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> Their commonality lies in the same impulse for vacuous, petit bourgeois taste to launder itself in narratives of nostalgia and cultural legitimacy. Oh shove

> Their commonality lies in the same impulse for vacuous, petit bourgeois taste to launder itself in narratives of nostalgia and cultural legitimacy. Oh shove it. I like minimalism because I grew up in a house with 6 tvs for 4 people, and so many tupperware containers that it could take a solid 10 minutes (not exaggerating!) to find a matching container and lid. Finding a lid for a stove pot was of similar difficulty. So yeah, I have one set of storage containers from Costco (the same set pretty much everyone else has) and one set of pots and pans with matching lids, and little enough stuff that I can mostly find what I want. Minimalism is nice because it allows people to take control of their stuff, instead of stuff taking control of them. Minimalism is nice because I can go buy a few well made pieces of furniture that will last a long time. And minimalism is nice because it is a lot easier to dust. Edit: After giving it 5 minutes of thought, it becomes apparent that minimalism is extremely anti-consumerism. "Buy less stuff! Buy a few high quality items that last a long time! Don't get doilies for your couch arms!" No wonder American furniture retailers took forever to get on board. Heck up here in the Pacific Northwest it is still hard to find good modern furniture stores. Back when I graduated college and started outfitting my apartment, Ikea was pretty much the only show in town.

soared 6y ago
Agreed. My parents garage is messy and overflowing - mine is not. Simple as that.
- Ghjklov 6y ago
  Having a garage is bloat
  - seabrookmx 6y ago
    Is having a kitchen bloat? If you like cooking, wouldn't a kitchen be important to you? What if you do woodworking, or you work on motorcycles in your free time? Then does a garage make sense?
    - Ghjklov 6y ago
      I was being facetious anyway. "x is bloat" is a common saying in free software communities.
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  Same with my parents house, which is only becoming more apparent after my dad died, and we're cleaning up the house for sale. There is just so much stuff, multiples of everything, at least a hundred Tupperware containers in the kitchen. My mom grew up rather poor, and I've talked to her about her borderline hoarder tendencies. She says it's an unconscious thing, stemming from when her family couldn't afford to buy new things, so they saved everything that could possibly be repaired or repurposed, and she falls into a tendency to still do the same thing. Over 24 years living in that house, it just kept accumulating. It's not like it's a mess, mostly everything is nicely organized, there's just a lot on every shelf and in every drawer stuffed to the brim. I fell into the same pattern for a while, keeping extras around of a bunch of things for no real reason, combined with being very bad at throwing things out or giving them away. I've gotten better, but it's a constant thing.
mc32 6y ago
I think there is functional minimalism which basically just want to get out of your way and provide function but there is also a kind of pretentious one which provides form over function which is overbearing, in your face minimalism that is just because it can.
- voisin 6y ago
  Can you provide examples of both for those of us less clear about the distinction?
  - mc32 6y ago
    Examples of the former are the furniture and whatnot you can buy from your modern furniture store... the latter things you might see at chic museum shops (these are smaller items) but it can be things like a headrest that looks nice, but in practice doesn't work. Aesthetically it might look balanced and have a wow look but don't try sitting in it kind of thing.
    - com2kid 6y ago
      Traditional furniture had the same problem but being too ornate instead. How many fancy hand carved wood chairs with 90 degree straight up backs exist? Painful to sit in, but they looked wonderful! It is possible to get unusable either way. :/
  - sidpatil 6y ago
    Easy. Command line interfaces are function over form. Overly-flat UIs are form over function.
- com2kid 6y ago
  I mean sure. I used to own a couple of chairs that looked cool and sleek but only the cats enjoyed sitting in them. But the article starts bad-mouthing minimalism hard. I wonder if the author ever bothered asking anyone why they like having less stuff? I personally thing it is a yo-yo effect from the previous generation having too much stuff. My Dad considered cable TV to be 100% necessary and there was always at least 1 TV on in the house at all times. I've never paid for cable TV. The TV I do have is not in any of the main living spaces, and it is off 95% of the day. Heck I primarily use it to pump audiobooks through from my phone.
airstrike 6y ago
I think there's "functional minimalism" and "minimalist aesthetics". The two were originally part of the same package, but the author's point seems to be that everyone's buying into the aesthetics because it's in vogue, not because it makes sense to them / for their needs
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  How can you have functional minimalism without aesthetic reality which reflects that? And if a minimalist aesthetic betrays functional minimalism, is it actually aesthetically minimalist or is it merely generic? It is a clumsy perversion of language to conflate minimalist with generic when the two are different.
  - p_l 6y ago
    Easily. You can have millions of Tupperware containers that look seemingly the same minimalist chic, you can also have few possessions that exhibit possibly insane amount of decoration while maintaining "just wipe it once across" dusting method, by simply having them painted. One tries for aesthetics of minimalism, the other one can be actually physically minimalist but not share that aesthetic at all.
    - yowlingcat 6y ago
      But that's my point. "Minimalist chic" is a misnomer because at least something is aesthetically there to belie the fact that the functionality is not actually minimalist. It's almost like an uncanny valley thing IMO.
      - airstrike 6y ago
        I'm not saying "aesthetic minimalism" is proper nomenclature, just that people are solving for that particular aesthetic slice when they pick their designs by generically extracting features from "functional / real minimalism" as you correctly pointed out. I think we're arguing the same thing, you just did it much more eloquently.
staticautomatic 6y ago
I think you may be misinterpreting the author’s general assertion as a categorical one, in which case your possibly exceptional brand of minimalism doesn’t disprove anything. I think it’s neat, though.
- com2kid 6y ago
  My thesis statement is minimalism is popular because people don't have time to dust an Edwardian armoire. The author's thesis statement seems to be that the public is a bunch of gullable fools who have been sold a style that was somehow "stolen" from the "authentic" artists the mid 1900s, who are, apparently, the only ones allowed to live in lofts and own a one piece couch. > When thinking of minimalism, one can only wonder what the once-avant-garde cadre of artists and musicians would think about this hyper-commodified end product of their ethos, practice, and even their living circumstances. The artists lived as such because they had shit to do, paintings to paint, music to write and practice. People choose minimalism for the same reasons, so that they can live their lives and not futz around with possessions. > Either way, somebody’s making a lot of money. Probably not, wicker basket sales are way down. The author is so elitest she somehow thinks that average people know what the hell Design Within Reach even is. I'd bet money that 90% of the US population has no idea about DWR. And Pottery Barn only recently, very recently, started selling stuff that even approaches "modern" or "minimalist". If someone asked me to describe Pottery Barn 5 years ago I'd say "another one of those stores selling overly ornate crap that shouldn't exist." (See also: 90% of everything ever sold at Pier 1) > Every realtor, in increasingly aggrandized text boasts each instance of charm and authenticity, each listing’s Real-American-ness, That is every real estate agent ever. Their job is to literally sell every possible iteration of the American Dream. Heck one real estate listing I saw recently had a photo with fake dog posed playing with a toy. Lame? Kinda, but it got the point across.
  - SenHeng 6y ago
    > The artists lived as such because they had shit to do, paintings to paint, music to write and practice. I'd argue that artists lived as such because the large majority of them couldn't afford furniture.
yowlingcat 6y ago
Jeez, that line really irked me too. When writers use Marxist terminology as a crutch for lazy writing and half baked thinking, it just annoys me because I wish they'd show and not tell. It's not the "vacuous, petit bourgeois taste" that is hated, it's the fact that they're "normies" who should know their place and be shamed for "appropriation" of aesthetics. And of course, neither one has really anything to do with the fact that minimalism is generally a useful design choice because it allows people to actually make choices about what they want their set of possessions to actually mean to them, by virtue of having as few as possible.
- taneq 6y ago
  Thirded. I tend to associate "normie" with edgy teens trying to make themselves feel superior.
hedora 6y ago
> launder itself in narratives of nostalgia and cultural legitimacy. I love the modern aesthetic, probably because I grew up in a frank lloyd wright-style home. I think the farmhouse look is acceptable because our house is on a farm, and most of those pieces are locally sourced antiques. (I’m cheap, what can I say?) But, yeah. No authentic nostalgia or cultural legitimacy here.
jhanschoo 6y ago
I think you're talking past the author. When the author says minimalism, they aren't referring to a lack of household equipment, but to a certain form of interior design, and a preference for lack of ornamentation in fixtures.
- richajak 6y ago
  For me, minimalism means living with basic things, not the northern europe interior style. It is about functionality and frugality, not about color harmony or hiding complexity inside a shelf. We should not use visual minimalism as a virtue signal to others about our character. Although our living room is very spacious, my wife and I are using one old table as both working desk and dining table. The old table is not in good condition, not matching with our cheap $15 plastic chairs, but we do not feel the need to spend money to buy new one. I think we are simply cheapskate, as well as not concerned about look.
brownbat 6y ago
Yeah, passages like this: > A side effect of the fetishization of the industrial is that it aestheticizes the backdrop of labor within capitalism, in many ways erasing labor’s histories of toil and struggle. "Why, of course a white kitchen signals you as an enemy of the people. It's so obviously counterrevolutionary!" I imagine stern, angular posters, "Mind your palette, comrade!" The piece isn't just Marxist, it's Soviet. But also... schizophrenic? You can't idolize the humble worker while hating "normies." The top 1% alone don't make something ubiquitous. The eccentric preferences of billionaires aren't driving the aesthetics that take over Target and starter homes or get featured on reality TV.
- morsch 6y ago
  You answered to the sentiment, but not to the point.
  - brownbat 6y ago
    Because it's just emotive, "boo mainstream!" which doesn't generally admit a detailed rebuttal. But here goes -- Wagner's main argument takes an action, ties symbolism to it, then denounces that action because of the author's wholly invented symbolism. But anything can symbolize anything with the right narrative attached. It's just word games to criticize people when you don't like their personal tastes.[0] Even if weren't for the flawed reasoning, the sentiment is pretty important here. If someone started going around dismissing other commenters as "normies" in these threads, we wouldn't demand careful rebuttals and carefully pull out their good points. We'd just flag them and move on. But that's the whole climax and title of this article! Why is it suddenly cool here? Because she's leveling insults at people we might not like? Is "don't insult people, unless you happen to not like them," really the threshold? [0] She does the same thing on McMansion Hell, which while sometimes amusing, has basically morphed into this whole attempt to cast people as deeply immoral because they wanted a skylight where she wouldn't have put it. And people love her for it, and that's great, but people love cynically piling on and judging other groups of people for the most trivial reasons. Doesn't make it nice.
    - 6y ago

soared 6y ago

Agreed. My parents garage is messy and overflowing - mine is not. Simple as that.

Ghjklov 6y ago
Having a garage is bloat
- seabrookmx 6y ago
  Is having a kitchen bloat? If you like cooking, wouldn't a kitchen be important to you? What if you do woodworking, or you work on motorcycles in your free time? Then does a garage make sense?
  - Ghjklov 6y ago
    I was being facetious anyway. "x is bloat" is a common saying in free software communities.
KozmoNau7 6y ago
Same with my parents house, which is only becoming more apparent after my dad died, and we're cleaning up the house for sale. There is just so much stuff, multiples of everything, at least a hundred Tupperware containers in the kitchen. My mom grew up rather poor, and I've talked to her about her borderline hoarder tendencies. She says it's an unconscious thing, stemming from when her family couldn't afford to buy new things, so they saved everything that could possibly be repaired or repurposed, and she falls into a tendency to still do the same thing. Over 24 years living in that house, it just kept accumulating. It's not like it's a mess, mostly everything is nicely organized, there's just a lot on every shelf and in every drawer stuffed to the brim. I fell into the same pattern for a while, keeping extras around of a bunch of things for no real reason, combined with being very bad at throwing things out or giving them away. I've gotten better, but it's a constant thing.

mc32 6y ago

I think there is functional minimalism which basically just want to get out of your way and provide function but there is also a kind of pretentious one which provides form over function which is overbearing, in your face minimalism that is just because it can.

voisin 6y ago
Can you provide examples of both for those of us less clear about the distinction?
- mc32 6y ago
  Examples of the former are the furniture and whatnot you can buy from your modern furniture store... the latter things you might see at chic museum shops (these are smaller items) but it can be things like a headrest that looks nice, but in practice doesn't work. Aesthetically it might look balanced and have a wow look but don't try sitting in it kind of thing.
  - com2kid 6y ago
    Traditional furniture had the same problem but being too ornate instead. How many fancy hand carved wood chairs with 90 degree straight up backs exist? Painful to sit in, but they looked wonderful! It is possible to get unusable either way. :/
- sidpatil 6y ago
  Easy. Command line interfaces are function over form. Overly-flat UIs are form over function.
com2kid 6y ago
I mean sure. I used to own a couple of chairs that looked cool and sleek but only the cats enjoyed sitting in them. But the article starts bad-mouthing minimalism hard. I wonder if the author ever bothered asking anyone why they like having less stuff? I personally thing it is a yo-yo effect from the previous generation having too much stuff. My Dad considered cable TV to be 100% necessary and there was always at least 1 TV on in the house at all times. I've never paid for cable TV. The TV I do have is not in any of the main living spaces, and it is off 95% of the day. Heck I primarily use it to pump audiobooks through from my phone.

airstrike 6y ago

I think there's "functional minimalism" and "minimalist aesthetics". The two were originally part of the same package, but the author's point seems to be that everyone's buying into the aesthetics because it's in vogue, not because it makes sense to them / for their needs

yowlingcat 6y ago
How can you have functional minimalism without aesthetic reality which reflects that? And if a minimalist aesthetic betrays functional minimalism, is it actually aesthetically minimalist or is it merely generic? It is a clumsy perversion of language to conflate minimalist with generic when the two are different.
- p_l 6y ago
  Easily. You can have millions of Tupperware containers that look seemingly the same minimalist chic, you can also have few possessions that exhibit possibly insane amount of decoration while maintaining "just wipe it once across" dusting method, by simply having them painted. One tries for aesthetics of minimalism, the other one can be actually physically minimalist but not share that aesthetic at all.
  - yowlingcat 6y ago
    But that's my point. "Minimalist chic" is a misnomer because at least something is aesthetically there to belie the fact that the functionality is not actually minimalist. It's almost like an uncanny valley thing IMO.
    - airstrike 6y ago
      I'm not saying "aesthetic minimalism" is proper nomenclature, just that people are solving for that particular aesthetic slice when they pick their designs by generically extracting features from "functional / real minimalism" as you correctly pointed out. I think we're arguing the same thing, you just did it much more eloquently.

staticautomatic 6y ago

I think you may be misinterpreting the author’s general assertion as a categorical one, in which case your possibly exceptional brand of minimalism doesn’t disprove anything. I think it’s neat, though.

com2kid 6y ago
My thesis statement is minimalism is popular because people don't have time to dust an Edwardian armoire. The author's thesis statement seems to be that the public is a bunch of gullable fools who have been sold a style that was somehow "stolen" from the "authentic" artists the mid 1900s, who are, apparently, the only ones allowed to live in lofts and own a one piece couch. > When thinking of minimalism, one can only wonder what the once-avant-garde cadre of artists and musicians would think about this hyper-commodified end product of their ethos, practice, and even their living circumstances. The artists lived as such because they had shit to do, paintings to paint, music to write and practice. People choose minimalism for the same reasons, so that they can live their lives and not futz around with possessions. > Either way, somebody’s making a lot of money. Probably not, wicker basket sales are way down. The author is so elitest she somehow thinks that average people know what the hell Design Within Reach even is. I'd bet money that 90% of the US population has no idea about DWR. And Pottery Barn only recently, very recently, started selling stuff that even approaches "modern" or "minimalist". If someone asked me to describe Pottery Barn 5 years ago I'd say "another one of those stores selling overly ornate crap that shouldn't exist." (See also: 90% of everything ever sold at Pier 1) > Every realtor, in increasingly aggrandized text boasts each instance of charm and authenticity, each listing’s Real-American-ness, That is every real estate agent ever. Their job is to literally sell every possible iteration of the American Dream. Heck one real estate listing I saw recently had a photo with fake dog posed playing with a toy. Lame? Kinda, but it got the point across.
- SenHeng 6y ago
  > The artists lived as such because they had shit to do, paintings to paint, music to write and practice. I'd argue that artists lived as such because the large majority of them couldn't afford furniture.

yowlingcat 6y ago

Jeez, that line really irked me too. When writers use Marxist terminology as a crutch for lazy writing and half baked thinking, it just annoys me because I wish they'd show and not tell. It's not the "vacuous, petit bourgeois taste" that is hated, it's the fact that they're "normies" who should know their place and be shamed for "appropriation" of aesthetics. And of course, neither one has really anything to do with the fact that minimalism is generally a useful design choice because it allows people to actually make choices about what they want their set of possessions to actually mean to them, by virtue of having as few as possible.

taneq 6y ago
Thirded. I tend to associate "normie" with edgy teens trying to make themselves feel superior.

hedora 6y ago

> launder itself in narratives of nostalgia and cultural legitimacy. I love the modern aesthetic, probably because I grew up in a frank lloyd wright-style home. I think the farmhouse look is acceptable because our house is on a farm, and most of those pieces are locally sourced antiques. (I’m cheap, what can I say?) But, yeah. No authentic nostalgia or cultural legitimacy here.

jhanschoo 6y ago

I think you're talking past the author. When the author says minimalism, they aren't referring to a lack of household equipment, but to a certain form of interior design, and a preference for lack of ornamentation in fixtures.

richajak 6y ago
For me, minimalism means living with basic things, not the northern europe interior style. It is about functionality and frugality, not about color harmony or hiding complexity inside a shelf. We should not use visual minimalism as a virtue signal to others about our character. Although our living room is very spacious, my wife and I are using one old table as both working desk and dining table. The old table is not in good condition, not matching with our cheap $15 plastic chairs, but we do not feel the need to spend money to buy new one. I think we are simply cheapskate, as well as not concerned about look.

brownbat 6y ago

Yeah, passages like this: > A side effect of the fetishization of the industrial is that it aestheticizes the backdrop of labor within capitalism, in many ways erasing labor’s histories of toil and struggle. "Why, of course a white kitchen signals you as an enemy of the people. It's so obviously counterrevolutionary!" I imagine stern, angular posters, "Mind your palette, comrade!" The piece isn't just Marxist, it's Soviet. But also... schizophrenic? You can't idolize the humble worker while hating "normies." The top 1% alone don't make something ubiquitous. The eccentric preferences of billionaires aren't driving the aesthetics that take over Target and starter homes or get featured on reality TV.

morsch 6y ago
You answered to the sentiment, but not to the point.
- brownbat 6y ago
  Because it's just emotive, "boo mainstream!" which doesn't generally admit a detailed rebuttal. But here goes -- Wagner's main argument takes an action, ties symbolism to it, then denounces that action because of the author's wholly invented symbolism. But anything can symbolize anything with the right narrative attached. It's just word games to criticize people when you don't like their personal tastes.[0] Even if weren't for the flawed reasoning, the sentiment is pretty important here. If someone started going around dismissing other commenters as "normies" in these threads, we wouldn't demand careful rebuttals and carefully pull out their good points. We'd just flag them and move on. But that's the whole climax and title of this article! Why is it suddenly cool here? Because she's leveling insults at people we might not like? Is "don't insult people, unless you happen to not like them," really the threshold? [0] She does the same thing on McMansion Hell, which while sometimes amusing, has basically morphed into this whole attempt to cast people as deeply immoral because they wanted a skylight where she wouldn't have put it. And people love her for it, and that's great, but people love cynically piling on and judging other groups of people for the most trivial reasons. Doesn't make it nice.
  - 6y ago