McMansions, Explained

Comments · 829

• IV

  @Ivonyyy · 4 months ago

  Looks like houses we all built in Sims 3 at age 10

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• PA

  @patrykkalita7166 · 4 months ago

  Fast food, but it's homes.

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• RO

  @rotciv1492 · 4 months ago (edited)

  As a Spanish kid who grew up watching a lot of Hollywood movies and American cartoons, I was always baffled to see how the characters on TV could punch through walls and doors, since nobody I knew could do the same; and if I ever tried that in my room, I'd break my hand.

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• AD

  @Adam-fj9px · 4 months ago

  Whenever I see those endless suburbs on google maps they’re like looking at bacteria under a microscope

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• ST

  @Star-Defenders · 4 months ago

  Then the HOAs decide to add fuel to the fire.

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• BR

  @brione2001 · 4 months ago

  In 1989, I bought a house in Northern Colorado. At the time, there was a McMansion available that the realtor showed me. I pointed out obvious construction strangeness and she told me something that I'll never forget, "well, you know, the same people that build the $100K homes also build the $400K homes." Yes.

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• DO

  @doomslayerdave · 4 months ago

  These are the homes we see all the inspectors posting on TikTok or on YouTube Shorts. Mass produced garbage.

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• PL

  @player400_official · 4 months ago (edited)

  Who doesn’t like Ionic columns paired with gothic windows, fake machicolations and a massive garage door? 😂

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• KR

  @krisgonynor689 · 4 months ago

  American suburbs are from the late 1940's and onward. They did not start in the 1980's. Though I guess the idea of the "McMansion" is from that era.

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• BA

  @BackToTheFuturama · 4 months ago

  My favorite feature of a McMansion is the dormer window in the attic. Now, several decades ago, you would have a walk up attic in a home and it would have functional windows for light and ventilation. But the McMansion version is literally a dormer built onto the roof with a window. Sometimes, they will paint the inside black so you don't see the framing through the window from the outside. And other times there is no way to get inside the dormer from the attic.  The attic in these homes are not designed to be accessible, usually only through a small hatch in a bedroom closet. No flooring in the attic, just joists and insulation. So the window dormer serves absolutely no purpose other than decorative.

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• GO

  @goatsandroses4258 · 4 months ago

  As another kind responder noted, suburbs didn't start in the 1980s. There were suburb-like developments even in the 19th century, although US suburbs took off after WWII to house returning soldiers and their growing families. As for "greed is good:" yes, the 1980s was about financial success, but so was the robber-baron era a century before when many true mansions were built.  Of course, and you're completely right about this: the difference is that in the 1980s and 1990s, the nouveau riche's homes were NOT the granite, mahogany, and marble mansions of previous generations. The huge late 20th century homes had plenty of room, pretension, and sometimes gaudiness, but not always the substance one would expect. A true mansion has a certain gravitas and real craftsmanship, and is often either on a valuable city lot or on an estate. By contrast, many McMansions were built on postage stamp-sized lots or even, crazily enough, on land that was basically RENTED for 99 or a 100 years!   Cities and counties may have benefited from the property values, but any grandeur the house might have had was often lost in the fact that it was on a street with a hundred more similar homes.

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• S1

  @s1ndrome117 · 4 months ago

  we got "vibe coded" mansions before gta 6

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