At least with the "f*ck" books this is just a money grab. Subtle art was a hit - I also remember enjoying the book - and it sprung bunch of copy cats with no originality. I also got suckered into this, picking up another one of these books thinking it was a sequel, but it was the most boring non-sense and I dropped it almost immediately.
I suspect money drives most other of these trends. You want to builds homes to look away that is proven to get highest sale price. You want to make the car look like the model that has sold most over past decade. You want to make your coffee shop look like what a successful coffee shop looks like to attract more customers. You want to make you influencer account look like every other influencer account to get as much sponsor and ad revenue as possible.
This is the same reason why we see reboot after reboot and if it isn't a reboot it is a sequel or prequel or reimagining of some sort, since all of the arts are now investments and need to make profit, no one wants to take a risk on unproven idea.
As for why even my home has white walls? Most people don't change the default. I don't care enough about the wall color and I know that I will be selling at some point and would have to paint the walls white again.
I think this one's the gist of it, and the big irony we'll all suffer from: While it gets cheaper to produce new things, not a lot of things will be original anymore.
I once heard that the 90s were the decade of references, and that might have just stuck a bit for too long: The boom of second-hand, mid-century furniture, the "industrial" look, rounded edged everywhere. Hell, even smartphones are just a reference to Sci-Fi flicks from the 60s (the case was Apple VS Samsung, I think). On demand services and the easy piracy of digital goods... I feel while there has been an perceived increase in quality for each individual at first, all these things helped everything to converge into "the average" for everyone.
We still see originality here and there, but you can just feel their competition against big budget productions. The movie Mandy (2018) was great, so was the show Scavengers Reign (2023), Breaking Bad etc. Landscape FM produce really interesing audio gear. I'm sure Open-Source (Hard- and Software) makes a lot of this possible, but for small and big equaly alike - depending on business practice, small might even be in danger to suffer from it.
I'm sure we all have our gems, but they just feel rare in this huge landscape. I just wish it would be a more common practice to support local artists and individials that take this mentioned risk, without having to turn it into a growth hacking startup idea.
I suspect money drives most other of these trends. You want to builds homes to look away that is proven to get highest sale price. You want to make the car look like the model that has sold most over past decade. You want to make your coffee shop look like what a successful coffee shop looks like to attract more customers. You want to make you influencer account look like every other influencer account to get as much sponsor and ad revenue as possible.
This is the same reason why we see reboot after reboot and if it isn't a reboot it is a sequel or prequel or reimagining of some sort, since all of the arts are now investments and need to make profit, no one wants to take a risk on unproven idea.
As for why even my home has white walls? Most people don't change the default. I don't care enough about the wall color and I know that I will be selling at some point and would have to paint the walls white again.