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Why is everything so ugly?

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Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#261

Post by midasuni »

jevoten wrote: post #121
midasuni wrote: post #7

Beauty isn’t valued in these areas by those with the resources to choose it. When the majority of people and businesses live hand to mouth, those that don’t have to constantly maximise exponential returns to their owners. Who has money to burn on “valueless” beauty Even if the cost of beauty is the same, and there is an actual value, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, you are increasing maximum potential value…

> (you turn off some buyers who don’t like the look) Fortunately the modernist minimal grayscale look is universally beloved, so no-one is turned off by that.

But nobody is more turned off. You have 3 people all disliking boring grey, and 2 grey properties for sale, you have more demand than supply and price rises

Build something pink and now you only have 1 person liking it and 2 strongly disliking it, demand now equals supply so price doesn’t rise.

Is it worth the risk?

There’s a reason rented properties are co feed in magnolia, not just because it’s cheaper to get the same paint in bulk, but because if turns off the fewest people, and those it does don’t have any choice anyway as everywhere is magnolia.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#262

Post by shiroiuma »

morkalork wrote: post #137
jszymborski wrote: post #38

I just wanted to echo the gray frustration here. I went to buy vinyl flooring (I can't afford hardwood) and the sheer amount of inexplicably "grey wood" planks was staggering. Why! Like, it's as if some alien only saw wood in an episode of I Love Lucy and wanted to replicate it.

Forget flooring, why are carpets and rugs with a grey and washed out faded look so popular? If you want a muted look, just don't buy one! Their whole purpose is to add color and style to a room and yet so much of what's available looks terrible.

No, one big purpose of a rug is to keep your place warmer and give you a softer and warmer place to walk or put your feet. So in front of your sofa, for instance, where your feet are usually on the floor, is better covered with a rug, so your feet don't get cold from the floor.

They also help reduce the noise caused by walking around, so your neighbors don't complain.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#263

Post by shiroiuma »

topaz0 wrote: post #176
j4yav wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if it’s millennials per se but subreddits about cozy, nice living spaces are upvoting for whatever reason quite uniformly empty and gray minimalist designs. Like a distopian hospital from the future or something.

Since when are redditors representative of the population?

Well Redditors sure as hell aren't typically Boomers, and the Zoomers can't afford houses.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#264

Post by esperent »

mglz wrote: post #148

My crackpot theory: This is in part due to CAD: * Colors other than gray don't look nice in CAD and aren't the default. * It's super easy to just stack a bunch of rectangles (looking at you, architects...) * You can chamfer and fillet but that's the end of what most people do. More complex shapes are hard to due due to the clunky spline tools. Hence elaborate ornaments are left out.

I think this is valid, but it's only one part of the equation - and I would guess it's the smaller part. The other side is manufacturing. In an era of mass production, making things like buildings look unique is expensive.

If your building is made from rectangles, lines, and few curves, you can use off the shelf panels to build it. Order them from a factory, have a truck deliver them, stick them together with cement and bolts.

On the other hand, even if you do pay someone for the extra time to create beautiful, unique, complex designs in a CAD program (which is not that hard), actually making those parts is extremely expensive so they will get rejected by most architectural and construction firms.

Perhaps as we come into the era of 3d printing, more complex structures will come back into vogue again. It will be kind of ironic if 99% of all futuristic cities depicted in scifi, all clean lines, spires, and cylinders turns out to be wrong and the skyscraper of the future looks more like the Sagrada Familia, but built in six months instead of three centuries.

(Although personally I'm hoping the future looks like forested garden cities.)

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#265

Post by firstplacelast »

jszymborski wrote: post #38

I just wanted to echo the gray frustration here. I went to buy vinyl flooring (I can't afford hardwood) and the sheer amount of inexplicably "grey wood" planks was staggering. Why! Like, it's as if some alien only saw wood in an episode of I Love Lucy and wanted to replicate it.

Hey, pretty things are hard. Why isn’t half of HN looking their best at least once a week?

It costs money and time. I work with people in shirts that are only befitting for elementary school kids.

You can have the niceties, just have to pay for them.

But I think this is about where the market is going. People (with the money for homes) don’t care, so that’s how they’re catered to.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#266

Post by Klonoar »

shiroiuma wrote: post #242
c0pium wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee you that this is not the case. Go watch an old CRT, even the eye-wateringly expensive ones sucked compared to even a mediocre OLED. We just think they were great because of the SD pieces of crap we compared them to. Ditto for all of the technology Millennials have ennui for.

As an Xer who grew up with all these old technologies and saw the transitions to modern stuff, I fully agree. It's odd how Millennials are so interested in obsolete and obviously inferior technologies like LPs and Polaroid photos. There's very, very few cases I can think of where an older technology really was better in a significant way. Mechanical keyboards like the IBM Model M (or better yet, the Model F, though t…

I theorize that it comes down to: newer stuff is better, but as a society we’ve somehow made everything trend towards being super impersonal, and thus the next gen is searching for that feeling.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#267

Post by sfn42 »

shiroiuma wrote: post #242
c0pium wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee you that this is not the case. Go watch an old CRT, even the eye-wateringly expensive ones sucked compared to even a mediocre OLED. We just think they were great because of the SD pieces of crap we compared them to. Ditto for all of the technology Millennials have ennui for.

As an Xer who grew up with all these old technologies and saw the transitions to modern stuff, I fully agree. It's odd how Millennials are so interested in obsolete and obviously inferior technologies like LPs and Polaroid photos. There's very, very few cases I can think of where an older technology really was better in a significant way. Mechanical keyboards like the IBM Model M (or better yet, the Model F, though t…

Personally I don't really see the point of ownership. If I can listen to the music I'm good, I don't need to "own" a copy.

I'm probably an outlier, I don't really see the point of collecting things in general. Seems strange to me to have a hobby that consists of literally just buying things.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#268

Post by Klonoar »

at_compile_time wrote: post #258
NoPedantsThanks wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relax. He didn't lash out in fury at their existence. He just said he doesn't like their appearance. Did you design it or something?

I couldn't read any strong emotion in my comment. Maybe it's on your end?

Def not just on their end, your comment reads needlessly aggressive.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#269

Post by shakow »

rootusrootus wrote: post #249
ricardobeat wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Contrast with highways where you do want people to stay awake, so blue makes sense I remember some kind of study around yellow light being ideal for roads actually. The human eye is more sensitive in the green/yellow part of the spectrum, the lights are more efficient and cut through fog better.

The difference between white & yellow light in fog is minimal. What really makes fog lights effective is being under 18 inches off the ground so they shine under the fog.

And they also shine much brighter.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#270

Post by Fluorescence »

c0pium wrote: post #239
twiddling wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best television I had was a HD Sony CRT. Incredible picture. Also weighed over 230 pounds. My back does not miss CRTs

I guarantee you that this is not the case. Go watch an old CRT, even the eye-wateringly expensive ones sucked compared to even a mediocre OLED. We just think they were great because of the SD pieces of crap we compared them to. Ditto for all of the technology Millennials have ennui for.

There are some things that look better on a CRT e.g. pixel art games or shoddy set design that you really don't want to see without an Instagram like filter to suspend your belief.

Too much of what people think is fidelity is actually a type of noise e.g. what matters to me in a drama is the writing, acting, plot, ideas and message. Going from 320p to 4320p does not add signal if it means I can see all the seams in the set, all the make-up, how badly the wigs fit etc... it's actually added noise.

> Ditto for all of the technology Millennials have ennui for.

Do you mean ennui (apathy)? Or do you mean nostalgia, yearning, yen, rose-tinted romanticism etc.?

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