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Comment by everdrive | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure I’d call this “kawaii,” as that has a particular (and often cringey) connotation.

But, there is something deeply unappealing about this style. I’m not sure I can even describe it properly. It just reminds me of the most boring parts of my childhood: the aesthetic of dentist office waiting rooms, and middle school pamphlets aimed at teaching kids about sociology.

My past association with this sort of aesthetic is so innoffensively boring, I almost can’t even stand to look at it. And, as and adult, it no longer strikes me as just boring, but also insidious in the way that all marketing is insidious: it promises one thing, and behind the marketing is something else. A pleasant and inoffensive advertisement is in actuality just a regular old business who wants your money. There’s (usually) nothing evil the business, but of course the feeling portrayed by the marketing is a lie.

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>I’m not sure I’d call this “kawaii,” as that has a particular (and often cringey) connotation.

Kawaii is great within the culture it created it (and not cringey, in fact, cringey is a cringey neologism applied to everything these days).

But this is definitely not Kawaii - doesn't have any major kawaii characteristics as known. Cute in some way != kawaii (which might mean "cute" etymologically, but refers to a specific aesthetic).

Your description "middle school pamphlets aimed at teaching kids about sociology" is spot on (at least concerning the human-like figures and color tones).

I think you’re being too narrow in application. People exclaim kawaii liberally —about as liberally as “oishi” for food delicious or just so-so.

It's the eternal debate: does the term mean what it originally meant, or does it mean what people commonly use it to mean? People will drift between meanings.

And it also means something different to westeners on the internet than it would to Japanese people. As hilarious as that is, it's nonetheless reality

>People exclaim kawaii liberally —about as liberally as “oishi” for food delicious or just so-so.

There are four sets of people.

People who know 100% what kawaii is (e.g. because they're Japanese).

People who know 90% what kawaii is (because they're cultural freaks, or watch anime, or whatever)

People who have heard the term kawaii and associate with being "cute" in general.

People who don't even know what kawaii means, and don't use it.

Categories 1,2, and 3 are by far the larger in my experience (well, 1 is small except in Japan, 2 is small, 3 is small, 4 is huge). People in 1,3,4 added, category 3 is nearly insignificant, and doesn't define the term...

I think you've nailed it. It's the business version of "let's make learning fun!" Even the article mentions this:

> Bank interfaces use pastels, rounded corners and soft drop shadows to make mundane or unpleasant tasks more "fun.”

I think I lean more toward your position than the article's. I would probably refer to this trend as the infantilization of product design.

Edit: I was wondering why I had that particular word in my head. A comment further down:

> Recently discussed, an article with an almost synonymous title: “On Infantilization in Digital Environments (2015)”

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22490089

Yes, infantilization is the right term. And it's main function is to suppress critical thinking of the product.

neoteny or an imitation of neoteny.

Completely agree. When I see a web page with this style, I just know that I'll have to dig really deep to find any concrete information about what the tech is actually about. There might be a link with the caption "how X works", but it will almost certainly take me to a simplified list of superficial features along the lines of "achieves 20% more goodness" instead of telling me anything about how the product actually functions.

The most "dissonant" example of this design- (or rather, propaganda-) style I've seen yet was in Shanghai, where "law enforcement rules" signs in public places were often done in this "cute style". It really drove the point home of living in a modern Orwellian surveillance state which rules over its people with an iron fist (or rather with a cutesy oversized night stick).

This type of design also deeply repulses me.

At a prior start up where I worked I fought against it with all my might. I call it "infantile simulacra" design -- rather than simply making a design to convey information in a clear and simple fashion and thereby treating their user with respect, it instead invites the reader and/or viewer to experience it as if they are a cartoonified, infantalized version of themselves... and thereby implying that company or service views their users as naive children too.

> I’m not sure I can even describe it properly. It just reminds me of the most boring parts of my childhood: the aesthetic of dentist office waiting rooms, and middle school pamphlets aimed at teaching kids about sociology.

But you just provided an excellent description of that style!

It reminds me of this kind of design (pre-web): https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=80s%2F90s+geometric+designs...

And may be about as lasting as it...

So even though I don't mind it at all—as stated, it's inoffensive on the surface—I think you hit the nail on the head.

This is worse than "kawaii". JP mascots actually pleasant to look at [1].

[1] https://mondomascots.com/index.php/category/japan/

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