You're still not sufficiently differentiating between "visual design" and "ephemeral fashion". I don't need to, these things go together. Visual design is ent

You're still not sufficiently differentiating between "visual design" and "ephemeral fashion". I don't need to, these things go together. Visual design is entwined with aesthetics that include trends. Here's a fun fact: everyone talks about Slashdot in the past tense, specifically how it's become irrelevant. Malda even talks about how it's been replaced by other sites, but it didn't have to be. Want to be perceived as an old site? Look the same as you did a decade ago. Name a successful interface that is practically unchanged for a decade that is not in decline. I've seen database management programs that have made bigger changes than Slashdot. Perhaps the reason why Slashdot hasn't changed its visual design significantly is because the current design is sufficiently successful at fulfilling this purpose. It's in steady decline. It's not fulfilling it's purpose. If we regard reference to trend and fashion as a subset of visual design, the function of which is to convey ideas, then it becomes clear that one of the ideas being conveyed is "we follow trends", from which we can reasonably extrapolate "we follow the lead of others" or "we care more about novelty than effectiveness in design". Perhaps the people who run Slashdot don't want to say these things? Complete conjecture. Things become trends for a reason.