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Why are most sofas so bad?

dwell.com

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Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#11

Post by pdabbadabba »

uoaei wrote: post #2

"Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption. I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk. No other culture seems nearly as interested, and some actively discourage it in favor of more real, personal…

> "Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption.

I think you may be engaging in a bit of axe grinding here! I agree that the sofa is one of the post important pieces of furniture in my home [1], but for reasons that have nothing to do with television. There is no TV in the room! But it is still where I spend the most time sitting during downtime, reading books, talking to my family, etc. And when I have friends over, we're either there or at the dining room table.

[1] For the title of the most important, I might have picked my bed. But that's a quibble.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#12

Post by fy20 »

The part about springs is interesting because all the sofas I've owned in the past decade have used foam, and I don't miss springs... When they are new maybe it's ok, but over time they wear out and the sofa becomes really noisy and uncomfortable as they aren't even. The same thing with mattresses, I'm never buying a sprung mattress again.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#13

Post by barbazoo »

uoaei wrote: post #2

"Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption. I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk. No other culture seems nearly as interested, and some actively discourage it in favor of more real, personal…

> "Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption.

That's quite a leap. Did you consider that dwell.com might not have actually done a study on what Americans consider the "most important piece of furniture" but just used that phrase to justify the very existence of their article?

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#14

Post by ed_blackburn »

uoaei wrote: post #2

"Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption. I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk. No other culture seems nearly as interested, and some actively discourage it in favor of more real, personal…

I'm not American. But I feel seen(!) :)

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#16

Post by vkou »

The article seems to exaggerate a bit, because neither in 2024, nor in 2004, would I have expected a $1,200 couch to be 'well-made'. (Although I wouldn't expect either one to actually fall apart in two years of use.)

This isn't exactly a novel problem.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#17

Post by uoaei »

barbazoo wrote: post #13
uoaei wrote: post #2

"Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption. I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk. No other culture seems nearly as interested, and some actively discourage it in favor of more real, personal…

> "Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption. That's quite a leap. Did you consider that dwell.com might not have actually done a study on what Americans consider the "most important piece of furniture" but just used that phrase to justify the very existence of their article?

I'm not making any claims about the preferences of Americans but about the default assumptions of the authors. It is as good a reflection of cultural attitudes as any.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#18

Post by uoaei »

saurik wrote: post #8
uoaei wrote: post #2

"Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption. I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk. No other culture seems nearly as interested, and some actively discourage it in favor of more real, personal…

> The only time I'm on my couch is when I have a few people over. You make it sound like this is not merely a rare thing for you, but that it should be rare... I don't just passively sit and watch much television and yet I have spent an incredible amount of time in my life sitting on either my couch or the couch of a friend -- or even one of many couches at an office -- talking and laughing and having fun with other…

No, it's just that most activities in my home are not amenable to sitting.

For instance, people come by all the time to play pool. Does that mean I should advocate that pool tables are important things to have in the home?

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#19

Post by tqi »

uoaei wrote: post #2

"Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption. I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk. No other culture seems nearly as interested, and some actively discourage it in favor of more real, personal…

> really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk

For one, it doesnt seem like americans are significant outliers in tv consumption[1] or smartphone usage[2]. For another, yeah if you're a foreign traveller people probably aren't going to make small talk with you about TV or other pop culture...

[1]https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-country-watches-th...

[2] https://explodingtopics.com/blog/smartphone-usage-stats#smar...

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#20

Post by nerdponx »

angry_moose wrote: post #9

I've posted about our ~$2000 West Elm sofa that disintegrated within 2 years in a similar previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37393399 The whole thing is just stapled together OSB. I ripped the dust cover off and added 3 new frame stretchers made from 2x8 construction lumber (and tied other loose joints back together) and its done pretty well since then: https://imgur.com/a/bqlLgW3 (wish I'd gotten…

As if it wasn't bad enough that most consumer goods have completely bifurcated into "junk" and "luxury", now it's hard to even tell which products fall into which category, because there is so much junk now being sold as luxury.
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