[marvindanig]

oh, yes! i remember those angry troll comments on HN as well. as if flattening all UI was the only thing that mattered and everything else was skeuomorphism.

no sweetie, not everything needs to be a pictogram. and everything you see or use online is skeuomorphism off of something in the physical world at some level. yeah, that flat design also.

Edit: Added "at some level" after helpful comments below.

[giraffe_lady]

If everything is something, then something isn't a useful category. Sure, all digital design is in some sense and to some extent a metaphor for real world objects. But skeuomorphism was always referring to things that were to an extreme extent following the design language of the real world, well beyond what was required by their digital constraints or expectations of the user.

That is a useful category of visual language description that is lost when you start with all-design-is-skeuomorphism. It's not wrong it's just not a useful model for anything.

[marvindanig]

oh yes, absolutely. fixed my comments above.