As I mentioned elsewhere, it's a result of a data first digital culture, not bearded white guys in tshirts.
Hipsterism is almost dead, the trend towards average is still accelerating.
Look, a graph!:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=h...
A: In the mainstream!
— I Must Be Emo https://youtu.be/WhNbg1Hkod0?si=C49qXfOWk4oO5vcL
In this case, please eschew racebait.
Well let's see, American capitalist oligarchy has a deep root in the defeat of Reconstruction, specifically the fact that the planter class was not liquidated and its land was not redistributed - because of the continued insistence on white superiority and political domination.
Technocracy is similar, it's a manifestation of the fear of radical democracy and the notion that people are incapable of self-government, typically expressed in racialized (white man's burden, etc) form. It's very easy to see that line worming through the past few hundred years of history if you actually try.
I don't know why people so willingly bury their heads in the sand sometimes...
Look again for other keywords, "sameness", "homegen"-suffixes.
E.g. The summary > coffee shops are physical filtering algorithms, too: they sort people based on their preferences, quietly attracting a particular crowd and repelling others
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
The discussion of interior decorating is called "interiors all look the same" but it immediately narrows focus onto just AirBnB listings (and for what its worth, I've stayed at far more AirBnBs that don't look like this than AirBnBs that do). The author describes trying to get design inspiration and getting stuck here, but there are entire magazines still in circulation about interior decor that very much cover a wide range of styles.
There is something to the article, but I feel that selecting ten similar looking things from each category is just not super compelling. There are ten books that sprung from a trend and use "fuck" in the title with a similar cover layout that were published over a period of like seven years. That's like, a normal trend that comes and goes. There are still a bazillion books that don't use this cringey title and have totally different cover design.
- Having a shared global design aesthetic also means there are likely open communication channels through which a shared global understanding might be achieved. If the citizens of the world can understand and appreciate each other through design, what else might they understand and appreciate about each other?
- Instead of critiquing existing designs - it'd be helpful to have a vision of what locally culturally distinctive designs for a coffee shop or AirBNB could look like. Help us readers envision what a better world - that's more "design inclusive" - might look like.
The advice to the author would be - "use your outlet to be the change you want to see." Highlight that cafe in Mexico City... or Morocco... serving coffee authentically that us readers should visit.[1][2]
[1] Mexico City coffee chain - Cielito_Querido_Cafe - looks distinct from a hipster SF coffee shop -
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g150800-d24591...
[2] Morocco coffee chain replicating across Asia - Bacha Coffee - also distinct from hipster aesthetics
While I don't discount the utopian sentiment behind this, it elides the fact that it is not all citizens of parts of the world understanding each other, but rather specific subsegments of the same. So while young, well-educated, white collar urban professionals might grok each other's vibe, that is immaterial even as we head into what seems to be a new era of nationalism and tribal competition.
I think we can just admit that good design is good design. This is extremely appealing to business owners because minimalism equals low setup costs. It’s also appealing to patrons because it’s aesthetically pleasing.
Some things become popular around the globe because the idea is so universally appealing. Coffee itself is a great example of such a phenomenon. Most coffee shops aren’t located in places that grow coffee.
I agree, but then I'd argue that simply pointing out the homogeneity of cafes (and everything else) might have been the author's goal. To just make you stop and think. The finding of that authentic cafe is left as an exercise for the reader.
Will they all look the same? Probably, but the market will seek next great novel idea and more rapidly replicate it to become the new standard.
The idea that a single structure works well for everybody assumes everybody values things equally. And usually, above a certain baseline, that's not true. I mean, yes, nobody wants burnt coffee and dirty tables. We can agree there.
But the question is, what can you build on top of that. And I think there's room for differentiation, even at a very local level.
As a simple example: I will never want a hyper-efficient coffee store that has my order ready the moment I come in. I want a more lengthy engagement with the staff - i.e. I like to chat. Others might want instant service and as little human contact as possible. Neither one is an optimal experience for the customer who doesn't seek that specific experience
The idea that there is a single global maximum is fundamentally broken.
Before Starbucks, the median coffee was worse. They showed the world that coffee is something more than Folgers or something you drink out of a carafe that’s been warmed for 6 hours.
When Starbucks came along it showed the world that coffee is a highly customizable beverage that could be served in thousands of modern stand-alone cafes around the world. That idea spread like a wild fire to the point where Starbucks became the norm, so today’s specialty cafes that this article criticizes popped up to elevate coffee even more.
Today we’re probably near some peak of “craft coffee in a loft cafe” that will become the new norm and the whole process will repeat itself again, elevating coffee even more. Even if this process reaches a global maximum we’ll see demand for novelty spread out into tea, Kambucha, etc.
2) Starbucks is many things, but coffee store is a euphemism. It offers sweetened hot drinks with caffeine. (See where that taste difference I mentioned comes in?)
3) Craft coffee shops don't elevate coffee. They elevate pomp and circumstance around coffee. (Again, not that there's anything wrong with that, but not everybody wants that. Taste, again)
You seem to operate under the misguided belief that taste has global maxima. It does not. It does have limited audiences, which is why normed mediocrity wins out on the large scale - it aims at the fact that most consumers follow a satisficing strategy. But that also means that the market will not continue to improve, it will aim to satisfy a maximal market and minimal cost, and then it will peter out. There is no "elevating even more", unless the desires of almost the entire world change significantly.
You mean they showed America. Lots of places weren't doing carafe coffee before starbucks
Is the Irish Pub a bad thing? You can find an Irish Pub anywhere. It’s a deliberate export [1]. But that’s not oppressive or exclusionary. The Irish Pub is just good design that has universal appeal.
I wish the article would just admit that this is an appealing, perhaps timeless style that appeals business owners across the globe. Its roots in minimalism equates to low setup costs. The aesthetics are pleasing to spend time in. What’s to complain about?
Then there’s the paragraph addressing the homogenous nature of the clientele. I have to push back on that one: I doubt that coffee shops in China or Japan with this aesthetic are mostly patronized by white people.
Also, you know, affluent people are allowed to have their own tastes and culture. That fact alone is not oppressive to anyone else by default. Affluent people who like expensive coffee, minimalism, MacBook Pros, and house plants are just existing, minding their own business patronizing a class of businesses they enjoy. In this case it’s not like they’re hunting endangered animals, they’re just drinking overpriced coffee.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/04/12/523653040/epis...
For example, I live in a tropical country with hot summers and monsoons. Historically, dwellings here have had tall ceilings, narrow windows, little glass. Still, of late, builders have embraced larger windows with tinted glass, lower ceilings, commode style toilets instead of Orissa pan toilets, and other such stylistic choices.
I’m sure no one told them to adopt this style. They simply converged on this through some combination of their own exposure to Instagram and pricy designers showing them catalogs of what dwellings in other parts of the world look like.
This break from local rootedness to global interconnectedness is what the article is about.
In your example, the availability of air conditioning and improvements in building materials (insulation) and glass technology (…insulation) are too important to omit. Also, these building technologies mean that you don’t have to have a have a specific aesthetic to achieve comfort and efficiency goals. You can build a concrete and glass building with the same airflow and insulating properties as traditional construction. One example I heard about recently is the new jewelers complex in India. It’s a skyscraper complex that uses a wind funneling system to send airflow down the main promenade and reduce the need for air conditioning. Of course, the design is nothing like traditional Indian architecture, but it accomplishes its goals effectively.
The toilet example is another one where the obvious comfort advantage of the Western toilet makes it universally appealing. As much as nature’s flow prefers squatting, there are obvious ease of use and accessibility advantages to sitting on a chair.
I think of global interconnectedness being more like everyone being able to make more discoveries. If Danish people eat more Chinese food because they think it tastes better than their local cuisine, it’s not some kind of perverse negative of global interconnectedness that they abandoned their roots. They just got exposed to a new idea that they liked and decided it was the way to go. Being interconnected with the entire globe means that more ideas can be shared.
In this and the jewellers complex example, you may be elevating function in your mind over form.
The original article is about form.
To tie us back to the coffee shop example, your comment would be akin to saying that since Italian coffee machines make better coffee, it’s fine if more coffee shops use espresso machines.
That’s not the point being made - the espresso machine isn’t the issue - ensconcing people in a cocoon of familiarity even in new, unfamiliar places is.
Mark Twain said, travelling is fatal to prejudice but that’s only if we are truly travelling - if we travel without making ourselves uncomfortable, have we really gone anywhere?
People often talk about a "Clovis culture", but it is unlikely that a single culture spanned the continent. What we know about is just the spear points.
It is the worst user interface design I have ever been forced to use in my life. It's like they designed it for children or something. And from then it spread to general Web design and to software including GNOME, with GTK3 and the Adwaita theme. Suddenly everything became low contrast and low density, with oversized buttons and excessive whitespace.
That part is mostly because of smartphones and their small touchscreens. You don't really have a choice with these fat fingers.
And for consistency purposes for multiplatform apps/webpages, desktop interfaces followed.
The unfortunate thing is that we have had smartphones for 20 years and no one could develop a paradigm with good desktop and mobile ergonomics. UIs improved massively from the 1980s to the 2000s, but from the 2000s to the 2020s, there is essentially no improvement. I understand the disruption caused by smartphones, but not the lack of progress. If anything, modern UIs are objectively worse than they were 20 years ago. Look at that mess that is Windows 11, nothing is consistent, even when you only consider what is shipped with the OS itself.
No mention of the contrast between the status quo and the rise of cottage industry tech was supposed to promise.
I don't really think that the aesthetic described here matches the aesthetic of the Friends coffee shop, no? Or am I crazy?
https://gen.medium.com/how-a-tv-sitcom-triggered-the-downfal...
The hipster shops in my city all sell awful light roast sour coffee that is not drinkable without milk. Italians would most probably pull disgusted faces. At least the roastery that I have been passing on my way to school years ago still sells decent coffee.
This is talking about TV but is applicable to everything; in the modern digital/computerized age, "data" is everything. Everything is measured and tracked, whether it's sales or Instagram likes. The result is always choosing what sells the best, trending towards the same, boring average.
Something I noticed before I found that article was also that, at least in my anecdotal experience is that older movies often had quicker moving dialog (characters talked faster, talked over each other, etc.). I’ve wondered if that’s been just a style choice or driven by the global market as well, since slowing dialog down makes it easier for non-native speakers to follow and presumably makes translation easier.
https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-...
Personally, I'm not. And I find these spaces noisy and uncomfortable to be in, with their concrete floors and lack of any soft furnishings.
I miss the grungy cafes with couches and armchairs and rugs and wall hangings collected from wherever.
They absolutely thrived on walking up (about 8 blocks away) and hanging out there, just to read the paper and chat with other locals. They knew everyone. They were immersed in all the gossip, about how the place was run (by a pair of husbands) and the guy down the street and all their friends. They had a special meeting on Sundays with some church friends.
When I used to visit them, they'd still go every morning and invite me along. Once I came back with bizarre blood-sugar readings because I had been drinking an XL Vanilla Milkshake and cream-cheese jalapeño-cheddar bagel every single day. My parents introduced me around to everyone, and they were usually really nice. I spotted an ex-girlfriend there once, but she didn't notice me.
The owners had another location a few miles away, but I think that's been closed down, too. My Dad is now going by every day to glean some sort of news about what's become of the building, whether it's got new owners or tenants, and whether it's going to continue as a coffeehouse. Meanwhile, they've set up shop at a different place, two blocks away.
Is it their own taste, though. If the internet substitutes as their brain, then it's possible their preferences are not their own.
My question: doesn't this just open up opportunities for people with off-algorithm offerings for those that prefer that? Algorithm could even be a template for "things to avoid and replace with unique/local items".
The observations in the article are valid but people should stop complaining and offer or do their own thing, this is the golden age of DIY and creative self expression. Everything from craft, art, engineering, music is so much more accessible now, nobody says you have to produce according to likes, the problem only crops up if you start monetizing and at that point you will have to follow popular taste, even if that forces succulents or latte-art on you.
