Why Gen Z Is Nostalgic for a Digital World They Never Knew | Hacker News Reader

Why Gen Z Is Nostalgic for a Digital World They Never Knew

decodingvibes.com

7 pointsaltmanaltman6 comments

Not wanting to be disrespectful or anything, but I just don't get how people can spend so much time caring about UI styling.

I get the UX idea: graphical environments have evolved to become more ergonomic and more intuitive. But at some point, when it "just works", I don't get the point of spending so much energy into styling it.

People don't generally get excited about door handles, do they? There are a few kinds of door handles that we know work, and we're fine with them. Maybe they vary a bit between the countries, sure. But people don't tune their door handles.

Why do people tune their OS?

I get that Apple may spend a ton of resources into developing liquid glass, which uses more compute and therefore forces people to buy newer devices. But that's not the same as a Gen Z person spending (wasting?) time tuning their OS, is it? Or do they consider it like art? Like does tuning your OS count the same as painting or playing an instrument?

I am genuinely wondering. I actually spent time reading this whole article.

So what was the point of stucco anyway?

So you're saying it's art, then? I mean, maybe.

I see the point of decorating my living room. It's just that I don't decorate my hammer.

Back when blacksmiths were a necessary part of life, some of them definitely did decorate their hammers. Quite highly, in fact. Some of the best-known blacksmiths in the world had some of the most highly decorated hammers. Truly gorgeous artwork in metal. And I think they did it to prove that they could. Even today, some of the best-known blacksmiths in the American Blacksmiths Association of North America (ABANA) do the same thing. I am not a member of ABANA, but I am a lifetime member of an ABANA chapter, namely the Blacksmiths Guild of the Potomac.

But their practical daily driver hammers and tools were not and are not typically heavily decorated. They were and are more of a functional thing.

So, I think it depends on what purpose you have for the thing. Does it have a purely practical purpose? What if the purely practical purpose is to entertain others? Is it okay if it’s highly decorated if the purpose is to entertain others?

> But their practical daily driver hammers and tools were not and are not typically heavily decorated

So Gen Z decorates their luxury smartphone, or the daily driver they use to swipe TikTok for hours?

In practice, using UIs that a corporate design department or product manager would never approve today is an implicit fashion-signal.

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