>In her essay “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde,” Sianne Ngai, a professor at Stanford, theorizes cuteness as an “aesthetic of powerlessness.” In the face of the

>In her essay “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde,” Sianne Ngai, a professor at Stanford, theorizes cuteness as an “aesthetic of powerlessness.” In the face of the overwhelming question — “What’s it for?” — a strain of avant-garde art responds by playing up its inutility, she argues. When I began reading this article, I was reminded of the cuteness that overwhelmed social media/web branding about five years ago--everything had a little laughing monster or a big smiling whale. At the time, I figured it was trendy and a means of appealing to mainstream, non-geek/non-nerd/non-whatever audiences, but now I wonder to what extent they were staring down their own uselessness.