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Why is everything so ugly?

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Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#151

Post by bobthepanda »

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.

The AirBnB/house flip aesthetic is truly quite lowest common denominator.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#153

Post by j4yav »

dylan604 wrote: post #104
j4yav wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That second one looks like a sanitarium for babies.

What, but that "Wild and Free" banner totally livens everything up. /s I would be interested in seeing the adult that grew up in that nursery. Like, do their meals have a side of fava beans and a nice chianti?

"Do you like Raffi? I've been a big children's music fan ever since the release of his classic album, "Singable Songs for the Very Young." Before that, I really didn't understand any of the kiddie tunes. Too jingly, too toddler-tastic. It was on "Singable Songs" where Raffi's catchy melodies became more apparent. I think "Baby Beluga" was the artist's undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic lullaby on ocean adventures. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Teddy, take off your PJs."

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#154

Post by bobthepanda »

pixl97 wrote: post #120
deebosong wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To piggyback off of this with a call-to-action against the realities you point out, I think it's absolutely valuable and worth it to go after the aesthetic things that you like even for subjective reasons, and even if prevailing trends say otherwise, at the expense of falling outside the confines of conformity for the sake of pseudo-safety. Safety in numbers is a thing, but when it comes to art & design & aesthetics,…

I don't think this is the only issue. People have always copied each other throughout history. In the past before the industrial age it was much more difficult though as you had to use local materials and labor. Now we have global corporations and many of them are near monopolies in many industries. Add to this that making a billion of one thing massively drops the costs over something you make a million of, so you'r…

There is also the question of new mass media.

I would hazard a guess and say if you look at AirBnB throughout major cities in the world, the aesthetic will largely be the same. Trends existed before but were often adapted to local taste, yet now everywhere has the same overpriced coffee shop with rustic wood/metal tables and edison bulbs.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#155

Post by Paianni »

snakeyjake wrote: post #124

> After New York replaced the sodium-vapor lights in the city’s 250,000 streetlamps with shiny new LEDs in 2017, the experience of walking through the city at night transformed, almost . . . overnight. Forgiving, romantic, shadowy orange gave way to cold, all-seeing bluish white. Before the late 1970s, NYC was illuminated at night by pinkish-white incandescent bulbs. When the yellow monstrosities were rolled out peop…

Chances are the pre-1980s lamps were mercury-vapour, not incandescent. Incandescent lamps were obsolete for road lighting by the 1950s. Sodium lamps caught on because they were much more efficient than both.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#156

Post by everybodyknows »

xtiansimon wrote: post #77
donatj wrote: post #28

My city and apparently numerous cities in my area have passed ordinances that new buildings over a certain size have to have multiple facades to look like multiple buildings butted up to each other. The effect has been this astonishingly hideous theme park esq approximation of small town America that isn’t fooling anyone. It looks more out of place next to the actual turn of the twentieth century buildings than an un…

That’s funny. I don’t know about any ordinance, but you’re describing my town’s new downtown. [1] Just around the corner is a 75+ yro brick building (to the right of this street view) [2] with a detailed facade fashioned to have a small personal scale and plays with ornament to align with other older buildings on this street. (And this is some firm’s same solution/plan that you can find in at least one development mi…

For most hideous misfeature of [1], I nominate this clash of siding styles: The turrets of mid-mod aluminum rectangles not merely abutting, but actually projecting out of their base walls of faux-wood-lap siding.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#157

Post by JadeNB »

cs702 wrote: post #136
JadeNB wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla vehicles look beautiful to me. As you say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder—but, seriously, the Cybertruck as a thing of beauty? (This is from someone who actually liked the boxy car designs of old.)

Yes, the Cybertruck looks great to me. Is it different? Yes. But ugly? Not in my view. Have you seen it in person?

> Have you seen it in person?

I have not. I can't imagine it improving that much in person, but who knows? Anyway, whether I think it's ugly, in person or from afar, is not the issue; I was surprised that someone found it beautiful (which is different from just not being ugly), but I certainly don't mean to argue the point.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#158

Post by mp05 »

snakeyjake wrote: post #124

> After New York replaced the sodium-vapor lights in the city’s 250,000 streetlamps with shiny new LEDs in 2017, the experience of walking through the city at night transformed, almost . . . overnight. Forgiving, romantic, shadowy orange gave way to cold, all-seeing bluish white. Before the late 1970s, NYC was illuminated at night by pinkish-white incandescent bulbs. When the yellow monstrosities were rolled out peop…

> People of my age view them as a nuisance born out of the austerity of the 1970s, a temporary suboptimal fix that persisted due to inertia. A reminder of the rot and desperation of the that era.

> Now this dude is nostalgic for them?

You could just as readily be talking about a cassette tape.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#160

Post by ilikehurdles »

vdaea wrote: post #98
moritzwarhier wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the elites want to demoralise us Yeah no. The "elites" want profit, that's why we turned every part of the planet that we don't use for agriculture into concrete car scapes. Or Something. > advertisements with unattractive people practically didn't exist ten years ago. Now we are constantly bombarded with them incel vibes here. This is so hilariously stupid that it prevents me from being tempted to flag you…

What's stupid, that there are many more unattractive people in advertisements today that ten years ago? You may disagree if you want but I don't see how that observation is "stupid". No idea what incel vibes means...

You’re bombarded with advertisements with uggos because of backlash from the very kind of people who would blame all their failure and misery on “elites.” They rage tweeted every time someone disciplined in maintaining their health and physique dared to appear in an advert.
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