DAVID PERELL
Why Did the World Get So Ugly?
Video Transcript
Why Did the World Get So Ugly?
David Perell - Main Stage, Main Street Summit
INTRODUCTION
DAVID PERELL
Hello everybody. That is a clip from a short film that I just produced. You know, it was funny. I’m really excited about what I’m here to talk about.
A few months ago, I wanted to turn this into a Netflix series. I was talking to people in Hollywood and they said, “Ah, there’s just no interest in this.” So we said, “Okay, we’ll make a short film.” And it was cool. Our goal was 100,000 views. It’s been three weeks, and it now has two and a half million views. It’s been crazy.
So I’m going to give you a synopsis of what the film’s all about.
The Logo That Started a Revolt
For me, it began with this funny thing that happened on the internet recently. Usually people freak out about important stuff—politics, taxes, who knows what. But the internet went up in arms about this Cracker Barrel logo. It went from that to this, and you can see the difference between old and new.
And I was like, why are people freaking out about this? But to my great enjoyment, the internet did what it does best: we got some absolutely killer memes. We got “no cracker, no barrel.” We got “a folksy, southern-style country restaurant, but we remove all the folksiness and countryness and southernness.” And then we got my very favorite one—the great Sydney Sweeney and Greta Thunberg.
So what is going on? What does this revolt mean? Why is this happening? I think it clearly shows that there’s at least some sort of discontent in our society, and the logo change touches the atomic core of whatever that thing is.
SAMENESS EVERYWHERE
The first thing we need to understand is that this trend is bigger than just the Cracker Barrel logo. This trend shows up in all kinds of logos. We have Cracker Barrel over here. These are the logos of luxury fashion houses and how they’ve changed—top-of-the-line stuff: Saint Laurent, Balenciaga. What do we see? We see convergence, homogenization, sameness.
Then we think of train tickets. Train tickets used to look like this, and now they look like this. And then we think of water fountains—they used to look like this, and now they look like this. And then we think of the famous telephone booth, which used to look like this. People travel to London just to take photos in front of these—and now they look like this.
So clearly something is going on. But you might be thinking to yourself, “Dude, what’s the big deal? What matters is how things function, not how things look. How things look is just dressing on top of what actually matters, which is how things work. I’m just trying to live my life.”
And I hear you. But if that’s where your mind is, I think you’re missing something really important.
The Core Idea: What We Make Reveals What We Value
This is the core idea: what we make reveals what we value. What we make reveals what we value.
And if you want to understand a culture, don’t listen to what it says about itself. Look at what it makes. We express ourselves far more honestly in the things that we make than in the things that we say about ourselves.
So often when we think about how to look at a society—what is the essence of a society?—we’ll think of something like the Golden Gate Bridge or the Empire State Building. But understand that we can actually see the entirety of a society based on the most ordinary objects, the things that you and I would ignore as we go about our lives.
San Francisco’s Lost Chains
So I grew up in San Francisco, in a place called the Presidio, and there was this wall my family and I would often walk by. I would always walk by these chains, and I just loved them. They held the character and the distinctiveness of the San Francisco Bay. I remember those container ships that would go by—these chains could have held those—and that wall had this distinctive sense of character.
And then one day, I was on the internet and I was heartbroken when I saw that those chains were replaced with a generic metal railing that’s colder than a hospital waiting room.
Look, I’m sure that some bureaucrat somewhere justified this change with a tiny little spreadsheet. But I think the city of San Francisco lost a piece of its soul on the day that this change happened.
And what I want to emphasize is that this isn’t about the change itself. It’s about a question of how something can get replaced with something so bland and unimaginative. It’s not just about those chains—it’s just one chain—but it’s about the thousands of cumulative decisions that have happened throughout our modern world that reveal something about who we are: that it lacks a sense of life that we used to take for granted, that we used to value, that we used to prioritize.
Look, I get it. Everything has a shelf life. Those chains needed to be replaced. But this was the decision they made. I want to emphasize that it’s the ensemble of those decisions. That’s what I’m focused on with this whole project.
The Color Is Leaving Our World
And it shows up in car colors per year. Look at this. You go back to 1990—no, let’s go to ’97. Forty percent of cars, only 40%, were on the grayscale—white, gray, or black. Now we have 75%, three-quarters. The color is leaving our world.
It’s the same with the logos—these are luxury fashion houses. This isn’t about, “Oh, it doesn’t matter.” The people buying from these brands are the wealthiest people in the world.
And then I look at—one of the things I’ll do is walk through a city like this. These are expensive houses. Two, five, ten million dollars sometimes. They all look like IKEA showrooms. And then when you go to those places, somehow they figured out how to buy that furniture.
But this is the one that really got to me. Remember the Home Alone house? Remember this? God, how many memories do we have of this house? Well, it’s in Chicago—I think it’s in Winnetka, Illinois. And they wanted to put it out to market. You hear the groans just now? We feel in our hearts and souls, pre-intellectually, that there’s something weird about a society that goes from this, with the old, to this, with the new.
And we know intuitively that the very most miserable people are ones who reduce their concept of wealth to the bottom line. So what about a society that does the same thing? I think that the exclusive focus on the financial bottom line, on spreadsheets, leads to the kind of lifelessness that shows up in a lot of the things we build.
That’s a bit of how I feel.
X-Ray Vision: Just Look
So you might agree with me. You might think I’m talking nonsense. And honestly, if you disagree with everything else, the one thing I want you to understand is this: when you look at ordinary objects, you get a kind of X-ray vision into the soul of a society. You can see what’s happening behind the smoke and mirrors of what people say.
And to do this, all you need to do is look at things. You just need to stop. You don’t need to listen to lectures. You don’t need to listen to experts. All you’ve got to do is look, and you get a kind of X-ray vision.
A Society of Convenience (Film Clip — London)
And so that’s what this is about. I want to show you a 45-second clip from the short film. This was in London, and I think it gets to the very core of this. This is my friend Sheen, who is the narrator.
[Film clip] Walking around a city, any city, and looking at its buildings and its infrastructure, you’re not just looking at objects. You’re looking at religions and principles, beliefs and ideas. These buildings, they don’t just look different—they represent fundamentally different worldviews. Clashing ideas about how we should all behave. And those skyscrapers say the same thing as our air conditioning units and sewage plants: that we have become a society of convenience above all else.
[music]
Democratic Beauty
So what we see is that great cities throughout history weren’t just supposed to function. Even the most ordinary objects were supposed to do this. And what I’ve gathered is that we no longer value beauty.
I mean, look at this theater. I looked it up—this theater was built in 1928. In my opinion, the most beautiful buildings here were ones that are more than 100 years old.
And democratic beauty is this: the idea that everybody, everybody, everybody, regardless of their level of wealth, is entitled to routinely experience man-made beauty. You see it in the telephone booth. You see it in ordinary lampposts. You see it with benches. This is well-crafted. This is not expensive stuff. All it takes is somebody with a little bit of vision.
I’m not saying that we need porta-potties that look like the Taj Mahal. I’m not saying we need to take Dunkin’ Donuts and put chandeliers in the middle. I’m not saying we need our Roomba to look like it was designed by Louis XIV. That is not what I’m saying.
What I’m saying is that we can just take ordinary things and infuse a sense of heart and soul into them—and that the collective decisions of doing all that will make this world a radically better place.
Once again, I think about this woman. None of this is expensive. And yet this scene is profoundly beautiful—the colors, the textures. This is not expensive. This is not a wealthy woman.
It’s About Values, Not Nostalgia
And also, I was talking about how this isn’t about money. This is about values—what we prioritize. I am not standing up here saying we need to go back to 1760, or 1830, or that 1928 was the ideal and we need to go back to that. That’s not what I’m saying.
1920s New York—let them be 1920s New York. Japan, the wonderful world, the styles, the aesthetics. I think in 1920s New York and in these images of Japan, you can feel a sense of character and love that has been infused into these things.
So what do we need? We don’t need to go back. It’s about finding our own spirit of vigor and vitality—the same one that built the very room you’re in. There’s a reason that the main stage is here and not at the local elementary school or a cafe down the street. There’s a reason it’s here: because we know this place has a sense of soul and character. And once again, there are so many kinds of beauty beyond the room that we’re sitting in.
And this is about learning from the past—learning from the past in order to improve the present.
The Post Office
And I just want to end with one more story about that. It’s about the post office.
When I was a kid, there was a beautiful one in San Francisco, and it’s one of the things that my dad and I used to do all the time on Sundays. And now you go to the post office, and what do you feel? You feel this kind of assault of fluorescence. I went last week to change my address, and it felt demoralizing to be in there. It’s like the interior was designed to make me feel miserable, and I felt it over and over again.
Like, we scream with the things that we make—not by the words that we say, but by the way that we design. And the message that I got is that you are not a citizen to be honored. You’re a transaction to be processed. And I think that says so much about the current state of our institutions and government.
And then I think about how the experience of visiting a post office wasn’t always so grim at all. They were once designed to elevate the spirit of their patrons. They were a symphony of marble floors and elaborate murals and hardwood countertops—great craftsmanship. We refuse to tear it down. It’s just so beautiful. And it was not just the buildings, but the idea behind them. This is a post office. This is what we routinely did a hundred years ago. And we said: we believe in democratic beauty. Everyone is entitled to routinely experience man-made beauty.
And it wasn’t just big towns like New York. This is a small town. But look at it. It’s not about baroque beauty. It’s about simple, ordinary charm, delight, and loveliness that could surround us. It’s about the civic pride that can show up in buildings.
And post offices amplified the idea of a government that was by the people and for the people. They were the embodiment of our highest ideals, going back to the founding of America. Our highest American ideals were etched in stone.
And today’s post offices transmit a darker message: that experience trumps dignity, and that beauty is a frivolous luxury that the public no longer deserves.
The Question That Matters
We scream by the things we make. And so my question is this: What should we infer about a culture that no longer values making beautiful things for ordinary people?
That’s for you to decide.
The Ask
Now, I do have an ask. I want to get this film on Netflix, Apple, HBO. So if anyone in here is an investor or has made a series, please come find me. I would very much appreciate your help. And get your phones—here’s the QR code.
Thank you very much.
