Minimalist furniture. Craft beer and avocado toast. Reclaimed wood. Industrial lighting. Cortados [...]
The interchangeability, ceaseless movement, and symbolic blankness that was once the hallmark of hotels and airports, qualities that led the French anthropologist Marc Augé to define them in 1992 as "non-places," has leaked into the rest of life. [...]
This confluence of style is being accelerated by companies that foster a sense of placelessness … Airbnb is a prominent example.
— theverge.com
Nicholas Korody previously explored this phenomenon, of supposedly idiosyncratic Airbnb styling converging on the generic.
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Hmm. I like this article. And I agree with it in one part. What do you guys think about this though: Is the sample pool biased?
It's talking about international, affluent people who are living and working in international, affluent cities. Wouldn't it then follow that this type of person is a bit generic across international borders and would inevitably experience homogeneity? They go to AirBnB ($$) and coffee shops ($$). The people who are selling either space or products probably opened a magazine or website that helped them to understand and cater to this kind of person. Does the apartment next door, which does not have a reason to sell their space to a generic, unknown other, have the same problem of homogeneity? That would be a good follow up article.
I find this marketing notion that we - as consumers - are somehow all unique snowflakes disingenuous at best. It really encourages one to buy stuff to project and determine one's identity - to showcase just how special one is. People are similar under similar socio-economic conditions - our purchases are determined by disposable income and popular taste, which by their nature are quite universal within geographic and national boundaries. The criticism of sameness, homogeneity and all presumes that outsiders are able to observe uniqueness of person and place from a casual visit and that such sameness is inherently bad. IMO this is more a reflection of consumer culture and its modern, Instagram-friendly selfie equivalent - that we have to be special, and have to show everyone how we are all unique in the most overt fashion.
And yes, it is a biased sample. Everytime I read an article about co-living start-ups like Roam, the mind boggles at just what is the market for such jet-setting, country-hopping millenials who are able to travel to exotic places to work at their leisure. I'm sure there is a lucrative market for such consumers but my God, the marketing push that this is the new way of living, that the future is now, that we should all embrace maximum consumption and minimal savings/investments is just abhorrent.
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