“This piece should be required reading for all those whiners”, says Matthias who forwarded this to us. Obrigado.
“It’s happened again.
Not for the first time, I was subjected the
other day to a heartfelt diatribe on how Ikea has singlehandedly leached all the
vitality and vigor out of the world, shoehorned human creativity into an
infinity of barcode-anonymous MDF wall units, and spawned endless cyborg armies
of khaki-clad, essentially fungible consumervolk.
You read that right: Ikea.
Unlike many nonsensical prejudices, it’s roughly possible to trace the
root source of all this hostility, identify a locus classicus of Ikeaphobia: in
this case, the vastly-overrated Fight Club. Ever since the film hit American
screens, some years ago now, it’s been hip among would-be cynics of a certain
cohort to reserve a stream of vituperation for the giant Swedish furnishings
chain. (For those of you who didn’t see the movie, it contained a very
nicely-produced CG sequence that essentially laid the blame for all that is
fake, mediocre and generic in contemporary life at the company’s blue-and-yellow
feet: the minute-long rant that launched ten thousand sneers.)
I must hear some version of this spiel once a month, generally from
some self-consciously leftie male between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two
desperate to prove his authenticity, present his down-with-the-people,
fuck-the-Man bona fides. This despite the fact that Ikea was explicitly founded
on the premise of providing well-designed furniture to the masses at affordable
prices – a premise that the company still largely delivers on. (If I have a
quibble, it’s with quality, not price.)
You know what? I’m done with it. If your life is mediocre, I promise
you, Ingvar Kamprad didn’t make it that way. You did. And if you’re so desperate
for your own soixante-huit moment that you can sit there with a straight face
and tell me that you’re being oppressed by flat-packable pine furniture with
goofy pseudo-Scandinavian names, I’d advise you to spend a few days working with
child slaves in the Sudan, or something…”
Ikeaphobia and its discontents
By Adam Greenfield
Opinions
