There was a popular HN post on the front page called "color has been disappearing from the world"[0]. There are comments on it about "regression to the mean", "commoditization", etc. One commentor proposed that "barren inoffense is maximum profit".
This blog post is a good example of that trend. Most humans enjoy alcohol, but some of us abstain, just like how most humans enjoy many colors but some of us of us are put off by some colors. Ergo, drinks trend towards water and colors trend towards grey.
Let's not have an alcoholic drink. Let's not go to a long sports game. Let's not see an irreverent movie. How about we just go to work, do our jobs, keep our heads down, and not do anything we can't all agree on. Obviously that's not what the author intends, but it's where you end up if you try to appease every opinion in the same family as the one in this post.
"If you don't [x], you feel like an outcast." This is true, and unfortunate. It's also unavoidable when you let people act human around each other. Common interests will be discovered, emphasized in conversation, and may begin to exclude others to some degree. The appropriate reaction is to discover those other interests that you have in common with a subset of your team and draw attention to those. However, the end result is not necessarily equitable. Sometimes a team member just has less in common with others. Worse still, not all people have the same degree of openness or diversity of interests as others. I don't know what else to say except that I sympathize, but not so much that I think we should keep on marching towards grey to lessen the impact.
0. https://tumblr.macleodsawyer.com/post/691054353059053568/col...
This blog post is a good example of that trend. Most humans enjoy alcohol, but some of us abstain, just like how most humans enjoy many colors but some of us of us are put off by some colors. Ergo, drinks trend towards water and colors trend towards grey.
Let's not have an alcoholic drink. Let's not go to a long sports game. Let's not see an irreverent movie. How about we just go to work, do our jobs, keep our heads down, and not do anything we can't all agree on. Obviously that's not what the author intends, but it's where you end up if you try to appease every opinion in the same family as the one in this post.
"If you don't [x], you feel like an outcast." This is true, and unfortunate. It's also unavoidable when you let people act human around each other. Common interests will be discovered, emphasized in conversation, and may begin to exclude others to some degree. The appropriate reaction is to discover those other interests that you have in common with a subset of your team and draw attention to those. However, the end result is not necessarily equitable. Sometimes a team member just has less in common with others. Worse still, not all people have the same degree of openness or diversity of interests as others. I don't know what else to say except that I sympathize, but not so much that I think we should keep on marching towards grey to lessen the impact.
0. https://tumblr.macleodsawyer.com/post/691054353059053568/col...