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Why is everything so ugly?

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Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#231

Post by opportune »

This article is trying too hard to be intellectual and incorporate artsy prose. A lot of it is just nonsensical or self-contradictory.

Basically the author is self-aware that others’ preferences and economic conditions have led to a built environment that’s incompatible with their tastes, and that they don’t actually have the right to dictate what others choose to build and buy. So they decide to snobbily denigrate them because… (makes them feel better? some kind of psychological need to establish superiority?)

Tastes change. There has been a pretty continual oscillation within architecture between more minimalist and austere styling and ornately decorated styling. Feels pretty pointless to get caught up in argument that boils down to red being a better color than blue

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#232

Post by jstarfish »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #122
bluetomcat wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it as an “iphonification” of industrial design and architecture. White cars became trendy in the early 2010s, after the white iPhone 4. Every item that wants to be perceived as a quality one is targeting that minimalistic, uncluttered, quirk-free look.

Beige computer cases with lots of details falling out of the way for black boxes, and then black boxes with LEDs, will always be the bane of my aesthetic existence.

I hate beige but miss it for computers.

On espresso-colored desks, great, but if your office doesn't have the color scheme of a vampire bordello, black cases and monitors are ugly as hell. Aside from SOCs and law offices, it's so conspicuous it's not really a good fit anywhere.

My desks at work and home are both light wood and thanks to all the black boxes and black cables everywhere, even with cable management my desk surface forever looks like two Minecraft squids tentacle-raping each other on the deck of a ship.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#233

Post by saghm »

inglor_cz wrote: post #212
saghm wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With the orange-ish sodium lights, I could go to sleep with their light still coming through the bedroom window. The amber glow was reminiscent of the glow of fire. > The harsh blue light now tells my brain it's daytime. I had to buy blackout curtains to be able to fall asleep. When I moved in with my fiancee (at the time my girlfriend), I noticed after a couple months that I had a bit of trouble sleeping due to he…

Sleep mask + very good earplugs + some melatonin made me a very sound sleeper in my forties, while I suffered from chronic insomnia since my teens.

I'm lucky that I either am not sensitive enough to noise or have a quiet enough environment that I can get by with just the mask, but definitely a good recommendation as well!

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#234

Post by renewiltord »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #226
renewiltord wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In SF, the most recent two controversies were over historic seating being removed from a Castro theatre and historic rusted iron protective chains being replaced by the waterfront. Age of said seating? 20 y. Age of chains? 30 y. It's not that I have a problem with this. It's just that I personally don't want to be considered historic in my mid 30s.

How are things ever supposed to become historic if people aren't allowed to fight to keep them around when they are only 20 or 30 years old?

To be honest, I don't think seats and rusted iron railings should be things we strive to just retain so that they can be considered historic.

Though I do like the idea of forcing everyone to keep their iPhone 13 for the next 20 years so that it can become old enough to be historic.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#235

Post by jstarfish »

nytesky wrote: post #86
KerrAvon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millennials in America apparently actually like the monotone look; it’s not just the resale thing. The process of making the house more bland for resale used to be called ‘beige-ing‘ by realtors (estate agents?) in the US; it’s not new, but it wasn’t always white and gray.

Pretty sure it’s embraced by Millenials. Kids toys and room decorations used to be vivid bright colors, and now they are a sea of beige highlighted with very faint pastal colors if they have color at all. https://www.crateandbarrel.com/kids/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/hot-new-baby-gear-is-sad-beige-...

No, it's forced on Millenials who are told they must like it and are given no choice in the matter.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#236

Post by prewett »

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.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I am turned off by the grey. I've seen some apartments that I might have considered renting except that everything was grey. I wouldn't buy a house with a bunch of grey flooring, or I'd at least underprice by the cost to replace it.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#237

Post by jstarfish »

vdaea wrote: post #39

[flagged]

> advertisements with unattractive people practically didn't exist ten years ago. Now we are constantly bombarded with them.

It's not all bad. A lot of film from the 70s had conventionally unattractive actors in leading roles. It made films more relatable.

Advertising is an interesting venue to try this in though. You're supposed to sell an ideal to aspire to, not a reflection of your own mediocrity.

The best advertisement I've ever seen was outside a hair salon in Japan. It was literally just a mirror on a sandwich board-- the most unflattering view of yourself possible.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#238

Post by c0pium »

crazygringo wrote: post #165
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…

> Now this dude is nostalgic for them? No, they really were better for sleep. With the orange-ish sodium lights, I could go to sleep with their light still coming through the bedroom window. The amber glow was reminiscent of the glow of fire. The harsh blue light now tells my brain it's daytime. I had to buy blackout curtains to be able to fall asleep. It's the same principle as using the amber-hued Night Mode on you…

The evidence that blue light is bad for sleep is much worse from an experimental standpoint than the evidence that it improves cognition and reaction time, which are obviously rather important considerations in street lights. Consider for instance that placebo glasses which filter the so-called harmful blue light wavelengths have been shown to fully reverse the apparent effect on sleep quality. This is despite them just being clear glass with no appreciable filter effect on visible light.

It is literally true that human mind is suggestible to an unimaginable degree.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#239

Post by c0pium »

twiddling wrote: post #187
argiopetech wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cassette tape has a lot of things going for it. They play for longer than CDs, they don't skip, they are simple to duplicate and record onto (with most cassette decks capable of one, if not both, actions), and the occasional tape tangle teaches patience and encourages mechanical understanding of the system. They can't compete with my phone and a bunch of FLAC for fidelity, but I wish they weren't effectively dead…

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.

Re: Why is everything so ugly?

#240

Post by latency-guy2 »

waynesonfire wrote: post #220
latency-guy2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I firmly dislike cherrywood, anything that is more red than brown is absolute shit to me. My parents loved it, thought it was the pinnacle of wealth. Now you might be questioning why I dislike cherrywood. The answer doesn't actually matter though, I dislike it. Most importantly, I am not the only one. I like vinyl, because I spent a few weeks of my life (probably at most a few hours total actual wall clock hours on i…

Had you started your post with i like vinyl, i would have stopped reading sooner.

I think my comment above is of equal quality to this article, do you not agree?
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