It's not coffee shops, it's everything. I read an essay last year on this topic, "The age of average" by Alex Murrell ( https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-age-of-average ) and it's stayed in my mind ever since. Cars, home interiors, instagram photos, skylines, self help books, franchise movies. The design of everything in our lives has become so relentlessly optimized we have a global culture that's stuck a risk-free local maxima.
As much as I will admit the Cybertruck is ugly and don't really _want_ one, this is why I was/am tempted by them. I can barely tell the difference between a Chevy, Ford, or Dodge truck at this point. They all look the same. Cars too. But the Cybertruck actually looks different. Not here shilling for the Cybertruck... Musk sucks and it seems like the truck does as well but it looks different than this boring average we're in and I kind of dig that.
I’m unashamedly getting one pretty much for this reason. I’m bored of driving the same amorphous blob-shaped cars for the past couple of decades (including my blob shaped model Y). It will be fun to drive something that tries to push the envelope for once.
Right?! I'm excited for you and I hope you love it! I want that moment of walking out to my driveway, not really thinking about it, and seeing this thing and, for just a minute, thinking "Why is there a Warthog from Halo 1 sitting in my driveway?" haha
I dunno, this feels like it is overemphasizing. Consider the section on cities. It shows eight skylines viewed from across water. They all have tall buildings. Two have towers that have a spherical bulge element. Some buildings are glass facades and others are concrete. In one skyline the tallest building is wide and looks like some sort of hotel. In one skyline there is a large and wide white building that looks like an arena. These don't look identical to me except that they all contain tall buildings, which isn't as much a design choice as it is an economic choice about city centers. Then the text immediately pivots to cheap stick framing and small apartment buildings outside of city centers.
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.
The two comments/critiques I would have on the article are:
- 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 -
> If the citizens of the world can understand and appreciate each other through design, what else might they understand and appreciate about each other.
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.
Agreed - and it is that backdrop of growing nationalism where it might actually be beneficial to have a small subsegment of the population in every country which shares a common, unifying belief in the design perfection of a global hipster coffee shop.
I mentioned it in another comment, but this has parallels to the Irish Pub.
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.
> 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..
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.
> If you've ever wondered why every poster and every trailer and every TV spot looks exactly the same, it's because of testing. It's because anything interesting scores poorly and gets kicked out.
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.
This phenomena gets more interesting when you considering increasingly global markets for things like TV and movies. For example, I read about ten years ago (so I don’t have the source, sorry), that humor in big Hollywood movies has been transitioning from dialogue to visual humor because the latter is much easier to translate for a global audience.
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.
There must be a reason why Clovis spear points looked the same all across North America, up until the comet strike 12,800 ya. It is probably because they were a trade good, so that anything different would be less tradeable. After the comet strike and its continent-wide wildfires, evidently the trade network broke down, and local styles drifted, freed from conformity.
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.
Such an excellent context to put this in. Even just thinking more broadly about the unimaginably long stretches of relative stability / homogeneity in ancient and prehistoric cultures. The Old / Middle / New Kingdoms (c. 2,700-1,100 BCE), Aurignacian (c. 60,000-24,000 BCE) and Gravettian culture (c. 30,000-15,000 BCE) come to mind but the examples are basically endless.
The Mousterian (Neanderthal industry) is even more extreme example. Extant for 120 000 years, fairly similar from Portugal to Mongolia, in absence of any known long-distance trade network.
I think this also applies to the scourge of "modern" user interface design, with its low contrast text, bland color schemes, monochrome icons and excessive whitespace. I was wondering for a long time if there was something going on behind the scenes (e.g. due to social media) to cause this mindless conformity and here we have an explanation for it.
Material design came out right at the very beginning when this "hipsterism" started happening. Then everyone started copying it. I absolutely hated it, and still do to this very day, with so much passion.
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.
> 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.
But older versions of Android prior to Material Design did not have excessive whitespace. So we had touchscreen devices in the past and we could still design good interfaces for them that were not dumbed down in this way.
I think it's probably a marketing drive to cater to as wide an audience as possible, to the lowest denominator of user. They probably made a rational decision to do this because it would increase revenue by simplifying the interface. So these devices went the way of TV in the end.
Spot on. I came across my old Nexus One recently, charged it up and whaddya know, still working. I clicked on Google News to see headlines from 10 years ago and was shocked at how much better it looked. It was like the diffrence between reading a folded newspaper vs looking at an electronic billboard.
This is hipsterism taken to its logical conclusion, the true irony being that in an effort to be fashionable/unique, everyone else just copied it to the point it was no longer so.
Is "hipsterism" still even a thing anymore? It feels like that kind of morphed into the whole holistic/burner culture trend that seems to be growing rapidly these days.
I don't know, but the time this author notices this trend beginning, early/mid 2010's, was definitely when it was full force and I still in my head associate these "trendy" pop ups with that culture.
No. "Hipster" was mostly a millennial youth thing, there's still recognizable bits around but the culture moved on. Especially from the word "hipster". Peaked around 2012. There are still kids who try too hard to be unique, quirky, and authentic in a way that makes them all do the same stuff... but it's a different vibe than a decade ago.
My parents recently suffered the loss of their neighborhood coffee shop, and they're absolutely crushed by this. They don't discuss emotions, but I can discern by their reaction that there is now a huge hole in their social life. And it's true. This place was the community hub for everyone who matters to them. They all converged there and met, every morning or every week. Mom and Dad both had their favorite dishes and drinks, and Dad would go nuts if they ran out of his bagel type. He would call ahead just to reserve it!
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.
I think this is great. It proves how well good ideas can quickly replicate around the world and improve the quality of services and products that we consume.
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.
This line of thought completely discounts the value of difference, though.
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.
1) Starbucks is a more American thing than a worldwide one.
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.
>1) Starbucks is a more American thing than a worldwide one.
Starbucks is easily the most popular coffee shop in urban Japan these days. The second-most popular is probably Tully's, which came from Seattle but has disappeared from America and is exclusively in Japan.
> 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.
You mean they showed America. Lots of places weren't doing carafe coffee before starbucks
I think this article is being really dramatic about how “bad” and “oppressive” this is supposed to be.
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.
The issue is that wealthy people in your comment aren’t choosing the aesthetic reflective of their geography and heritage. They’re choosing an aesthetic prescribed and circumscribed by what they see on social media.
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.
I just think the article is too negative about the shift toward global interconnectedness. Like I said, there are trends that are appealing to everyone on the globe.
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?
We could make the argument that forcing someone to travel to obtain a unique experience isn’t better than depriving the traveler of their wish to experience something unfamiliar.
There has been a (tiring) trend in journalism in recent years where all ideas must be linked somehow to climate change, racism, capitalism, or some other politically charged trigger button. Apparently one can’t simply write about a style of cafe decor because that wouldn’t qualify as Serious Journalism.
The author should check out the 2013 Edgar Wright movie The World's End, pointing out the growing uniformity of local pubs. Also, it has awesome fight scenes.
I've noticed that all new fast-food buildings (McDonalds, Wendy's, Taco Bell, etc.) all look very similar. I don't know the name for it, but square/rectangle with vertical "wood" planks outside, sparse interior with touchscreens and no registers inside. It seems designed to be as bland and uninspiring as possible. I suspect this "design" motif is due to focus groups and boardrooms though.
My girlfriend and I say these have been "Turned into Cog buildings" referencing a game we've both played a lot throughout our lives, ToonTown. Basically, the Cogs take over buildings and make them boring and corporate.
"It was the kind of cafe that someone like me - a western, twentysomething (at the time), internet-brained millennial acutely conscious of their own taste - would want to go to."
Is it their own taste, though. If the internet substitutes as their brain, then it's possible their preferences are not their own.
That may be from Charles Stross's "Laundry" novels, which occasionally mention "Hotelspace". There's an implication that all hotel interiors are somehow connected.
Everything has a turning point, and when the “algorithm generation” find out the excitement and pleasure of discovering things by oneself there will be a comeback. That was the magic of the video store shelves, the bookstore, the “let’s eat here” and the: “I want the same as that men in that table”
Well written, good follow-up to the Airspace thing (won't buy the book though).
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.
Is this a consequence of global optimized supply chains? Maybe we’re all manipulated in to wanting this because it’s actually what interior product companies can make a high profit on.
I differ from a few people here in thinking that everything is not gravitating toward the average: it's gravitating toward the lowest common denominator, which is usually significantly below-average.
The Friends Coffe Shop seemed quite cozy compared to modern incarnations.
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.
So the “problem” is that companies optimize their offerings to appeal to as many people as possible and the author doesn’t like the outcome? I would call that a hipster first world problem. The amount of “the world has to change to accomodate my tastes” narcissism demonstrated online nowadays is amazing.
I stopped reading when the author started to lean into how this must be a representation of "whiteness." No, how about it's an artifact of Internet enabled oligarchic capitalist technocracy like you started with? Ironically, the author's performative racism is part of the same trend.
> Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.
That works as long as there is not a pervasive trend to push the 'provocative thing', also as long as the 'provocative thing' is not something that would be totally off-limits if applied to a different group or category. Imagine an article which complained about thing X being a representation of blackness in a negative context and decide for yourself whether you would consider it in the same light.
> Internet enabled oligarchic capitalist technocracy
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.
It's unfortunate that you stopped reading in the one paragraph that touched on whiteness when there's so much of the article left to be read after that. Had you continued, you'd see that they don't stay on that subject. In fact, a CTRL+F for "white" shows that the instance of "whiteness" in that paragraph is the last time that "white" shows up at all - and every time "white" shows up before that paragraph, it's about colors in a coffee shop. They touch on it because someone that they interviewed mentioned it, and then they move right back to how it's "an artifact of Internet enabled oligarchic capitalist technocracy" in the very next paragraph.
I don't know why people so willingly bury their heads in the sand sometimes...
I have the same response to people randomly mentioning how the solution to everything is accepting Jesus into my heart. Whether secular or non secular, this kind of thing is a tell for low quality content because it is indicative of the uncritical acceptance of nonsense. I'm aware of what they're peddling, and I don't have time for people who think like this, which is different from burying my head in the sand, I suspect.
You came into this thread and said that you threw your hands up and walked away from the article when someone that they interviewed mentioned "whiteness". It was then pointed out to you that that was the only time in the article that race was discussed, and that everything you didn't read was actually about the subject you hoped it would've been about.
You proceeded, just now, to double-down and refuse to hear any more of it. In point of fact, you're not "aware of what they're peddling" because you're demonstrating a clear misunderstanding of the article to those of us who actually read it, and you seem proud to do so after you've been called out for it.
That's the definition of burying your head in the sand. Hell, your reaction to my comment is basically you trying to wiggle all the way down so that you're buried up to the waist. But hey, you do you. Ignorance is bliss, and such.
Would it be fair to observe at this point that reading a sarcastic and contemptuous paragraph about how I should be more open minded about casual racism in my sociological fluff pieces is creating a bit of cognitive dissonance for me?
For anyone wondering, the paragraph in question is: "It wasn’t just the spaces that were homogenous, but also the customers, Gonzalez observed: “If you go into the cafes, they’re predominantly white. But [Kloof Street] is historically a neighbourhood for people of colour.” Only certain types of people were encouraged to feel comfortable in the zone of AirSpace, and others were actively filtered out. It required money and a certain fluency for someone to be comfortable with the characteristic act of plunking down a laptop on one of the generic cafes’ broad tables and sitting there for hours, akin to learning the unspoken etiquette of a cocktail bar in a luxury hotel. The AirSpace cafes 'are oppressive, in the sense that they are exclusive and expensive', Gonzalez said. When whiteness and wealth are posed as the norm, a kind of force field of aesthetics and ideology keeps out anyone who does not fit the template." No support is given for any of the gross generalizations made, and they go unchallenged by the journalist. Does this lend credence to the rest of the article?
The point is that those cafes are a symbol of gentrification, as they were created and decorated by wealthy people alien to that neighborhood. Certainly a lot of well-to-do establishments are not exactly friendly environments to those who fall out of their target demographics, even if the people might be local residents. You fixate upon race when the disparity in wealth is just as important in this line of critique.
I understand the point, and I'm suggesting that the author's uncritical acceptance of all the assumptions in the quote makes it difficult for me to take the author as a credible objective observer. For example, is there any actual analysis done to support the idea that these cafes are not owned by locals? In the earlier part of the piece, she mentions that even "local" folks converged on the same aesthetic. Is it a good notion that a neighborhood be "for people of color?" Why are racially segregated neighborhoods good, again?
That paragraph is preceded by two other paragraphs of the author largely quoting and paraphrasing a particular academic. The author has chosen to accept that academic's thesis in order to buttress the overall argument advanced by the essay. Why is it necessary for the author to refute or dispute the academic? Especially compared to any other expert, narrative, or paragraph cited by the essay as evidence for its position? Your obsession with this paragraph, again, is bewildering. This is not an article about hipster cafes in South Africa, that is simply an example that was advanced. If you have an issue with it, do your own research and debunk it yourself. Read the source material and find real holes in it, not just comment thread theorizing. Find yourself actual counter-narratives and analysis that proves such. To do otherwise seems like unnecessary quibbling.
I would acquiesce that the tone of the last three sentences in my most recent response can possibly be off-putting, but I don't think it really changes or negates the overall point I clearly made in a non-sarcastic tone during the rest of the comment and the one before it. Nor is it fair to say that I'm telling you to "be more open minded about casual racism", which is a clear misinterpretation of what I have been saying here.
Edit: On that last point - by all means, disagree with the point the person they're interviewing is making regarding race, but don't ignorantly assume that the rest of the piece, and the whole point of the article, is now entirely about race and refuse to hear anything else about it. It's not fair to gripe about it not talking about how "it's an artifact of Internet enabled oligarchic capitalist technocracy" when you put the thing down right before it spent a lot of time doing just that. You don't walk out of a movie theater right before the climax and then complain about how the film didn't resolve anything, do you?
Edit 2: It's interesting to go back and read the rest of the comments here now that this post has been up for a while. Most people on HN seem to be discussing points around the concept you wanted discussed, but your comment is the only one griping about race.
You've made tons of edits, so it is perhaps more challenging to respond than it might be. Everyone uses a thresholding approach for their consumption of media. I read the author's uncritical acceptance of a loaded quote as an indication that she is an ideologue, and it made me distrust her opinion. You don't like that, and that's fine, but I have a right to my opinion and a right to express that as an assessment around the quality of the piece. It's cool that HN is having an interesting discussion; they probably thought we covered the racial element here.
For what it's worth, there's a stark difference between the phrases, "I read the author's uncritical acceptance of a loaded quote as an indication that she is an ideologue," and the way you phrased your first post. One comes off more reasonable, the other comes off, well... here we are lol. Just my $.02. But you're probably tired of hearing from me (and I oughta stop flogging a dead horse) so I'll fuck off. Have a good one!
I mean, I'm a pretty reasonable character and I imagine you are too in real life. It's tough to be pithy and come across the way we want at the same time. In any case, have a good rest of your day, honestly wishing you all the best.
Its odd to me how normal it has become for some white folks to through up their hands in outrage and disgust, crying racism and discrimination at the slightest mention of anything relating to race or culture.
Not saying I agree with the article or anyone in this thread,(though after reading the excerpt the parent is upset about I think I do agree with the the article) just that this has become rather common and predictable. Is this what people mean when they talk about white fragility? I dont know.
On the contrary, the struggle is to not see it. The article's point is "color/diversity" is better than sameness.
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.
