Comment by brownbat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brownbat | Hacker News Reader

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Because it's just emotive, "boo mainstream!" which doesn't generally admit a detailed rebuttal. But here goes -- Wagner's main argument takes an action, ties symbolism to it, then denounces that action because of the author's wholly invented symbolism.

But anything can symbolize anything with the right narrative attached. It's just word games to criticize people when you don't like their personal tastes.[0]

Even if weren't for the flawed reasoning, the sentiment is pretty important here. If someone started going around dismissing other commenters as "normies" in these threads, we wouldn't demand careful rebuttals and carefully pull out their good points. We'd just flag them and move on. But that's the whole climax and title of this article! Why is it suddenly cool here? Because she's leveling insults at people we might not like?

Is "don't insult people, unless you happen to not like them," really the threshold?

[0] She does the same thing on McMansion Hell, which while sometimes amusing, has basically morphed into this whole attempt to cast people as deeply immoral because they wanted a skylight where she wouldn't have put it. And people love her for it, and that's great, but people love cynically piling on and judging other groups of people for the most trivial reasons. Doesn't make it nice.

I tend to agree more with McMansion hell because McMansions lend themselves to stylistic choices that serve no purpose, or actually serve an anti-purpose and make life harder.

My favorite example being random columns. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWGPsS0dh5k)

Windows of random styles is another irritation of mine, doing so serves no purpose, and it makes the house look worse.

Ditto with random mixings of different types of siding material. Done right, changes in texture can look good, but many McMansions don't do it right, they just put a stone facade somewhere because the house needs stone on the outside somewhere as a checklist item.

And checklist describes McMansions perfectly. They are designed to have features, not to be livable spaces. I've seen 1600sqft houses with 4 bedrooms that are spacious and bright, and I've seen 2200+ sqft McMansions that are tight and narrow, with lots of wastes space on hallways.

Then again I have a near moral opposition to houses that have both formal and informal dining rooms. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen formal dining rooms actually used for something.

I feel much the same way about family rooms and living rooms. The coastal cities have a bloody shortage of affordable housing and developers are burning square footage on 2 dining rooms and 2 living rooms per house.

Honestly I think most people look for large square footage houses because they have never seen a house under 2000sqft that is properly laid out.

Now if she wants to write an article about irritated she is with houses advertised as minimalist that have a formal dining room, a breakfast nook, an informal dining area, a family room, and a living room, and a 3 car garage, well then, I'll be out in the comments showing my full support. :)

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