Kate Wagner does this awesome thing where she starts with the "history" of something that usually goes all the way back to 1965 so that she can assure the reader she knows her shit and then proceeds to launch into a whole bunch of unfounded opinion as if she actually had something to say. She's the kind of person who will pretend paper design began in the '60s while also using the word "panopticon." I think she does it because then she can pretend that maybe at some point in the past architects weren't mostly fuckhead morons with no fundamental grasp of human living but that's a whole lot easier if you don't go back any further than the careers of your undergraduate instructors. Popular Mechanics has been "some dumb designer's terrible idea" for 75 years or so. Scientific American used to tell you what dumbass bullshit they'd featured 150 fuckin' years ago. I cannot remember a crisis in my lifetime that didn't have some jackass designer's jackass adaptation to a jackass situation; Sandy Hook brought us bulletproof trapper keepers, fuckin' 9/11 brought us fuckin' parachute office chairs, the oil embargo brought a couple dozen "run your car on water" kits and the unifying feature of my grandpa's 30-year subscription to Cold War-era Popular Science was a million dumbshit articles about how to use this that or the other retarded gadget to survive a Soviet missile strike. Dumb thing is we all sit around going "lol squatty potty unicorn poop" while we order fuckin' Snuggies off of a Facebook ad because fundamentally, it's culture, culture exists through the adoption of ideas, and all cultural critics can do is try to guide the stampede. I think it bugs the shit out of Kate Wagner that she's just another snarky social critic because goddamn it she paid for a master's degree but bored intellectuals sitting around at home doodling solutions to save the world isn't something you can lay at the feet of Dezeen. More than that, any choad who photoshops a spread of a chick wearing a lettuce leaf is arguably doing more for people at home than Kate Wagner. Dezeen responded appropriately by quoting the shit out of her article and stealing all her clicks. I find that delicious.
I think I'd hate McMansionHell a lot less if she would just go "these things suck for the following reasons" instead of "the past was objectively superior to the present as any moron can tell now let me tell you, moron, the way the universe is."