Design Kitsch
summary
Argues that many speculative design pieces amount to a superficial rhetorical stance labeled Kitsch Criticality rather than a real critique, diagnosing why dystopian prompts like subscription air or memory-targeted ads feel empty. Grounds the concept in Umberto Eco and demonstrates use of AI-generated videos as both example and methodological probe. Connects the diagnosis to practice problems—designer-centered credibility, performative methods—and proposes concrete steps to make speculative work materially and rhetorically more rigorous.
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