> Not everyone has this same experience of the world. People are harsh, and how much grace they give you has more to do with who you are than what you say.
contradicts with brutalism IMO. like someone already said, brutalism is when form follows function and without much frivolity, and one of the functions of a website is being usable by loading smooth and fast (the wingdings are not it).
this is not necessarily a dunk on you, this is more of a dunk on David Bryant Copeland; I'm really sick of developers and programmers who co-opt design movements or other design-adjacent terms, make up a definition or principles that seem like they could fit but then fail when inspected closely. Someone here already mentioned Gumroad as an example of (neo) brutalist web design; Figma is another great example. The sites here https://brutalistwebsites.com/ are great typography-driven examples. This could even count as brutalist https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ especially because their goal, as a site running on solar power, is to be as well performing (and low bloat) as possible while still satisfying expectations of functionality.
I think my advice to you would be, look outside of the developer/programmer sphere when building out design. Brutalism is not only "the least lines of code", it's also a lot about intention when it comes to function, and then, form.
I'm gen Z too (and a designer) and I agree with everything you've said in this thread. This invokes a retro indieweb DIY type of vibe, not the sharp and clear intention that is behind brutalism.
I would argue it does much more so functionally because my constraint was building something cross platform with no libraries, one html file, that can also be installed as an app on all devices
So perhaps less in the most absolute sense regarding the UI, but in the overall approach it does
I've been thinking about this a lot the last two years as someone who also grew up with social community online. It was life-changing for me too, but sometimes I catch myself wishing I could have had these experiences offline instead.
That was actually an amazing read, thank you so much. It reflects my thoughts on the matter pretty well — to use the analogy of the article, there are certainly some versions of social media that are poison, and online interaction may be less "socially nutritious" than in person interaction ceterus paribus, but things are rarely eever ceterus paribus! You have to take into account the relative barrier to entry of online interaction versus in person interaction, because the alternatives may well be online or nothing because the barriers of anything else are far too high for an individual, and you have to take into account the possibility that the available in person interaction for someome may in fact be non nutritious or poison itself. Likewise, depending on the way you use the internet to socialize, it may be more or less socially nutritious: interacting on something like Instagram is basically poison, Twitter Facebook and Tumblr offer almost no nutrition at all, and forums and medium to large IRC chats (or Discord servers) maybe significantly more over time or none at all depending on how they work, while conversely a small IRC chat or Discord or group chat of close friends that you met online in other places and consciously gathered over time into an intentional community of people who all intimately know each other and share every day's victories and defeats, hopes and fears, traumas and healing, art and jokes, means a whole lot more, even if being with them in person would be better. That last option, where you use niche interest online communities to find people, but then graduate them to something "online" but far more intimate, with maybe even the goal of living near each other one day, is rarely pointed out, but it's something I started to intentionally do four years ago and I've found it's by far the healthiest option.
Really beautiful comment. I agree wholeheartedly with all you said about the last and healthiest option, I've been intentionally doing it too and it's been rewarding, even healing :)
Well, was it? If you can't show that, this isn't an interesting, clever comment, you're just imagining to yourself an alternate universe where you're right. And I'd be surprised if it was, since LLMs are basically incapable of generating something that isn't vague, generic, and generally in line with common/average sentiments, by virtue of their reward function. AI writing might be indistinguishable from shitty human writing, but not from good human writing.
This is really beautiful.