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Jeff: "Is it me or are more people wearing gray? I feel like I'm in a commercial and someone's about to hand me a Starbust."

Abed: "3's and 2's tend to wear neutral colors. Looking like you want to move up can get you moved down..." [Abed waves to people in the distance] "Those are other 3's. We talk about how we're glad we're not 2's." [Abed stands to leave] "Small talk guys... I make small talk now."

The "Nosedive" of Community, before Black Mirror did it :)

I almost always wear hi-vis orange shirts, and my preferred hoodie is hi-vis yellow (pity it’s not orange, but that’s the one I’ve got and I don’t need another). Good quality, readily available, comfortable, cheap, and I stand out and am memorable in most contexts, which can be useful. Probably blinds people a little in direct sunlight, though no one’s ever mentioned such a thing. Occasionally throws people for a loop because they assume I must be some kind of tradie.

I started this back in 2010 as a safety measure when cycling from home to Uni, and rapidly decided I liked it.

I’ve progressively branded myself more and more in bright orange. Funny thing is it isn’t even close to my favourite colour.

My car is “velocity red”. Pity it’s not metallic orange or green or some other more interesting colour, but I certainly don’t care enough to foot the bill to repaint it.

If you're actually interested in changing your car color, you should could look at wrapping. It's still expensive (thousands last I checked, which was before any measurable inflation took hold), but cheaper than painting and obviously less permanent. I've heard it's better to wrap black/dark vehicles because if the measurement and cuts are a bit off it gets hidden away a lot better than something like red or blue. But could still be an option!

I had a dark gray car many years ago that I wanted to wrap in matte black, but I just never got around to it then ended up selling it.

> I almost always wear hi-vis orange shirts, and my preferred hoodie is hi-vis yellow

I have some orange t-shirts that I love, but if I'm going out on a trip to the country to look for wildlife there is no way I'd wear them - I choose muted natural greens and khaki instead (although I don't actually wear camo gear). Also, when I photographing anywhere where I might be partially visible in a window reflection I wear clothes that don't have stripes, because these stand out like a sore thumb.

Does most of that wildlife have color perception that would pick out orange? My recollection is that hunters in Colorado would wear blaze-orange vests to reduce the chance of being shot by other hunters; I presumed that this did not make them conspicuous to deer or elk.

Many birds have very good colour vision, including UV. Some mammals such as Lions are dichromatic (lacking red) but this doesn’t render a red jacket invisible.

> These people don't tend to be very positive about it, yet they feel the need to say something about my appearance, because I wear colorful stuff.

I'm a man and I've recently started wearing a lot of "Hawaiian" shirts (loud, colorful prints) and I get a lot of compliments on the street. Not sure if it's about the color or about wearing something that reads as a "party" shirt, though.

if you dress a way that you are not, people will get mad, and if you do, they are happy.

this thread wasn't talking about fashion choices anyway. the reason for this is totally uninteresting. we're seeing the circumstances of assets like cars and houses being sold to future people and surviving, and the ones that future people by have less of the prior owner's personality to them.

why are new houses so boxy and drab? consider that the brutalist VA building in Chicago and federal building in boston are equally as historically important, if not more so, than your average twee little crumbling victorian in san francisco. but hey, you can demolish the "ugly" buildings and critically, do something fuck all different with the land, than those absolutely destitute sticks buildings. i don't think the economic stories are interesting.

The absolute destitute sticks buildings stay up out of some perverse mixture of house-as-investment (instead of land-as-investment), American house building culture, the state of construction in this country, and a really misplaced desire for “historical” preservation of “neighborhood character”.

The Victorian houses are nice but they all need to go.

I don't know shit about San Francisco (which I assume you're talking about here), but I'm very glad that Baltimore isn't knocking down all of our 1890s brick-and-masonry rowhome shells to put up more 4+1 apartment complexes.

Designers: We use gray colors as a starting point in value evaluation. This gives us the ability to see the form clearly.

Marketing: When presented with a colorful choice, people will buy the gray/white and neutral palette. We will create a colorful campaign to ignite emotional response.

Business Development: We love this approach. It makes business sense. Go for it.

Psychologist: In the past, people were open-minded and tolerated more artistic and individual choices. Nowadays, every one is in search of the safe zone for social validation and compliance. Big Brands create a culture of subtle colors and people love it.

I'm a guy, and I also like colors. But I tend to like low-lightness, high-saturation colors. Just because it's dark doesn't mean it's not colorful! I'm currently wearing a black & dark-blue Hawaiian-print shirt!

> These people don't tend to be very positive about it, yet they feel the need to say something about my appearance, because I wear colourful stuff.

That's odd, I dress in colourful clothes and I get positive comments both from people who are themselves dressed in bright colours and from people very drably dressed. Perhaps it differs from place to place.

> I'm glad I don't care too much about the opinions of other people

I think there is a small minority of people that either want attention, or don't mind it.

The rest of the world wants to avoid drawing attention to themselves. This is true for both positive and negative attention. I don't think it's so much about what others think, I think it's just that attention is uncomfortable for most people, and they do what they can to blend in as to avoid drawing attention and feeling uncomfortable.

If the world were more colorful, this may mean not wearing neutral colors, as this would now stand out and likely draw attention.

But when I grew up in the 1960s and 70s everyone wore bright colors. I don't think the number of extroverts has changed particularly.

I do the same. When people remarking about it are a bit malicious I always say: "I can afford to have X that way. I don't have to blend in or be careful what other people say about my choice of colours."

I do the same. I either have a flashy top, or a flashy bottom. And I love it, because it gives more occasions to get compliments. Not only people can comment about how the clothe fits, but also how the color highlights my skin (I'm pretty tanned all year round, and flashy colors makes it even more stand out).

But yeah, people are afraid of standing out. Once a friend told me he'd love to do the same, but he did not have the guts to do it, so he keeps wearing dim clothes.

People are afraid to stand out? Where I'm from, USA, it's popular to dye your hair bright colors and to get tattoos

My pet peeve is cases like this where you mention the context of where you're from, but it's so broad as to be useless. There are places in the USA where it's popular to dye your hair bright colors and get tattoos, but I assure you there are also places in the USA where it is not. When mentioning being from the USA in the context of talking about USA culture, one should specify a state, metro area, or at least general region. The USA is a very diverse place, but since so many Americans rarely see the rest of it except through media (which naturally plays up the homogeneity or focuses on things that will be relatable throughout the USA, avoiding local quirks unless trying to emphasize a strange locality), they frequently mistakenly assume the whole country is a lot more similar to their region than it really is.

Do you have a place in mind where these things are not common? Like I have friends from Tennessee with colored hair, colored contacts, and like to wear bright "harajuku" style fashion.

but sure, I'm positive there's some towns where dressing in bright colors is frowned on. Not sure where that would be. Even Elvis and Roy Rogers wore outlandish clothing.

I'm guessing your Tennessee friends live in a city (or not even in TN at all, since you say they're "from" there).

In my experience there is much more conformity in rural areas in the mid-south, especially in middle class spaces. I even notice it if I take a flight from the east coast to Tulsa, Oklahoma. The first flight to a hub like Atlanta has a normal variety of people in a normal variety of dress. Then the second leg you suddenly notice a significant decrease in variety. It's just kind of obvious if you see it, so idk why you haven't noticed it unless you're not very well travelled in the USA.

It sounds like you are making inferences about Tennessee based on what your friends from there are like, but they are your friends (and it sounds like they chose to move from TN to wherever you are) so this is in many ways a biased sample. A more accurate way is to observe random people. I would be more interested in hearing your observations from when you actually visited Tennessee than your inferences you think you can make from knowing someone who is from there.

I happened to fly out of Austin, Texas, on Halloween late in the 1980s. An awful lot of the airport staff were done up for Halloween. I landed in Dallas-Fort Worth for a connecting flight home, and nobody but nobody was done up for Halloween.

I noticed that my friends could always find me at the ski resort because I wore an orange ski cap.

One day there was a case of mistaken identity when there was one other person at the resort with an orange cap.

Not neon pink or anything. Just regular 70s orange.

i too feel like we see any modern deviation as a statement and not a meaningless preference, like food or people attraction.