hyalineskies

American popular culture has an insatiable taste for trendiness, with the end result being nothing more than a petty aesthetic takeaway of something that originally had true meaning. Perhaps social media is the cure for our disease, but in the end, American pluralism feels increasingly like a façade for an old populist philosophy.

A trip back to Ann Arbor and my alma mater set things straight again. The Silicon Valley exuberance left me exhausted, jaded and superficial. After the failure of hyalineskies 8 and the all-devouring power of consumer culture, I’m actually back for good this time with a redesign, a philosophy and the resurgence of an everlasting vendetta.

We constantly look toward our books of things of what not to do when designing interactions with people; we incessantly read how to make our users more passionate and addicted to our material. In the end, what we as humans really seem to care about isn’t how close we adhere to theory and standards: instead, we just care about emotion.

In the same week, negative publicity and personal issues have slammed the blogs of prominent A- and B-listers such as Kathy Sierra, Chris Locke, Molly Holzschlag and Andy Clarke. What many of those in the blogosphere don’t seem to realise is that we are psychologically building ourselves into the same realm as that of real celebrities, and there are many more people following your every move than you would think.

Things haven’t changed in the mainstream; well, at least since 1967. Teenagers, trendwhores, and other conspicuous consumers elevate the overall user experience of an item to iconic status, entirely against the expectations of its original designers, and in doing so can create what are essentially viral products. There is a way to topple the tyrant, however, and it’s using the method you’d least expect.