Dwain Northey (Gen X)
There is something that happens when you see something too often: it loses its impact.
Take highlighter yellow.
There was a time when you saw a guy wearing an orange construction vest and your brain immediately registered, Pay attention. There is something important happening here. Maybe there was road construction. Maybe somebody was operating heavy machinery. Maybe the guy was standing around holding a STOP sign while accomplishing absolutely nothing, but at least you knew where he was.
That was the whole point of high-visibility clothing.
It stood out.
Now?
Every warehouse worker, construction worker, road crew member, delivery driver, bicycle-riding senior citizen and apparently anyone who has wandered within 500 feet of a traffic cone is wearing fluorescent yellow or orange.
At this point, half the country looks like it is directing traffic.
The color that was once extraordinary has become background noise.
And that’s the funny thing about human perception: we adapt.
Something designed to grab our attention eventually becomes invisible simply because we see it all the damn time.
Which brings us to the extreme opposite.
Go to a nudist camp.
Suddenly, the person wearing clothes is the one who sticks out.
Think about that for a second.
You could have 200 naked people standing around, and nobody is particularly remarkable because, well, that’s apparently the dress code.
Then some poor bastard walks through the gate wearing khaki shorts and a polo shirt and suddenly everyone is thinking, Holy shit, look at that guy!
He’s wearing clothes!
The man who would be completely unremarkable at Walmart has become the most visually interesting person in the entire campground.
Why?
Because contrast creates attention.
And that brings me to gold.
Gold used to mean something.
The ancients didn’t value gold because some marketing executive told them it was luxurious. They valued it because it was rare, beautiful, durable, resistant to corrosion and—most importantly—difficult to find.
You couldn’t just order a pallet of gold trim because you decided the lobby needed a little more pizzazz.
Gold was special precisely because there wasn’t much of it.
Scarcity creates value.
Then along comes Donald Trump, a man apparently operating under the philosophy that if one gold object is impressive, then 10,000 gold-colored objects must be the pinnacle of sophistication.
Gold walls.
Gold trim.
Gold fixtures.
Gold furniture.
Gold lettering.
Gold accents.
Gold everything.
At some point you stop seeing gold.
You just see yellow with an enormous self-esteem problem.
That’s the strange thing about covering everything in fake gold: eventually the gold itself becomes less impressive.
When every surface is screaming, LOOK HOW EXPENSIVE I AM, the effect starts becoming less “royal palace” and more “casino that has somehow wandered into a HomeGoods clearance aisle.”
The ancients understood something we seem to have forgotten.
Rare things are valuable because they are rare.
Diamonds don’t become more impressive because you glue them to the toaster. Gold doesn’t become more precious because you put it on the bathroom faucet. And a color doesn’t remain attention-grabbing when absolutely everyone is wearing it.
There is a psychological phenomenon hiding in all of this.
Overexposure dulls perception.
The first time you hear a song, it might stop you in your tracks. Play it 400 times and eventually you’re reaching for the radio button.
The first time you see a spectacular building, you might stare at it.
Live next door for 20 years and eventually you’re complaining about the parking.
The first time someone walks into a room wearing highlighter yellow, you notice.
When everyone is wearing it, you don’t even register it.
Walk into a nudist camp wearing nothing and you’re dressed appropriately.
Walk into it wearing a three-piece suit and suddenly you’re the spectacle.
Apparently, the easiest way to become interesting is simply to be different from whatever everybody else is doing.
And that’s exactly what excessive displays of wealth eventually destroy.
When everything is gold, gold stops communicating precious.
It communicates gold-colored.
And there is a difference.
Real wealth doesn’t necessarily need to announce itself every five seconds.
Real value doesn’t become more valuable because you paint it gold.
And genuine luxury doesn’t require every available surface to scream, DID YOU SEE HOW MUCH MONEY THIS COST?
Eventually, the screaming becomes the wallpaper.
There is an old saying that everything that glitters is not gold.
Perhaps we’ve reached the point where everything that is gold isn’t particularly impressive either.
Because if you have to cover absolutely everything in gold to convince people you’re wealthy, powerful or important, maybe the gold isn’t doing the convincing anymore.
Maybe it’s just decoration.
Just like the orange construction vest.
Just like highlighter yellow.
Just like the naked people at the nudist camp.
When everything is trying to stand out, nothing stands out.
And perhaps that’s the ultimate irony of excess:
When you make everything extraordinary, you accidentally make nothing extraordinary.
Sometimes the thing that gets noticed isn’t the brightest color in the room.
It’s the one person who decided not to wear it.
