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The age of average

alexmurrell.co.uk

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Re: The age of average

#371

Post by bobthepanda »

sirmarksalot wrote: post #314
mortenjorck wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mo…

Weird and interesting are a part of individual behavior, and unfortunately our economy is trending towards more consolidation.

The urban streetscapes of older cities are dominated by very similar buildings, but often the differentiation is not just a result of the architecture but of the tenants. You have multiple buildings, multiple landlords, and multiple tenants, and the combinatoric permutations of all of them produce interesting variation on just a single city block.

These days, the modern five over one probably takes an entire block or at least half of one, and the relevant landlords or HOAs basically all but forbid tenant individuality. For example, I have a balcony, but I’m not allowed to hang clothes, or flags, or art, or anything, and so the only thing that is actually out there is some basic outdoor furniture. Businesses with storefronts in these buildings also have similar restrictions, because today’s corporate landlords are used to sterile, manicured environments like malls.

Re: The age of average

#372

Post by groby_b »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #333
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…

> No, things have converged because lots of people with no taste[1] just ho-hummed along with the zeitgest. You buy what you can afford. Whether that be a shotgun shack with second-hand traipings or a McMansion with IKEA furniture. AirBNB's are optimizing for cheap, easy to clean and maintain, but still providing the minimum expected features. If you want variety, go to actual B&Bs. The big mistake the artists in the…

"You buy what you can afford. "

The problem is, there is "almost everybody can afford this", and there is "completely bespoke". We have eliminated the middle ground.

Re: The age of average

#373

Post by ssnistfajen »

guntherhermann wrote: post #343
ssnistfajen wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is it because the modern entertainment industry truly has become stale, or is it because I've lived long enough to see the simple patterns underlying most of our desires and fantasies? Most likely the latter. There's so much content being created nowadays thanks to advancements in pretty much everything, making it easier to for anyone to create content. Patterns eventually emerge since creating truly original and un…

There are 9 superhero/marvel films out this year. I sit on the side of "It's because the modern entertainment industry has become stale."

When there's so much content being produced, of course some of them will become stale. It is a consequence, not a cause.

Re: The age of average

#374

Post by ProfessorLayton »

nicenewtemp84 wrote: post #357
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe a lot of it has to do with resale value. People want to be able to trade in their car for maximum value, and picking the color with the widest appeal helps with that. This seems to have created a feedback loop where car manufacturers ship more of the "boring" colors because that's what customers are buying. This also applies to things like computers: A cursory search on ebay shows that a silver iMac general…

Odd colors actually have the best resale value on the used market. A yellow Porsche is very hard to sell new. Very few are made and sold in yellow because dealers don't spec them that way. 10 years later, if you try to sell a black Porsche, you have 72 others competing with you. If you try to sell a yellow Porsche, the buyer will fly from across the US to buy it from you.

>Very few are made and sold in yellow because dealers don't spec them that way

Dealers aren't speccing them yellow because they don't sell as well as other colors. If people were lining up for yellow Porsches, dealers would absolutely be ordering more yellow Porsches.

Odd colors may be priced differently at the top of the market for used cars (I don't know), but that's just not true for the typical car used buyer.

Re: The age of average

#376

Post by anonymouskimmer »

groby_b wrote: post #372
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, things have converged because lots of people with no taste[1] just ho-hummed along with the zeitgest. You buy what you can afford. Whether that be a shotgun shack with second-hand traipings or a McMansion with IKEA furniture. AirBNB's are optimizing for cheap, easy to clean and maintain, but still providing the minimum expected features. If you want variety, go to actual B&Bs. The big mistake the artists in the…

"You buy what you can afford. " The problem is, there is "almost everybody can afford this", and there is "completely bespoke". We have eliminated the middle ground.

Yeah.

People still reupholster old furniture. I think the real problem is that many goods these days are either so cheap it's cheaper to replacement them entirely, or not built to last, so they never get to a rebuild stage.

Re: The age of average

#377

Post by generj »

jcanyoh wrote: post #283
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…

> Sure, you can design electric toothbrush branding that "stands out", but it's probably going to result in less sales. Because most people don't want to express their unique personality via their electric toothbrush, they just want a nice slim white object that blends into their sink area. I’d generally agree with you here but there are exceptions. The company ‘Liquid Death’ is yet another company selling water, but…

Liquid Death is counter culture, deliberately rebelling against the status quo (and collecting a price premium for doing so). Even here they lean into conformity - their cans are shaped and styled like beer cans - partially for marketing and partially because that size of can was already made. The lettering on their cans leans into existing tropes about rebellious brands.

In one of my marketing classes I learned of 16 different archetypes brands mostly fall into. Usually all brands in a category use similar archetypes. You look at Liquid Death using an atypical archetype for the water category and see a unique clever choice. The author of this piece would probably decry that they use similar branding techniques to every other rebellious archetype brand.

It’s challenging but rewarding to buck category archetypes. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a niche for an aggressively branded toothbrush with an attitude problem.

Re: The age of average

#378

Post by eyphka »

For much of this article, I know nothing.

But on the one area I can speak intelligently about, video games, this article is dead wrong. There has been an explosion of experimentation in terms of anything measurable: genres, art styles, etc. And from a product/ company point of view, this can be seen by the diversity of who is winning. The largest game in the world in terms of revenue AND number of users is Minecraft, which looks zero like the next best selling game.

This makes me think the whole article is wrong.

Re: The age of average

#379

Post by karaterobot »

All of those examples do look the same, as long as you ignore the ways in which they look different. If you do that, then it all makes pretty good sense as an argument. If you start pointing out how they aren't all the same, then the argument breaks down a little bit. Take your pick of approaches, depending on whether you are predisposed to agree or disagree with the thesis.

Re: The age of average

#380

Post by FrustratedMonky »

trgn wrote: post #368
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> all inexorably drawn towards the realm of Plato's Forms I almost retched reading that. All the examples in the article are of the most bland, disposable junk imaginable. I think the common interpretation of Plato's ideals is one of an aspirational, idealized world, beyond our grasp. Seeing such perfection realized in mass produced crap is baffling to me.

Or, Plato's Forms are not what we would expect. Because humans are converging on something, and it doesn't fit 'someone's specific concept of ideal', doesn't mean it isn't converging to the Form. That is just arrogantly saying you have more of the 'ideal' in mind than anyone else. But nature can be ugly too, and that is potentially the true 'ideal'.
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