Society massively undervalues ugliness. (📍London)
Summary
A rider in London argues that society's obsession with beauty has created a bland monoculture where nothing truly stands out. Ugliness matters. It's where experimentation happens, where authentic beauty gets discovered. Kareem agrees, pointing to old buildings that look disgusting but somehow end up beautiful because of it. The conversation shifts to faces and film, lamenting how everyone on screen now looks the same thanks to cosmetic trends. "I miss people like Steve Buscemi," the rider says. They both agree it's time to bring back ugly faces in TV and film. The world's already plenty ugly in other ways, but if the visual ugliness matched the horror, maybe people would actually do something about it instead of staying complacent in their pretty, boring bubble.
Full Transcript
So what's your take? Society massively undervalues ugliness.
100% agree. Yes.
It abs and it flows. It does. But I think with our pursuit towards beauty, we've forgotten that ugliness has a place and therefore the beauty doesn't hit us hard.
What is the place of ugliness? I think it's experimentation. And I think it's just making that mistake aesthetically.
Are you talking about human ugliness or like ugliness like this train? This train is kind of ugly. Well, exactly. I think in design it's important and in architecture.
Like a little bit of ugly goes a long way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even tech design I think I think across the board we need to embrace ugliness so that we're not so scared of it. And out of not being scared we'll find more beauty and like authentic beauty, real beauty that slightly jars of the brain.
Like if you look at some of the old buildings from the past, they look disgusting. But because they're disgusting, they're beautiful.
Exactly. And now because everything's designed to be beautiful, it's boring and ugly as hell. And that's what's happening to people.
Yeah. Yeah. People are changing their faces for these current trends. And then it's like, okay, well, we've got this one-size-fits all. No one's particularly beautiful, but no one's ugly and we're all just kind of complacent. And then it's a monoculture.
Yeah. Exactly. It's time to embrace the ugly, right? It's time to embrace the ugly. But, you know, the world is not great.
The world is plenty ugly enough, but I think if visually that that was aligned, we do something about it more. I think everything's so pretty and easy that despite the horrors that are going on absolutely everywhere, it doesn't really touch us. I think we got to bring back ugly faces.
Yes. Especially in TV and film. For sure.
Why is everyone beautiful? I don't know. I don't like watching that. I miss people like Steve Buscemi.
Yes. Shout out Steve Buscemi.