convinced that flatui won b/c of two dynamics: it's easy to stamp out wholesale w/little skill (read: well paid labor) & designers are terrified of being called kitschy (can't be kitschy if you don't do anything interesting)
see the "yale box" discussion in bauhaus to our house
It's the web equivalent of early brutalism
"we don't care to design this and don't mind if it heavily clashes with everything around it and isn't appealing"
There's a fine line between tasteful minimalism, and doing your consumer a disservice by not doing enough design work.