The ubiquity of the 5-over-1 architecture in the US is very striking. The NY Times had an article recently called "America the Bland" [1] which challenged people to tell if apartments were in Nashville, Seattle or De…

5 over 1 is the result of regulations of various kinds converging resulting in economic pressures dictating that building format. Also unless land is just atrociously expensive, the marginal cost of adding floors doesn't go down. In fact it really goes up at some point. I've still never actually worked out how sewage works in supertall buildings.

My biggest gripe with 5 over 1's is the interior and the pricing. They're all cheap drywall with no insulation, quartz counter tops with an island and stainless steel appliances, and vinyl, wood grain flooring. They then claim that because they hit all of the "luxury" points, they are "luxury" apartments and can charge an extra $750 more than other apartments. In the end, all new apartments are like this, and beside location, basically interchangeable.

Re: The age of average

#316

Post by DeathArrow »

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…

> 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.

But this is the essence of article, that the average has bad tastes when it comes to art.

Salvador Dali has way less exposure than some random Instagram influencer and Bach has way less exposure than some random hip hop "legend" from Brooklyn, NY. Some random people from Tik Tok have more exposure than Friedrich Nietzsche.

Re: The age of average

#317

Post by thomastjeffery »

epups wrote: post #242
thomastjeffery wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary! There is a key difference going from "convergence" to "conformity": circular reasoning. People who need to sell the thing they invent, tell themselves that "convergence" is the best way there. Customers like familiar traits. So they design for intentional convergence, and that is the essence of conformity. 99.99999% of keyboards are the same physical layout. This layout is a standard that conforms to…

I would dare say that 99.99999% of keyboard users expect a similar layout. Sure, it converged out of conformity and familiarity, but so what? This is part of the added value to me, I can learn to type in a particular layout and I'm good to go in any other. This is a crucial part of functionality in fact.

You are precisely the consumer demand that drives conformity here. You are real! That doesn't change any of the other things I just said: in fact, it exasperates the issue, because it isn't wrong to target your familiarity as a reliable selling point.

The problem is that it's also a good thing to try create new designs. I have a keyboard that you would hate to use. That's how I feel about the traditional design you prefer. We can both be served by the market, but only if designers have enough confidence to do so.

You wouldn't even care about this if you had originally learned to type on my keyboard. If that was the ubiquitous thing you started with, then we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Had the progression of keyboard design been free to explore other options, it might have naturally converged on something more ergonomic; which would serve both the need for familiarity and the desire for ergonomics.

We are already seeing ergonomic keyboard designs converge to 3 shapes: Dactyl-like extreme ergonomics that place keys as close as possible to the resting fingertip; flat compromises like ergodox that can use a PCB; and grid layouts like planck that optimize the difficulty of conceptual memory layouts when using many layers. All three place keys in columns, so they are pretty easy to switch between. The only real mystery left is the thumb.

Most of the discomfort involved in switching from the typewriter layout stems from how obscure and unwieldy it is relative to anything else. Like a Who from Whoville, we look at the elegant hammer - as a replacement for the familiar Whabam - with distaste.

Re: The age of average

#318

Post by larve »

The good thing about living in today's world is that nothing is as easy as escaping the blandocracy. You don't want big franchise video games? There's a googol of indie video games on itch and steam and co. You want weird ass looking appartments. Guess what, they're on airbnb too. You want music? Books? Software? The weirdest communities? A text-mode orange website? They're all out there for you to use and discover.

Re: The age of average

#319

Post by precompute »

I can't find the link to it right now, but there's an article / post that says a lot of the blandness in our surroundings / houses is because we subconsciously try to balance it out with all the color we have available on our digital screens. Walls are bland white / gray because we have televisions, everything else is bland because the entire world is in our phones.

And yes, globalization is yet another reason why. Even travelling to places is pretty boring now, it's just the same things. It takes a while for the reality to sink in, but our entire economy is now based on being bland. To the extent any country deviates from the USA it is deemed "undeveloped".

Edit: found it - https://old.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/10njiwd/co...

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