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Every year around this time Pantone publishes a "Color of the Year," which shows up in places like graphic design, home decor, and clothing over the course of the next year. I used to follow them, and in the mid 00s they had nice colors like frog green (greenery, 2017), coral red ("Living Coral, 2019), and Emerald Green (2013). Like many things, they've been corrupted lately, and the past three years have seen "Peach Fuzz" (the color children's art sets used to use to represent people), "Mocha Mousse" (the color of a mixed race actress in an advertisement), and now... white. Literally just white. It's called "Cloud Dancer," and has a tiny bit of grayish blue in it.
People are making fun of the "authoritarian" vibes of literally just white. But also, I was hoping that the white and grey trend was on its way out? I've been seeing white and grey boxes going up this past half decade, full of coffee shops, burgers, and more recently apartment buildings, and am not a fan. At least it's not Pot Shop Green, I guess?
Does this predict another year of literally just white and Landlord Grey?
Adding: The LA Times is trying to make the best of it, by highlighting bridal fashion. The Guardian and the New York Times both mention the difficulty of keeping actually white things clean looking, and several people talk about Whiteness.
If Pantone's doing it as its Color of the Year, then, yeah, that could mean it's on the way out. Same way Peak Oil actually meant the end of oil.
Peak Oil was a relatively dumb theory that was only taken seriously because of the unusual 2004 to 2014 spike in oil prices, which was speculative and driven by short-medium term bullish views on Chinese and other EM consumption, and then prolonged abnormally after 2011 by fears of Arab instability. Weird ZeroHedge types seized on this market dynamic as proof that oil prices would never fall and that actually 100/barrel was just the start and justified it with outdated peak oil fearmongering from the 1970s. In 2014 it became clear that Chinese demand would be lower than predicted, global growth was low, and US shale production was higher than forecast.
As usual, there is nothing new under he sun but specifically with Peak Oil, it was heavily influenced by popular book/manifesto The Limits to Growth published in 1972 which influenced The Club of Rome as part of the now ubiquitous messaging on
global issuesplanetary emergency issues.I see Peak Oil as part of what I'd mark as defense in depth and/or ideological deep battle doctrine. You see it used quite often in propaganda, where often contrary messages are constructed for different audiences. The general description is the old meme: it is not happening > yeah, it is happening but it is not a big deal > It's a good thing that it is happening > people against this happening are the real problem. Except it is constructed and promoted by propaganda at the same time to various groups, sometimes as a result of people not catching up to latest news, sometimes deliberately pushed at the same time despite logical contradiction.
Sometimes these messages mutate, but they stay the same. Or in case of Peak Oil it was just one example of caution against impossibility of "exponential growth", which is the backbone of leftist environmentalist "sustainability" messaging, all stemming from the original Limits to Growth idea. All of these are quite popular to this day.
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