Maryellis Bunn and the Museum of Ice Cream | Hacker News Reader

Maryellis Bunn and the Museum of Ice Cream

nymag.com

18 pointswallflower17 comments

> “The old traditional experiences — take museums, for example — are the institutions that become more and more archaic,” she told me. “They just haven’t been able to reformulate for the shifts in what people are interested in.”

Like diving in plastic sprinkles? This quote will not age well, much like her vision of our future: cultural and community institutions replaced by cathedrals of narcissism.

> The Museum of Ice Cream is not innately entertaining, nor is it especially educational... The experience was, above all, a novelty, and a place to be both online and off.

It's the daytime equivalent of a see-and-be-seen nightclub, only without the social interaction or alcohol.

While shallow, I think it's a brilliant business idea.

Say what you will about Instagram, but I think it has vastly increased the business value of interestingness. There's a reason Applebees and many generic chain restaurants are struggling—they are boring. If you have a restaurant with cool artwork or an interesting vibe, it's more likely to succeed.

It's cyclical. People see interesting place on Instagram and want to go to this interesting place. People take selfies there and more people want to go.

Whether it's a colorful museum or a fancy coffee shop, interestingness has business value.

The key is to quickly drive attendance by grabbing the transient eye of social media darlings long enough to make a quick buck before they get bored, the mainstream media catches on, and the inevitable backlash begins.

A few weeks ago a similar place opened here in Berlin: A former hipster shoe store was converted to an "Oreo popup" for a weekend.

https://mitvergnuegen.com/2017/oreo-eroeffnet-seien-ersten-p...

It was mostly empty besides some installations, art, drawings on the walls and a oreo packaging filled tunnel that lead to ball pool with white balls. Of course you could also get free Oreo cookies and take lots of photos with the different "installations" placed around the room like a giant Oreo cookie or glas vases filled with Oreos.

It was packed all day. As some people started absuing the free Oreos (go in, get cookies, come out, dump in bag, go in ...) they had to add security at the door.

This "museum" (if the word "museum" meant "advertising ploy") is to culture what the Kardashians are to culture. Shallow and disposable.

As someone who works for an "accredited" museum, it does hurt to see our valued word rendered meaningless.

But this article also has a valuable lesson for us. She is giving people what they want. People really want to have meaningful interactions with the spaces they pay to visit. Institutional museums really have need to up their interactivity game to the point so that they provide much more than a "photo opportunity". That is the only answer to this type of chesse.

But as it stands, many younger people feel they get more value from taking a picture next to a giant sandwich, than they do from something like the Met. The Facebook likes they get from that picture reinforce this belief even more.

What if the next time you got an "audio tour" it wasn't just an audio recording, but a game with a giant leader board in the front lobby? Museums need to give customers something they can share to feel special too!

I think the title of "The Millennial Walt Disney" might be overselling it a bit.

I remember seeing them on Yelp a couple of months ago and they had terrible ratings (1 star). It seems to have jumped up to 3 stars now, but a surprisingly large number of them were written in the last couple of weeks. Hmm...

why is this on HN front page? :(

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

Its a hack.

Because she's a brilliant entrepreneur who has invented something new and interesting.

She's a founder.

I know it's easy to hate on hipsters, but JFC I think this article shaved five years off my life through the sudden burst of unbridled rage it induced in me.

I'm not sure even hipsters want to claim audience ownership or affiliation for this one. The typical latter day hipster proclaims association with the pseudo-obscure, not abundant confection gore.

Say what you will about this, but you gotta admit that it's perfectly catered to the Instagram selfie crowd, and she's definitely going to make a pretty decent amount of money off this idea before it's all said and done. It hits all the points: unicorns, bright colours, and twee feminism. Not my thing, but kudos to her for making it work.

I don't know that hipsters is the correct classification of the target crowd, it seems to be right for a population of vapid folk with abundant discretionary cash that see hedonism as an achievement. (--hey you kids, get off my lawn).

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