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Last night, before playing a few rounds of Pump It Up, I had dinner with some friends at the dining area inside the local arcade. I arrived several minutes before they did, and I elected to sit near the entrance to wait for them instead of getting a table right away.
My gaze began to wander around the building. I noticed several varnished wooden beams criss-crossing half the dining area. The hanging lights above the tables had intricate mesh-style shades. Neon bulbs lining the bar were green, while in the rest of the arcade the neons were blue. A colorful bubble pattern adorned one wall. At the elevated tables, the stools were arranged at an angle, so customers didn't have to pull them out to be able to sit down. Even the metal rafters bracing the roof were careful painted to match the dark gray tone of the walls, even without lights shining directly on them.
Such attention to detail, artificial as it makes the space feel, is present in many retail businesses. Color palettes are deliberately chosen to balance each other. Shapes and pictures on the walls guide the eye and evoke certain emotions. Menus are structured to make the more expensive options more prominent. Tables are carefully matched with chairs. Fonts are a concern all their own: sizing, spacing, kerning, serif, weight, positioning, color, the list goes on.
These flourishes are not usually intended to be noticeable on their own. Their goal is to mix together and create a certain atmosphere in a space. They may drive you to feel excited and energetic; they may want to calm you down and make you comfortable; they may even want to disturb you and motivate you to action. But the common theme among all of them is an intent to get you, the visitor, to feel and behave a certain way--and, they hope, open your wallet.
Though I understand the goal is simply to get me to spend money, I do enjoy seeing the effort put into curating a space. I like seeing decorations and trying to deduce the reason for choosing them. I appreciate efforts to keep rooms clean and organized, present a unified aesthetic, and maintain an air of service for me.
Most people go beyond not noticing certain nuances of a business's presentation. They are completely unaware of their surroundings, because their faces are buried in their smartphones or glued to their portable game consoles. It's not uncommon for me to see people walk into a store, buy a product, and leave, without once looking up from their Instagram feeds or Discord chats. They never see the LED wall art next to the register; they don't glance at the well-manicured plants arranged along the wall dividers; they care nothing for colorful decorations in the store window; they are completely apathetic to the floor lamp, molded from a complex mathematical curve, bathing the shop floor in soft, soothing light.
I find myself deeply saddened by this state of affairs--but I feel this despondency on many different levels. The thought that we've become so shallow that all businesses need to embrace such a clinical, curated look saddens me. The thought that so much creative effort goes into what is ultimately a marketing pitch saddens me. The thought that so few people care for the fruits of those efforts saddens me. The though that gainful artistic expression has sunk to such vapidity that the public recognizes its shallowness saddens me. The thought that so many people are completely addicted to constant streams of content from their mobile devices saddens me. The fact that people seem to care so little about the world around them saddens me.
I might be the crazy one here. I find the real world, both as a natural entity and as a space we create for ourselves, such a fascinating thing to explore. We humans are blessed the ability to take something that was already beautiful and turn it into a completely different kind of beauty. But that creative power has been subjugated to the whims of commerce, and even the pleasing art that results from such endeavors is ignored by society.
Why are we so complacent about the world around us?
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[Last updated: 2022-04-21]