Riff: The Great Smoothening--Let’s talk about Analytics. Let’s get weird.
Two raw thoughts started forming in my head while reading commentingon (commenting-on) take on how everything has turned into safe-corporate-blend-millennial-grey-sort-of-meh kind-of-product:
1. It has always been true for things that move into mainstream
“Phones, smartwatches, game consoles, and especially the games” all of these have moved from fringe niche things to mass market global phenomenon in the last generation, or two at most, which means we all remember their teenage rebellious years while we’re now staring down their corporate 9-5 shirt-and-khakis dead eyes.
There was a time when taking a picture of something (and not someone) was edgy and fringe and cool, you just don’t remember that because for the last 2-3 generations we already had cheap disposable cameras and everyone became a “photographer” with it.
Rinse and repeat for any new trend and tech that will ever exist.
2. Weird is a luxury
The call to action to “love the weird” to:
Let's stop accepting the bare minimum for everything and start embracing the weird, the bizarre, the risk-takers, the highly opinionated ideas and products.
Glosses over the fact that people don't do this (chosing smother-land) by choice but by necessity: they can’t afford to buy 4 different quirky consoles to play quirky games, they can barely afford a Switch and the last version of Mario Kart, both in price and time.
I guess that post got out of its bubble and into mine, and in mine the baked in assumptions are glaring and obvious.
We all have a blind spot, it’s good sometimes to find out which one is yours, painful, but good.