The American Room

https://medium.com/message/the-american-room-3fce9b2b98c5

by ossama • 12 years ago

127 64 12 years ago

chiph• 12 years ago

As a landlord, I put neutral-beige paint on the walls because it's the least-offensive option. If I had put a strong color on them, even as an accent color, there will be a percentage of potential tenants that would dislike it and rent from someone else. "Oh, that was the place with the hideous apple-green wall by the stairs. I couldn't live with it there."

apaprocki• 12 years ago

I've rented a bunch of places in my life and rental rooms almost always looked pretty bare. Landlords do not want tenants painting their own colors for those same reasons. Tenants that frequently move each year do not accumulate furniture/furnishings because they are too annoying to move year after year and get damaged. You can only speculate how big a factor rental vs ownership plays in determining if rooms look like this.

wil421• 12 years ago

Tenants that frequently move each year do not accumulate furniture/furnishings

This is something I noticed a while ago when I was living in a nice apartment complex. It seemed like many residents would just throw away old lamps or small furniture rather than take them to their new place or put them in storage. A good portion of those videos looked like people bored in their apartments or parents basement which would fit your observation.

dm22• 12 years ago

I haven't found that to be true.

Many places I've stayed at will have a promotion "get $50 off first months rent or we will paint any wall in the house a color of your choice", I always just do the $50 because I couldn't care less about the random wall color.

mhurron• 12 years ago

Owners do this because they believe their house is an investment and they want to be ready to move whenever someone waves that wad of cash in their face. Apparently people buying don't realize they can repaint because coloured walls are a reason people won't make an offer on a house.

Personally, I can't stand white/beige rooms. I want colour in my life. When I bought a house, we painted half of it before I moved in. The kitchen is a yellow, the living room has a peach/seashell thing going on, the guest/spare room is a light lavender and the office is a blue that almost glows in sunlight.

This is supposed to be my house, I want to like living in it. It should be colourful. Maybe it's because we rented several houses when I was growing up.

God I hate white and beige.

tannerc• 12 years ago

I'm immediately reminded of the background Ze Frank has used in his web series, "A Show"[1]. In the videos, Ze regularly places a single white bookshelf with a mishmash of objects on it, mostly books. He either uses the bookshelf often enough to arrange the objects in unique ways regularly, or re-arranges it for every individual episode of A Show he records.

When I see videos like those Ze creates, I know they're staged but can't help but feel like my life, too, should be filled with knickknacks, books, clutters of inspiration.

There's some sense of: "If my environment looks like that environment, I'll be able to act like that person does." I imagine much of pop culture influences how we imagine our rooms and homes should look.

1 http://ashow.zefrank.com/

JonnieCache• 12 years ago

That's how pretty much all advertising works.

personZ2• 12 years ago

At risk of sounding cynical, I would find an entry titled "The Medium Blog Entry" even more compelling.

It is a platform made for entries to be authored quickly and cheaply. The droll full-page lead image sets it apart, the color palette muted and neutral, simultaneously making it exactly like every other Medium blog entry you've seen lately. Many intermix videos and viral media to tether off of other's fame.

The air of grandeur of the platform allowing people to post with pomposity while simultaneously sharecropping. To post judgmental observations by carefully cherry picking the evidence.

Medium. You and your predictable blogs.

As an aside, it's curious that this entry talks about "suburbs" a number of times. Most condo and apartment rooms have the same 8' ceilings, the same muted palette, and virtually identical construction. But...you know...suburbs and temporary workers, or something.

WD-42• 12 years ago

You should definitely write a blog post about your observation with a full-page lead image consisting of a bunch of full-page lead images.

altcognito• 12 years ago

And link to it from a social network with a narrow band of interests so they can comment snarkily.

mc32• 12 years ago

I also think if you're going to publish a video, one might think about the background and might choose a room which is not cluttered and won't distract from what the subject wants to present. I mean, if I had a few rooms to choose from, I'd choose the least cluttered or decorated one to use as background.

But, might be a good idea to sample rooms from videos/clips produced in rooms in other countries, maybe there is something to it?

Also, as a counterpoint, I recall when living in the suburbs as a teenager, friends' rooms bedecked with posters, pinup pictures, clothes strewn, music instruments about, etc. Their basements might have been different, those tended to be bare with exposed support beams, studs, unfinished (without a finish) concrete floors, etc.

MrMeker• 12 years ago

Minor (major?) nit: I'd like to see a post about "The top HN reply to any submission that makes any sort of statement." In it, the author could show a number of top replies, each trivializing the original submission. "Look, I did this three weeks ago in my handmade Javascript interpreter [0], written in my own implementation of Go [1], compiled with a compiler written in assembly [10], by me."

HN. You and your predictable comments.

wldcordeiro• 12 years ago

It's almost as if there are patterns to human behaviour no matter the medium (hah!) we use.

philsnow3• 12 years ago

Most condo and apartment rooms have the same 8' ceilings, the same muted palette, and virtually identical construction.

condos and apartment complexes built in the last 40 years all look pretty much alike, yes. older ones are more likely to be beautiful / "unique".

justinpaulson5• 12 years ago

I read this whole thing, I even continued when he showed a clear misunderstanding of how pinterest works (the columns aren't going to show the same "Gallery Wall" in the same column every time someone clicks your link!) I continued through his careful selection of things that seemed to follow his logic and ignorance of things that argued against it. I hoped and hoped a point would be made at some time, but I was disappointed.

Yes, lots of American homes have similar decor, but those pictures on pinterest that you seem to think are fantasy are not fantasies, they are actual pictures of actual homes. We don't all live in wall-to-wall off-white boxes.

What is the point of this overgeneralization? Is it a surprise that lots of people have similar houses? Is it a surprise that lots of developers always wear t-shirts and jeans? Why is this on the front page of HN??

pauldino• 12 years ago

I have to admit it kind of made me feel better about myself for living in a boring beige apartment.

mr_luc• 12 years ago

Eyeballs.

I also read the whole thing, even though I started disliking myself halfway through.

I also wonder why this is on HN. But the reason it was written is eyeballs, a thin excuse to tie together a bunch of viral videos. This kind of 'meta-viral' post is easy to write because you're working with a vetted pool of already-popular content.

All you need is to suspend the reader's disbelief enough, with your narrative, that your post does make sense, that there is a thesis statement here. The popularity of the content you're cribbing from does the rest.

personZ2• 12 years ago

"Yes, lots of American homes have similar decor"

Aside from the cherry picking of the author, and the natural tendency for people to use the simplest possible backgrounds when they're recording a video, it's worth noting that the simplicity of modern interior construction, and the use of neutral colors, is completely intentional and desired.

It isn't accidental or unnoticed, and isn't some side effect of cheapness or thrift, or the "temporary worker" suburbanite, as the post seems to imply. It's that we learned through many generations that the things that you think look pretty awesome today often don't look that great in the near future, and soon interior design is an enormous burden instead of an expression or enjoyment.

In the 70s homes were filled with wallpaper, wall to wall carpet, shelves with trophies and knick-knacks, etc. And then we collectively decided that we didn't like wallpaper, carpet, shelves or knick-knacks.

So we moved to more malleable internal decorating that can more easily change with tastes. Pictures and accents instead of strongly colored walls. Throw rugs instead of carpet. Decorative free-standing elements instead of bolting stuff on a wall.

This newer model has held since pretty much the 80s. Simple interiors that you make your own, and you can keep making your own with every change of your taste, instead of being tied to the taste of you from a decade ago, or worse the taste of generations before you.

justinpaulson5• 12 years ago

And with this comment you made more of a point than the entire original post.

cma• 12 years ago

Carpet/rugs were a status symbol of ultimate luxury when they were expensive; as synthetic fibers became cheaper new construction settled on plywood and carpet flooring as actually being cheaper than hardwood flooring. Pretty soon carpet was "gross" and "tacky" and hardwoods became a status symbol.

Prior to cheap aluminum manufacture through the Hall–Héroult process, aluminum tableware was light weight and considered excellent, after the process it was cheap tacky and flimsy and everyone knows you need some heft in your fork for proper balance and etiquette.

williamcotton3• 12 years ago

I like the piece. It exposes a melancholic beauty to the ticky-tacky hedge rows and webcam uniformity of the Western existence. Peering past the facades and in to the lives of American suburbanites we see a million people separated by their screens yet united in their droll simplicity.

There's more to life than just the exuberance, progress, and extraordinary creations that we obsess over here in the Bay Area. For every amazing success story there's a thousand people shuffling their feet and walking in circles just to be our customers. On the other side of almost every IP packet is a person sitting alone in a room. It's important for us to realize the implications of our creations. It is important for us to realize what's real and what's just an idealized vision of the future. It'll keep us thinking about a path forward that includes everyone. It'll keep us from thinking that we're special and different and more entitled to life's pleasures. When we turn our heads most of us see the same pale white walls.

Well Frisco's a mighty rich town, now that ain't no lie

Why they got some buildings that reach a mile into the sky

Yet no one can even afford the time just to tell me why

Here's a world filled with people and so many people alone

- Frisco Depot by Mickey Newbury

justinpaulson5• 12 years ago

Well I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma so I'm very aware of what not being in the Bay Area is like. Not everyone on HN lives in the bay area startup bubble ;P

I also think you added a lot more in your commentary than was laid out in the article.

rhapsodic2• 12 years ago

"There's more to life than just the exuberance, progress, and extraordinary creations that we obsess over here in the Bay Area. For every amazing success story there's a thousand people shuffling their feet and walking in circles just to be our customers. On the other side of almost every IP packet is a person sitting alone in a room. It's important for us to realize the implications of our creations. It is important for us to realize what's real and what's just an idealized vision of the future. It'll keep us thinking about a path forward that includes everyone. It'll keep us from thinking that we're special and different and more entitled to life's pleasures. When we turn our heads most of us see the same pale white walls."

OMG! The self-importance in that paragraph is hilarious!

morsch• 12 years ago

I enjoyed the post. It's well written. It had a stream-of-conciousness feel to it. I liked the idea of looking at internet videos from a different angle. I knew almost none of the videos and didn't play any of them, the stills were enough illustration for the post.

Not everything needs to make a point. Sometimes we read (and write) things just for fun.

lobster_johnson3• 12 years ago

I don't see any misunderstanding about how Pinterest works. He points out that one of the pinned photos is itself a kind of meta-Pinterest -- the "Gallery Wall" item is an article about how to arrange stuff on a wall similar to Pinterest. Nothing about clicking, nothing about the same column showing every time.

those pictures on pinterest that you seem to think are fantasy are not fantasies, they are actual pictures of actual homes

Actually, quite a lot of pinned photos on Pinterest are from marketing materials (catalogues, Etsy, magazines, etc.). That applies to Houzz, too. Sure, there are some real homes there, including ones that have been designed by professional interior designers. But the point is that's why they are pinned there: It's what a lot of people aspire to. Not necessarily what they have.

Speaking from experience of other people's homes, people generally don't have homes like those shown in interior design magazines. Part of it is that most people simply don't have the taste -- whenever I speak to Americans about their beige homes, their wainscoatings, paneling, stained-glass windows and other reactionary cruft, they insist their love it -- and also that it's often very expensive.

justinpaulson5• 12 years ago

He said "Gallery Wall" from the second column. As if we would all see that post on the second column of the link he provided. That's not how pinterest works, it is always updating and changing.

viciousambition• 12 years ago

This struck me as analysis for the sake of analysis. I'm willing to wager many people pick the most bare wall in their house on purpose because it looks best to film against.

sp3323• 12 years ago

People pick bare walls because they're imitating each other, and the bare-wall look is easy to recreate. For example, Hannah Hart can make videos like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzYk2iOZqss#t=242 but when she built a studio, it looked like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjK2xgolAws The first one is more engaging, but people have this idea of what a youtube video looks like, and they just keep doing that because it's what they're used to.

antsar• 12 years ago

At the risk of sounding like a jerk, why is this on Hacker News?

joshdance• 12 years ago

Talks about YouTube?

nicky0• 12 years ago

Same answer as always: it's interesting to a number of HN readers and got voted up.

lbearl• 12 years ago

The fact that the author is trying to make the argument that (I'm exaggerating here) "All Americans must be poor, because the walls in YouTube videos are white" doesn't make any sense. The author even alludes to this briefly in talking about "YouTube Teens." Yes, author, younger people tend to a) rent more and b) not have as many things to hang.

As someone under 30 who moves across states every few years, I have no desire to collect a bunch of stuff to hang on my walls.

legulere• 12 years ago

What this article doesn't mention are the strange carpeted floor everywhere.

bkjelden3• 12 years ago

I see a lot of sentiment against the post-WW2, american, timber-based style of construction on HN and I've never really understood it.

I view modern american residential construction as a model of efficiency. Why build a house out of brick or stone when timber is completely sufficient, and the latter is much, much cheaper to come by? It's not like timber just magically stops working one day - there are plenty of houses in older parts of the US that are 100+ years old. Any argument along the lines of "they don't build them like they used to" is likely ignoring survivorship bias among older homes.

And for the record, ceilings over 8FT are not a luxury item in the US. Any major home improvement store sells framing lumber and drywall in a variety of sizes over 8FT long:

http://www.menards.com/main/c-13132.htm?criteria3_facet=2%22...

http://www.menards.com/main/c-5656.htm?criteria5_facet=9%27&...

jacquesm• 12 years ago

I actually like European houses because they have a sense of being of a longer timespan than I am, it reminds me that I'm transient in a much slower changing world.

Seeing the cities change around me faster than I can absorb those changes always weirds me out. In Europe you have that too in areas where there is a lot of construction but it only gets to me with places that I know well. I remember almost driving into a tree when I rounded a corner into Amsterdam one fine weekday morning and saw a - new to me - very large building that had been built during my stay in Canada. Of course for people that had seen it built it arrived very slowly but for me it might as well have popped out of the ground.

So you can imagine what I feel when I'm in North America.

bkjelden3• 12 years ago

That's an interesting viewpoint that I hadn't really considered before.

Of course, the US as a whole just isn't that old compared to most of Europe. So it's hard for us to have buildings that are 300 or 500 years old - because no one was here that long ago. Not saying our current buildings won't last that long, we just don't know yet. And the idea that they are just going to crumble to the ground one day because they are made of wood seems a bit misguided to me.

sp3323• 12 years ago

That attitude goes back at least to Thomas Jefferson. Here's a letter he wrote in 1791:

A country whose buildings are of wood, can never increase in its improvements to any considerable degree. There duration is highly estimated at 50 years. Every half century then our country becomes a tablua rasa, whereon we have to set out anew, as in the first moment of seating it. Whereas when buildings are of durable materials, every new edifice is an actual and permanent acquisition to the state, adding to is value as well as to its ornament.

Any argument that wooden houses last 100+ years is ignoring survivorship bias :) But even granting that, 100 years is not a very long time - just over one lifetime. If your parents lived in a wooden house, your children will need to build a new one.

philsnow3• 12 years ago

There duration is highly estimated at 50 years. Every half century then our country becomes a tablua rasa, whereon we have to set out anew, as in the first moment of seating it.

Maybe this was rhetoric (? who was that letter addressed to, and what was his purpose in writing it?), but I can't fathom the thinking that the entire country's buildings would simultaneously fail, in lockstep, every 50 years.

bkjelden3• 12 years ago

I agree with you that 100 years is not very long - I chose that number because a lot of communities in America aren't a lot older than that. The idea of a suburb didn't really catch on until after WWII, so we don't really have much data on those beyond 60 years. And even beyond that, a lot of areas in the midwest/west weren't very settled until around the turn of the century, so permanent structures from before then are not common.

jghn• 12 years ago

Indeed. My house is ~150 years old and made of wood, much of it original. Even large sections of the hardwoods are believed to be original or relatively close to it. Certainly the newest section of hardwood predates the addition of radiator based heat (based on scorch marks from a wood burning stove)

In my neighborhood, the #1 reason for similarly aged wooden houses to be torn down is simply because developers want to build multi-level, multi-unit condo buildings.

ArkyBeagle• 12 years ago

Just a guess, but our country was founded by Masons and perhaps that leads to a bias for ... other materials.

It's interesting that a lot of new homes are stick built but with brick fascia, where bricks are available.

ape4• 12 years ago

I have noticed the American Room in YouTube videos too. Another things is lake of shelfs - things seem to be stored sitting on the floor. No time to move it?

jstalin• 12 years ago

A blog post about nothing.

jscheel• 12 years ago

This whole article feels like the author is trying to pull something from nothing. House-poor seems like a stretch. I would suggest a more plausible theory: people, in general, just aren't that creative, especially when it comes to interior decorating.

bicx• 12 years ago

Yep. I'm sitting in a beige box right now. I own it. I'm not house-poor. I just haven't put the time into re-painting or decorating much, and I just don't have the desire to put my money into things that just sit there.

bicknergseng• 12 years ago

Tangental: did anyone else see that video of the woman talking about a nuclear Jesuit semen bomb (not making this up)? Is she frighteningly schizophrenic or just pulling yarn?

drcube• 12 years ago

My house is 100 years old. The walls are bright green and ten feet high, and full of homemade art. I will never buy or live in a boring beige box again.

I'll never understand why people want to live in such mind numbingly plain spaces. We decorate our cars, we decorate our laptops, we have cute cases for our phones, but the walls of the house we live in must be grey, beige or off-white? I don't mind the architectural sameness. I understand its efficiency. But the lack of color, or any kind of self-expression, that's what I don't get.

gipp• 12 years ago

Most people don't want to. Rentals and often even homes for sale take on these colors because they're the most inoffensive. Everybody wants some kind of color and character to their home, but nobody will agree on exactly which kind of color or character. As a result, those responsible for selling/renting these places have them take on a "neutral middle": something absolutely nobody loves, but you can't really hate either. Inoffensive.

And since so many people either a) Rent and aren't allowed to paint or make significant alterations (e.g. nails in the wall), or b) Move too often to feel it's worth the effort, lots of people don't bother to change it from the inoffensive, dull, soul-crushing middle ground.

logfromblammo2• 12 years ago

Walls that are white or beige indicate to me that there is no personal ownership of the room. When I last owned a room, I painted it orange, because I was the only one that had any say in the matter, and I wanted orange.

Now, all my rooms are white.

And almost all of my furniture is crappy, flat-pack, self-assembly particle-board dreck. That's because my preference for durable, quality furniture is overridden by my ever-declining wage relative to my expenses, and my need to move around frequently in search of jobs that allow me to tread water a bit longer at my current standard of living.

I want a nice chair, but I also want something to sit on until I can afford one. It always seems that the price of a chair I could keep until the day I die increases faster than my ability to pay for one. And so I live in a cheaply developed suburban subdivision, in a cheaply built home, on cheaply constructed furniture, using a discounted laptop. And all the while, things crumble around me, and I constantly find myself paying to replace the cheap things that I only have in the first place because I am trying to save up enough to buy the nice, durable things that I really want. And those recede into the distance faster than I can chase them.

My American room is devoid of decoration, because I no longer have any sense of ownership. It makes no sense to personalize a place that is not mine. It makes no sense to invest emotion and effort into something that you feel in your heart to just be temporary.

And in the end, I live a temporary life, plodding through endless mundane todays in search of an extraordinary tomorrow. Everything that I own is junk that I never wanted to keep. Everything that I really want dangles just barely out of my reach.

And all the time, I am angry and frustrated, because all I ever wanted is quality. And I can't afford it. The walls behind my webcam aren't blank, white, and empty. They're covered in the corpses of my dead dreams and aborted aspirations. Those gothy types think black is the color of despair. But it's really eggshell semi-glossy.

I have plenty of decorations to hang up. But they are still packed up and ready to move--again--because there is no longer any wall that I can say is my wall. All those white walls out there belong to someone else. All those videos just show that someone else controls the backdrop of your life.

And I just want to get out my brush and paint. It. All. Red.

sxates• 12 years ago

Beautiful.

9999• 12 years ago

Get a divorce. Quit your government contract job. Move.

logfromblammo2• 12 years ago

I thought ramping the angst up to full throttle at the end there would have made it obvious, but apparently Poe's Law strikes again.

jdmichal• 12 years ago

Ah, the Vimes "boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness:

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...

slipperyp• 12 years ago

Paul Ford is a magician and offers terrific perspective on subtle aspects of what is typically our American culture. If you're looking for him to beat you over the head with THE POINT about what he insists you're suppose to think, you're reading the wrong author.

The American Room

Related Stories