Memes

Inheritance value is not furniture's most desirable trait. Sometimes it's price, or mobility, or disposability. The meme suggests that people in wholly different circumstances should be measured equally, and they shouldn't. It's a stupid, cruel meme and I despise it.

First of all. Kids. Ha. No.

However, this is an interesting observation, since homes used to be placed where you entertained guests. You had people over for an evening to drink and share stories and everything.

But, we're not a sentimental age. Millennials, Gen Z, etc.... Everything has been made to be temporary for us. There is no permanence. We don't buy homes, we have to rent because all of the homes are being purchased by a handful of people in that area and their being converted into rentals. The most expensive things we own are our cars, and even then, it's probably a lease, so that's basically like renting the car anyways, just with more steps. We don't need to get together for social time in our homes. We tend to go out and borrow a table for an evening at the local pub, or go to the beach or something. We rarely meet in person, often drinking alone but together over the vast world wide web.

Speaking of the Internet, there's so many people on there, that most of our connections become extremely temporary. We'll meet, play together, laugh together, and depart within hours. The likelihood of seeing eachother again is slim to none, and even if it happens, we probably won't remember.

We're in an age where you're not friends with the friends you have on Facebook... Your Facebook friends is a long list of people you met once or twice and never saw again, now permanently a part of your life on a friend's list you never look at. It's become a meaningless thing to be on someone's friends list.

All of the things that should be permanent are so ubiquitous that they've lost any meaning that they had, and that's how we live. Temporary particle board furniture, that will swell up and disintegrate with high enough humidity. Temporary connections from tinder or whatever. Temporary hangouts at a local location... We don't "do" hosting anymore, and when we do, everyone is too focused on a screen to notice that your furniture is falling apart or that you have no unnecessary stuff . Having things is a statement of wealth, because you need to have some place to put them, which means real estate. We are not wealthy. Our parents generation ensured we couldn't be when they became capitulent in the dismantling of unions, and the destruction of the middle class. They spent their wealth and our inheritance on retirement, which was made to be worthless sums of money by the economic inflation that they wrought.

The current generations have been beaten into submission to accept everything as temporary and be happy about it. We are frequently convinced that we like it like this.

We do not value these things because it represents a permanence that we neither care for, nor have we ever enjoyed.

There's a song about this phenomenon in Québecois French called Dégénération, from Mes Aïeux.

It starts with your great great grand father clearing the land, your great grand father plowing the land, your grand father making a profit out of it, your father selling it to be a white collar, and you, living in a one room apartment, owing debts to corporations.

The lyrics are pretty conservative and portray a rosy past, but it goes with the traditional style and the fact the band's name means "my ancestors". This being said, the song is still pretty spot on about this phenomenon. Here's a link to the translated lyrics, and the song.

EDIT: Oh and there's a parody (no translation, sorry) stating the obvious, like "your great great great grand mother, she took dumps in a bucket, and she only had three teeth left, but it was paradise."

Oh no! A drop of water fell on it and it's swollen and fell apart.

I mean, it's not surprising when you're not sure if you're going to be where you are in even three years.

I love the furniture on the left, but until I bought a house I was NOT gonna put that into an apartment. I never spent more than five years in an apartment. The longest I ever spent in a single location was the house I lived in college where I lived with five other college goers and grads about 7 years.

You can genuinely get some fantastic deals on furniture like the left. I got a gorgeous 4 poster queen bed for 15 bucks. It was an absolute nightmare to move, had to rent a truck to move it, it works great though. If I had to move it every three years though, fuck that.

Sorry, people who came before me. My storage is way more space-efficient. It's not like I'll ever own a house, so this is a priority.

I very much like the old style furniture but one thing quick to realize is that most of it doesn't really have much organizing space.

It's a show of craftsmanship, it is something to look at but that is it.

I'm planning to build a lot of furniture for myself and the top requirement is internal space, followed by ease of assembly and modularity.

Visual impact can be achieve by different varnishes or finishes or, what I'm considering lately, pyro engraving or ink line work, underneath the varnish.

What grandkids?

Well no, because the left will still be in perfect condition when you die but the right is a cheap piece of shit that will disintegrate if you sneeze on it.

In all honesty, I'm glad that I dont have any of that shit on the left.

Dealing with an estate is enough work without adding guilt into the equation, my will for my daughter literally says "If I did my job right, this is all just stuff. Dont be precious about it because its mine, unless its specifically mentioned I really dont give a shit about it. Do what you need or want to do."

It won't last that long.

I am not leaving anything to anyone

Lots of old people still offload hardwood furniture on kijiji (local buy&sell) or ReStore (2nd hand warehouse here) here it's not expensive to aquire if you happen to like orange and brown furniture. Or can stand to put some time in refinishing stuff or even repairing the more worn pieces that sell for even less.

Yes, there are plenty of other factors for the enshittification, but...

Furniture used to be a thing you saved for and bought once, for life. Consumers used to think in those terms, now we're like, meh, it's cheap enough. Same for appliances. There was only a few choices in the refrigerator space. People talked, compared notes, knew what brand ranked where in quality. Now we're overrun with choice, aim low and bitch about quality.

Also, if you want nice shit, the used market is booming. And more, I'm shocked what I find on the side of the road. Right now I'm looking at a perfectly nice, solid wood table getting stormed on. Wife found it last week, no room in the house or use for it, so there it sits.

Kallax is great, it can fit so many board games.

Why did you get rid of the nice furniture your grandmother left you???

Did a buddy leave a cup-ring & you decided to put it out on the street? Or did you sell it for a video game or drugs? Was it smashed during a really wild party by a sledgehammer man wearing leather chaps?

Look at this dood, showing off their wealth being able to afford EKETs.

wow you can afford to own ikea furniture and not rent it? you're lucky