
The American Room - ossama
https://medium.com/message/the-american-room-3fce9b2b98c5
======
bkjelden
I see a lot of sentiment against the post-WW2, american, timber-based style of
construction on HN and I've never really understood it.

I view modern american residential construction as a model of efficiency. Why
build a house out of brick or stone when timber is completely sufficient, and
the latter is much, much cheaper to come by? It's not like timber just
magically stops working one day - there are plenty of houses in older parts of
the US that are 100+ years old. Any argument along the lines of "they don't
build them like they used to" is likely ignoring survivorship bias among older
homes.

And for the record, ceilings over 8FT are not a luxury item in the US. Any
major home improvement store sells framing lumber and drywall in a variety of
sizes over 8FT long:

[http://www.menards.com/main/c-13132.htm?criteria3_facet=2%22...](http://www.menards.com/main/c-13132.htm?criteria3_facet=2%22+x+6%22)

[http://www.menards.com/main/c-5656.htm?criteria5_facet=9%27&...](http://www.menards.com/main/c-5656.htm?criteria5_facet=9%27&criteria5_facet=10%27)

~~~
sp332
That attitude goes back at least to Thomas Jefferson. Here's a letter he wrote
in 1791:

 _A country whose buildings are of wood, can never increase in its
improvements to any considerable degree. There duration is highly estimated at
50 years. Every half century then our country becomes a tablua rasa, whereon
we have to set out anew, as in the first moment of seating it. Whereas when
buildings are of durable materials, every new edifice is an actual and
permanent acquisition to the state, adding to is value as well as to its
ornament._

Any argument that wooden houses last 100+ years is ignoring survivorship bias
:) But even granting that, 100 years is not a very long time - just over one
lifetime. If your parents lived in a wooden house, your children will need to
build a new one.

~~~
philsnow
> There duration is highly estimated at 50 years. Every half century then our
> country becomes a tablua rasa, whereon we have to set out anew, as in the
> first moment of seating it.

Maybe this was rhetoric (? who was that letter addressed to, and what was his
purpose in writing it?), but I can't fathom the thinking that the entire
country's buildings would simultaneously fail, in lockstep, every 50 years.

~~~
sp332
It doesn't have to be simultaneous. If buildings last about 50 years, then in
50 years you're going to have completely different set of buildings. You'll
have no influences to draw on from 50+ years ago.

It's from "Notes on the State of Virginia"
[http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JEFFERSON/ch15.html](http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JEFFERSON/ch15.html)
which was actually a book, a collection of essays published by Jefferson.

~~~
philsnow
if it's not simultaneous, how does the country ever become a tablua [sic] rasa
(a blank slate)?

------
chiph
As a landlord, I put neutral-beige paint on the walls because it's the least-
offensive option. If I had put a strong color on them, even as an accent
color, there will be a percentage of potential tenants that would dislike it
and rent from someone else. "Oh, that was the place with the hideous apple-
green wall by the stairs. I couldn't live with it there."

~~~
apaprocki
I've rented a bunch of places in my life and rental rooms almost always looked
pretty bare. Landlords do not want tenants painting their own colors for those
same reasons. Tenants that frequently move each year do not accumulate
furniture/furnishings because they are too annoying to move year after year
and get damaged. You can only speculate how big a factor rental vs ownership
plays in determining if rooms look like this.

~~~
wil421
>Tenants that frequently move each year do not accumulate
furniture/furnishings

This is something I noticed a while ago when I was living in a nice apartment
complex. It seemed like many residents would just throw away old lamps or
small furniture rather than take them to their new place or put them in
storage. A good portion of those videos looked like people bored in their
apartments or parents basement which would fit your observation.

~~~
dm2
This happens at most colleges every year. It's a goldmine for dumpster divers
or even just locals who don't mind hauling it back to their house and possibly
selling it.

I've thrown away some perfectly good furniture just because it wasn't worth
hauling it across the state or I didn't end up having room in the moving truck
I had rented.

Yeah, I could have probably made some money if I sold it on craigslist.

------
justinpaulson
I read this whole thing, I even continued when he showed a clear
misunderstanding of how pinterest works (the columns aren't going to show the
same "Gallery Wall" in the same column every time someone clicks your link!) I
continued through his careful selection of things that seemed to follow his
logic and ignorance of things that argued against it. I hoped and hoped a
point would be made at some time, but I was disappointed.

Yes, lots of American homes have similar decor, but those pictures on
pinterest that you seem to think are fantasy are not fantasies, they are
actual pictures of actual homes. We don't all live in wall-to-wall off-white
boxes.

What is the point of this overgeneralization? Is it a surprise that lots of
people have similar houses? Is it a surprise that lots of developers always
wear t-shirts and jeans? Why is this on the front page of HN??

~~~
williamcotton
I like the piece. It exposes a melancholic beauty to the ticky-tacky hedge
rows and webcam uniformity of the Western existence. Peering past the facades
and in to the lives of American suburbanites we see a million people separated
by their screens yet united in their droll simplicity.

There's more to life than just the exuberance, progress, and extraordinary
creations that we obsess over here in the Bay Area. For every amazing success
story there's a thousand people shuffling their feet and walking in circles
just to be our customers. On the other side of almost every IP packet is a
person sitting alone in a room. It's important for us to realize the
implications of our creations. It is important for us to realize what's real
and what's just an idealized vision of the future. It'll keep us thinking
about a path forward that includes everyone. It'll keep us from thinking that
we're special and different and more entitled to life's pleasures. When we
turn our heads most of us see the same pale white walls.

Well Frisco's a mighty rich town, now that ain't no lie

Why they got some buildings that reach a mile into the sky

Yet no one can even afford the time just to tell me why

Here's a world filled with people and so many people alone

\- Frisco Depot by Mickey Newbury

~~~
justinpaulson
Well I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma so I'm very aware of what not being in the Bay
Area is like. Not everyone on HN lives in the bay area startup bubble ;P

I also think you added a lot more in your commentary than was laid out in the
article.

~~~
williamcotton
Art is as much what you bring to it as what you get from it.

------
logfromblammo
Walls that are white or beige indicate to me that there is no personal
ownership of the room. When I last owned a room, I painted it orange, because
I was the only one that had any say in the matter, and I wanted orange.

Now, all my rooms are white.

And almost all of my furniture is crappy, flat-pack, self-assembly particle-
board dreck. That's because my preference for durable, quality furniture is
overridden by my ever-declining wage relative to my expenses, and my need to
move around frequently in search of jobs that allow me to tread water a bit
longer at my current standard of living.

I want a nice chair, but I also want something to sit on until I can afford
one. It always seems that the price of a chair I could keep until the day I
die increases faster than my ability to pay for one. And so I live in a
cheaply developed suburban subdivision, in a cheaply built home, on cheaply
constructed furniture, using a discounted laptop. And all the while, things
crumble around me, and I constantly find myself paying to replace the cheap
things that I only have in the first place because I am trying to save up
enough to buy the nice, durable things that I really want. And those recede
into the distance faster than I can chase them.

My American room is devoid of decoration, because I no longer have any sense
of ownership. It makes no sense to personalize a place that is not mine. It
makes no sense to invest emotion and effort into something that you feel in
your heart to just be temporary.

And in the end, I live a temporary life, plodding through endless mundane
todays in search of an extraordinary tomorrow. Everything that I own is junk
that I never wanted to keep. Everything that I really want dangles just barely
out of my reach.

And all the time, I am angry and frustrated, because all I ever wanted is
quality. And I can't afford it. The walls behind my webcam aren't blank,
white, and empty. They're covered in the corpses of my dead dreams and aborted
aspirations. Those gothy types think black is the color of despair. But it's
really eggshell semi-glossy.

I have plenty of decorations to hang up. But they are still packed up and
ready to move--again--because there is no longer any wall that I can say is
_my wall_. All those white walls out there belong to someone else. All those
videos just show that someone else controls the backdrop of your life.

And I just want to get out my brush and paint. It. All. Red.

~~~
9999
Get a divorce. Quit your government contract job. Move.

~~~
logfromblammo
I thought ramping the angst up to full throttle at the end there would have
made it obvious, but apparently Poe's Law strikes again.

~~~
tripzilch
Could use a few more IKEA and/or Fight Club references ;)

------
lbearl
The fact that the author is trying to make the argument that (I'm exaggerating
here) "All Americans must be poor, because the walls in YouTube videos are
white" doesn't make any sense. The author even alludes to this briefly in
talking about "YouTube Teens." Yes, author, younger people tend to a) rent
more and b) not have as many things to hang.

As someone under 30 who moves across states every few years, I have no desire
to collect a bunch of stuff to hang on my walls.

------
viciousambition
This struck me as analysis for the sake of analysis. I'm willing to wager many
people pick the most bare wall in their house on purpose because it looks best
to film against.

~~~
sp332
People pick bare walls because they're imitating each other, and the bare-wall
look is easy to recreate. For example, Hannah Hart can make videos like this
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzYk2iOZqss#t=242](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzYk2iOZqss#t=242)
but when she built a studio, it looked like this
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjK2xgolAws](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjK2xgolAws)
The first one is more engaging, but people have this idea of what a youtube
video looks like, and they just keep doing that because it's what they're used
to.

------
tannerc
I'm immediately reminded of the background Ze Frank has used in his web
series, "A Show"[1]. In the videos, Ze regularly places a single white
bookshelf with a mishmash of objects on it, mostly books. He either uses the
bookshelf often enough to arrange the objects in unique ways regularly, or re-
arranges it for every individual episode of A Show he records.

When I see videos like those Ze creates, I know they're staged but can't help
but feel like my life, too, should be filled with knickknacks, books, clutters
of inspiration.

There's some sense of: "If my environment looks like _that_ environment, I'll
be able to act like that person does." I imagine much of pop culture
influences how we imagine our rooms and homes should look.

1 [http://ashow.zefrank.com/](http://ashow.zefrank.com/)

~~~
JonnieCache
That's how pretty much all advertising works.

------
drcube
My house is 100 years old. The walls are bright green and ten feet high, and
full of homemade art. I will never buy or live in a boring beige box again.

I'll never understand why people want to live in such mind numbingly plain
spaces. We decorate our cars, we decorate our laptops, we have cute cases for
our phones, but the walls of the house we live in _must_ be grey, beige or
off-white? I don't mind the architectural sameness. I understand its
efficiency. But the lack of color, or any kind of self-expression, that's what
I don't get.

~~~
gipp
Most people don't _want_ to. Rentals and often even homes for sale take on
these colors because they're the most inoffensive. Everybody wants _some_ kind
of color and character to their home, but nobody will agree on exactly _which_
kind of color or character. As a result, those responsible for selling/renting
these places have them take on a "neutral middle": something absolutely nobody
loves, but you can't really hate either. Inoffensive.

And since so many people either a) Rent and aren't allowed to paint or make
significant alterations (e.g. nails in the wall), or b) Move too often to feel
it's worth the effort, lots of people don't bother to change it from the
inoffensive, dull, soul-crushing middle ground.

------
slipperyp
Paul Ford is a magician and offers terrific perspective on subtle aspects of
what is typically our American culture. If you're looking for him to beat you
over the head with THE POINT about what he insists you're suppose to think,
you're reading the wrong author.

------
legulere
What this article doesn't mention are the strange carpeted floor everywhere.

------
jstalin
A blog post about nothing.

------
jscheel
This whole article feels like the author is trying to pull something from
nothing. House-poor seems like a stretch. I would suggest a more plausible
theory: people, in general, just aren't that creative, especially when it
comes to interior decorating.

~~~
bicx
Yep. I'm sitting in a beige box right now. I own it. I'm not house-poor. I
just haven't put the time into re-painting or decorating much, and I just
don't have the desire to put my money into things that just sit there.

------
bicknergseng
Tangental: did anyone else see that video of the woman talking about a nuclear
Jesuit semen bomb (not making this up)? Is she frighteningly schizophrenic or
just pulling yarn?

------
ape4
I have noticed the American Room in YouTube videos too. Another things is lake
of shelfs - things seem to be stored sitting on the floor. No time to move it?

------
personZ
At risk of sounding cynical, I would find an entry titled "The Medium Blog
Entry" even more compelling.

It is a platform made for entries to be authored quickly and cheaply. The
droll full-page lead image sets it apart, the color palette muted and neutral,
simultaneously making it exactly like every other Medium blog entry you've
seen lately. Many intermix videos and viral media to tether off of other's
fame.

The air of grandeur of the platform allowing people to post with pomposity
while simultaneously sharecropping. To post judgmental observations by
carefully cherry picking the evidence.

Medium. You and your predictable blogs.

As an aside, it's curious that this entry talks about "suburbs" a number of
times. Most condo and apartment rooms have the same 8' ceilings, the same
muted palette, and virtually identical construction. But...you know...suburbs
and temporary workers, or something.

~~~
WD-42
You should definitely write a blog post about your observation with a full-
page lead image consisting of a bunch of full-page lead images.

~~~
altcognito
And link to it from a social network with a narrow band of interests so they
can comment snarkily.

------
antsar
At the risk of sounding like a jerk, why is this on Hacker News?

~~~
nicky0
Same answer as always: it's interesting to a number of HN readers and got
voted up.

