How Comic Sans became the Crocs of fonts

Not giving a fuck if you look cringe is a superpower for the great online game. Like Peter Parker getting bit by a spider, I had my superhero moment with the druggie days. And I’m glad it happened. But you don’t need to go down that path to realize this: internet embarrassment isn’t that bad. Stop living in fear of being called cringe. The fear is ... See more

The ethics against commercial art set strong boundaries for "alternative" culture, which arguably allowed it to flourish as a separate entity. As that culture began to hit the mainstream in the early 1990s, the taboo against selling out spread into broader youth culture. As Chuck Klosterman writes in The Nineties, “The concept of ‘selling out’ — an... See more

what’s remarkable about this particular pendulum swing is that after centuries of wrestling with hierarchies of taste, the cultural stigma that has always come with indulging in bad taste has disappeared.