It’s as if their aesthetic dictates not just how we use technology but how we perceive and navigate our lives.
A life where spontaneity and the rough edges that make us human are edged out in favor of an existence that mirrors the devices we carry. Beautiful on the surface, on the inside empty and increasingly flat. The messiness of life smoothed over.
What I was seeing around me felt less like a coherent design language and more like a kind of aesthetic fascism.
Aesthetics seem to come before functionality in tech now… My husband and I both have new old Pixel phones (6a and 7a), which we both *hate* in comparison to the 3a we had previously. The new phones are exceedingly slippery, sliding off of seemingly flat surfaces constantly. They’re too large to comfortably hold, for either of us. To accommodate a bigger camera lens, I presume, they added a raised bar to the back of the phone — so better hope you don’t have vibrate turned on because this bad boy will rattle itself right off the table, the horrendous sound amplified by the gap between phone and table; to avoid it, I put my phone facedown, which risks scratches. The aesthetics of this phone are an imposition.
Not only do these aesthetics make physically worse products, they also encourage disposability. Demanding sleekness and thinness means gluing components instead of screwing them together, which means batteries aren’t replaceable and they’re difficult to repair. People think it’s normal to buy a new pair of ear buds every year. I’ll trade the svelte look for repairability any day.
And these perfectionist, demanding aesthetics extend beyond tech, into every aspect of our lives. It’s not good enough to use old shoeboxes for storage, now your closet needs to look good too, better buy some expensive storage containers. Even our cleaning supplies are cutified.
FOR SCALE writes:
IMAGINE IF YOU WILL: you walk into someone’s homespace and it is PRISTINE AS F*CK, i.e. “mint condition”. And yet, rarely do you feel at ease there. Looks great, vibe like sh*t.
[…]
You see, straight-on “PRISTINE” is fragile and demanding: the pristine as f*ck homespace rarely let’s you flop, spill, wax-drip, sweat, sneeze, cry, etc. You must be your most buttoned-up self, lest you Water Ring, Finger Smudge, etc. When everything is fully “PERFECT” then the stakes are high as all f*ck.
Maintaining perfection, fighting back entropy, requires endless work. When the expectation is that our homes will be spotless and our possessions immaculate, that demands labor, either our own or purchased from others.
See also:
Letting companies supplant our goals
The Homogeneity of Millenial Design
The patriarchy embedded in techno-think
Reframing home as a productive rather than consumptive space
