People are just as worked up about kids as they are worked up over everything else. As a parent I can confirm that the traditions of all dead generations still weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living in the age of the internet
It’s actually a Fascist playbook thing and it’s been really accelerating since about the 2000s. Intentionally reducing diversity of color and expression breeds obedience and makes people feel pressured to confirm. (Don’t quite me on this, but I wanna say it was Italian futurists that came up with this theory.)
Remember when fast food restaurants were colourful and had playzones? Now they’re just beige or maybe stone if you’re lucky. Remember when cars were available in colours other than grey, black, white, and silver? Remember when houses and apartments weren’t all greige?
It’s all the same thing, desaturate the world and make everything sterile so that people feel like being good little fascist freaks. You’re only allowed to express yourself within the approved little field of “individuality” that is consumer purchase preferences.
Kate Wagner was on Trillbillies fairly recently talking about how McDonalds is leading this boring-ass architecture because it increases the resale value of the properties, and because McDonald’s is a real estate company, not a burger company, resale value is a more worthy pursuit for the company overall.
People keep suggesting this theory, but how would it actually increase real estate value? It’s still got an interior layout that you’ll have to completely gut for it to be anything other than a McDonald’s and the exterior is something you’d still be required to change in that case as well since that’s McDonald’s’ legally protected styling. It doesn’t actually help resale value any more than painting your whole house greige because the realtor said it’ll tooooootally get you an extra 30 or maybe 40 grand!
This theory also doesn’t explain how genuinely customer-hostile newer interior layouts are, because no other business could possibly find a use for this shit.
The kiosk? There are lots of kiosk restaurants. And it looks like if they don’t want to be as aggressive about it, they could take down the signs and human-interaction blockers.
It’s built so cheaply that they just have to be replaced in a much shorter amount of time. What they save on building materials and quality, they can eat when it comes profitable to sell.
I don’t think leaving the red and yellow dye out of your plastic makes that big of a difference for the production side, but the aesthetic itself is probably rooted in middle class precarity / insecurity manifesting itself as taste anxiety
Depends on if they are still coloring the plastic or not. Color is a huge pain in the ass to get correct and consistent from batch to batch. It is one of the most carefully quality controlled aspects, because if your products are all lined up, you want them to all look the same on the shelf. Color absolutely matters in production.
So if they are just leaving the dye out, that can be a large cost saving measure, if they are dyeing it beige or whatever, then it is just a different color palette (which browns and whites are usually easier to keep consistent than greens, reds, and blacks). But overall it is probably more rooted in beige mom aesthetics.
Which is silly, because one of the reasons you have colored toys is because supposedly it helps stimulate brain development. Though all of that ‘science’ has changed since I took psych so idk these days.
There has to be a capitalist reason for this on the material side.
Children are a status symbol but adults fucking hate children now.
People are just as worked up about kids as they are worked up over everything else. As a parent I can confirm that the traditions of all dead generations still weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living in the age of the internet
It’s actually a Fascist playbook thing and it’s been really accelerating since about the 2000s. Intentionally reducing diversity of color and expression breeds obedience and makes people feel pressured to confirm. (Don’t quite me on this, but I wanna say it was Italian futurists that came up with this theory.)
Remember when fast food restaurants were colourful and had playzones? Now they’re just beige or maybe stone if you’re lucky. Remember when cars were available in colours other than grey, black, white, and silver? Remember when houses and apartments weren’t all greige?
It’s all the same thing, desaturate the world and make everything sterile so that people feel like being good little fascist freaks. You’re only allowed to express yourself within the approved little field of “individuality” that is consumer purchase preferences.
Kate Wagner was on Trillbillies fairly recently talking about how McDonalds is leading this boring-ass architecture because it increases the resale value of the properties, and because McDonald’s is a real estate company, not a burger company, resale value is a more worthy pursuit for the company overall.
People keep suggesting this theory, but how would it actually increase real estate value? It’s still got an interior layout that you’ll have to completely gut for it to be anything other than a McDonald’s and the exterior is something you’d still be required to change in that case as well since that’s McDonald’s’ legally protected styling. It doesn’t actually help resale value any more than painting your whole house greige because the realtor said it’ll tooooootally get you an extra 30 or maybe 40 grand!
This theory also doesn’t explain how genuinely customer-hostile newer interior layouts are, because no other business could possibly find a use for this shit.
The kiosk? There are lots of kiosk restaurants. And it looks like if they don’t want to be as aggressive about it, they could take down the signs and human-interaction blockers.
It’s built so cheaply that they just have to be replaced in a much shorter amount of time. What they save on building materials and quality, they can eat when it comes profitable to sell.
Thought the restaurants were like that because it makes them easier to sell when they inevitably go belly up in this economy.
Convergent evolution.
Reverse Pleasantville syndrome.
Tormentville
I don’t think leaving the red and yellow dye out of your plastic makes that big of a difference for the production side, but the aesthetic itself is probably rooted in middle class precarity / insecurity manifesting itself as taste anxiety
Depends on if they are still coloring the plastic or not. Color is a huge pain in the ass to get correct and consistent from batch to batch. It is one of the most carefully quality controlled aspects, because if your products are all lined up, you want them to all look the same on the shelf. Color absolutely matters in production.
So if they are just leaving the dye out, that can be a large cost saving measure, if they are dyeing it beige or whatever, then it is just a different color palette (which browns and whites are usually easier to keep consistent than greens, reds, and blacks). But overall it is probably more rooted in beige mom aesthetics.
Which is silly, because one of the reasons you have colored toys is because supposedly it helps stimulate brain development. Though all of that ‘science’ has changed since I took psych so idk these days.
We don’t need brain development, we have AI!
I wouldn’t think so either tbh, but idk, I might be to far removed from suburban ideology cause it makes as much sense to me.