Lobotomy-Core

Aesthetics are the driver wheel at the center of everything these days.

I feel like no one would be on this website, or websites in a similar vein, if it weren't for the want for better aesthetics.

Everyone hates minimalism now. I feel like they always hated it - I've been hearing people shit talk it for years - I shit talked it years ago and still do - yet it still existed.

All the greys and beige and beige adjacent colors - it's flat, untextured, drywall where there used to be wood paneling that you could hallucinate faces in during the night - it's Coca-Cola throwing the last bastion of Xtreme advertising in the garbage and changing the formula back to something more approximate of the original flavor (I will never stop being pissed about Pibb Xtra being axed) - it's Corporate Memphis and all that jazz.

Lobotomy-Core - that's what I call it.

Sanitization that goes so far it makes you feel like you're in a padded cell.

I have wondered, at length, how and why everything got so bland - and I wonder now if my reference to it as being a "Lobotomized-Aesthetically Movement" is more apt than originally intended.

Think about artists - you likely know a few. Those poor, tortured - generally nutjob - souls. A lot of them that I've known are always living chemically enhanced lifestyles.

I'm not here to talk about recreational drugs - though those are bad and do ruin the brain in their own right - I'm here to talk about some of the most prominent drugs that are prescribed daily to a large chunk of the populace.

SSRI's.

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors.

Anti-Depressants - Anti-Anxiety meds, etc. They're prescribed for a great deal of ailments - and at least 15% of Adult Americans are on them. This doesn't take into consideration kids who are on these drugs - that's another, more frightening, can of worms.

I digress.

I posit that the side effects of widespread SSRI usage in creative fields - more specifically in Art departments at large corporations who effectively decide the "Aesthetics of The Current Paradigm" - is at least partially to blame for the way things are now.

I've used SSRI's before - I was prescribed them after a rather traumatic event as an adult where I found myself having panic attacks daily. PTSD. They helped - but I felt muted. Numb to the world. I talked slower, thought slower - gained weight because I was just tired all the time and didn't move much.

That was on a low dosage - which I specifically requested.

At the same time, I had been prescribed a Benzodiazepine - not Xanax, but something like it.

I never took it, but the realization I've come to is that these two drugs - which can provably permanently alter the brain's chemistry - can and will be prescribed together in significantly high dosages to just about anyone who walks in and requests them.

And now, back to the meat of the whole problem.

Think about the companies that drank the minimalist Kool-Aid without thinking twice.

We'll use Microsoft as an example.

When I think of "The Good Old Days", it's the Windows XP taskbar, those pre-rendered UI elements that had reflections and shadows and whatnot - it's Windows Vista and the "Frutiger Aero" stuff that all the kids love these days - but then, everything flattens out, gets simpler - more "lobotomized" - and now we're here.

Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond, Washington - the West Coast. The West Coast is known by the rest of the country as the land of fruits and nuts - where every fruit's a little nutty and every nut's a little fruity.

Drug usage, both recreational and prescription, run rampant.

Why - I know a girl there who's on five different medications, all high dosages - and she drinks like a fish. That's just the way they do things out West.

It was the "Silicon Valley Mentality" that gave rise to concepts such as "Micro-Dosing" on the job - doing small amounts of hallucinogens to "free the mind" during work hours, everyone's got pinhole eyes, and everyone talks in the same top down - but surprisingly monotone - voice.

And birds of a feather always flock together.

What I'm saying in all of this - is that I believe it's a very rational assumption that in a field known for it's predisposition towards mental illnesses and disorders - in a part of America known for it's rampant chemical dependencies - in a rampantly incestuous sector of the economy (Tech), at the tail end of an era where it's never been easier to get hooked on a high dose of mind numbing, brain chemistry altering, "feel good" pills - that the reason everything has been so bland for so long is because there is a stranglehold on aesthetics by an effectively lobotomized talent pool - who do not wish to make things look "cool" or "interesting" because they have not felt the sort of extreme, visceral, guttural, emotions necessary to conjure up the sorts of designs and ideas we saw when we were all children.

If I were to run the numbers again based off of more than just SSRI usage - and took into account legal and illegal usage of things like psychadelics, benzos, weed, alcohol, etc. - I believe the picture would become much more apparent.

Remember kids, winners don't do drugs.