Rewriting the polarizing headlines from my favorite design magazine's Instagram

What does it mean when social media is crafted to divide, even in the home space?

For a while now, my absolute favorite home design magazine (not even the one I edit!) has been putting out the most divisive and cringe-y Instagram headlines.

Things like: “Is the farmhouse sink dead?”

It’s always the same kind of dumb statement designed to make people comment. The whole thing makes me want to bash my face into an Ikat throw pillow.

The magazine I am not naming here does some of the best home design reporting in the business.

I absolutely love the print edition. It isn’t a stretch to say that I’d go to bed with pretty much every story in it.

So why does it putting out material on its social that is designed to divide the populace?

In spirit of writing headlines that actually excite and not divide, that inspire without putting up fences, and that intrigue without making someone feel bad about their design choices or themselves, I’ve rewritten some of the design headlines that have felt a little tone-deaf from my favorite magazine’s Instagram.

Is the farmhouse sink dead?

Here’s what our readers love about their farmhouse sinks

Is a room naked without a rug?

10 great rugs you’d want to be naked on

Do both nightstands need to match?

7 ways to do unmatched nightstands

How cool people decorate for the holidays

How they did it: The decorating secrets of people who go all-in on holiday style

When is it appropriate to begin decorating for the holidays?

When you decorate doesn’t matter. It’s the WHY.

The interior trends designers are officially ditching

How these 8 interior designers are evolving their style

What do you call your Summer House?

Summer house dreams: Five styles to love

Have we reached peak boucle?

Timeless choices for re-upholstering

I recognize the hubris in me as I tell others what not to do while they are telling others what not to do. But I’m becoming increasingly sickened by everything behind social strategy and the sad grasp for engagement that fuels it — the more rancorous the better.

The more divisive a publication can make a headline, the more likelihood the algorithm will feed people scrolling the story and they will consumer it, the more those scrollers’ blood rises when they read the headline (and the more they are dopamined into that moment where they become A PERSON WITH OPIONIONS), the more the lookers comment on it, the more the algorithm feeds it to people, the higher the numbers the account gets, the more the magazine can charge to the advertisers that support the publication, the more the publication survives in these tough times.

This is how social works.

Successful social requires that it get some kind of emotional rise out of you.

Joy is great, and it’s definitely present on many design instas, but anger and self-doubt are also particularly potent emotions — ones easy to drive engagement if you are a 24-year-old social media manager tasked with feeding the Instagram beast.

For home design magazines, that often means dividing readership who are trend-conscious and those who either can’t participate because of their budget or simply prefer the joys of slow decorating.

Aspirational print, the kind that you find in shelter magazines, has always been a look at this-not-that arrangement, with a little “here’s how to” thrown in. By showcasing a whole lot of this and leaving out the that, it makes a visual statement about what its readers should care about or what would inspire them most at this moment.

It’s entirely a guessing game editors play. What will our readers like based on what this creative community is generating right now?

Print doesn’t always get it right, either. But it is a gentler friend than social.

Print is a friend sitting next to you on a porch dreaming with you while social is a snotty persona across town with a megaphone screaming into your corner of the void about why your taste sucks.

Go back to print

I have to tell you — I still get a dozen print magazines and in the spirit of competing with social, they have only gotten better.

Editors are packing more information in, more value, doing better reporting, seeking more interesting layouts, going deeper into what interests their readers, finding more unique stories.

To lean into divisiveness for engagement in the home space — at a time when thousands just lost their homes in wildfire and millions don’t even have a home — is completely tone-deaf.

This is all to say that if you are a design-interested human, one way that you can refuse the ownership of the big social platforms over your attention and reject the strategies that divides you from other humans is to BUY PRINT MAGAZINES.

The other way is to call these publications out when they participate in sowing division among readers who are deeply connected to the process of making a home.

We should demand better messaging

I’ll leave you with this:

It is possible to write headlines that compel and inspire without making people fall into a polarized camps.

It is a completely possible to support the evolution of the self through design and the creation of a beautiful home without suggesting that choices for the home are outdated based on a yearly trend cycle dictated by industry.

It is reasonable to get people excited about design and even about buying products by focusing on what it will mean to them and not what it means about them.

In other words, if you’re going to choose a camp when it comes to design media, a more helpful binary would be to decide whether you are an Instagram dopamine scroller or print reader.

Design magazines I still subscribe to

Magazines are cheap, friends. And compared to social, they feel like a gift every time they appear in the mailbox.

I guarantee taking a one into the bath with you for an hour is going to feel 300% better than scrolling Instagram.

Here are the ones I’d be naked with 🛀🏻.

Oregon Home magazine — the one I edit, of course! It’s $6 a year.

House Beautiful — Supremely inspirational, helpful design guides

Architectural Digest — a little celebrity obsessed, but really fun for dreaming

Rue — Visual Xanax, a gentle voice, always beautiful

Better Homes & Gardens — Satisfying and fresh, always surprising, and relatable to a wide section of readers

HGTV — Colorful and happy, a trifle but a good one

DWELL — great reporting on housing issues in addition to modern design coverage