Russell Jenkins, who has an accurate sense of where my funny bone is located, sent me a link to a website about Brutalist web design. “The disease spreads beyond architecture,” he noted. Yes, but that strikes me as old news. I recall writing about this a while back. I will link to my post if I can find it. Meanwhile, here is a post on the matter (don’t call it an “investigation”) by Maria Gilo called “Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need,” and a link to “Brutalist Websites,” which illustrates what she’s talking about.

Just found my old post. I have nothing to add to “The ‘Brutalist’ website fad,” from June 5, 2016. In it, Andrés Duany writes, “We have a sick society. Do we express it or reform it?” Obviously modernists in architecture and other fields seek to express it. So much easier! I will link to that, and as an inducement for readers to follow the link, I quote Sara Hines on the phenomenon:

Did you miss the memo on “ugly is the new pretty”? Once you grasp this, and related topics like “illogical is the new rationality,” you are good to go with the new millennium. I could point you to other concepts in women’s clothing like “designer bags are ugly but better because they cost more or have someone’s name on it,” or “the new design is to make things smaller and with materials that are so weak that you can find them shredded on hangers – and for this you will pay a lot more.”

We are getting to Idiocracy far sooner than even I had hoped!