The amount of time and money corporate America wastes so we can all feel like beautiful and unique snowflakes, is well, a waste of money

That title pretty much encompasses this whole entry, but seriously, what a waste.  Granted we like as variety as people, but really, the variety we think we want because "it'll seperate us from the rest of the crowd" is just someone else telling us we need it so we're compelled to get it.  If you buy or get this; you will be happy.  That covers pretty much everthing we spend our money on: clothes, cars, etc (even some stuff we get for free).  It's someone else's dream that someone convinced us we need to be different.  That's capitalism.  However what I think is a total waste are bits of personal flair to things no one will necessarily ever see, especially on the web.

For instance: custumized landing pages for websites, specifically, an ad for "my yahoo" I saw that talked about the ability to change your "my yahoo" to reflect your own personal flair.  I'm not talking organization of information (which is often nice and relevant to most users), I'm talking adding "skins" to your homepage. So if you're a culinary artist, you like ponies, you're into death metal (or whatever you're into), apparently the customization is there can a whole new interface will greet you on your next login.  And I'm guessing that there's a gaggle of predesigned, professionally created templates, however, I'm guessing this "customization" will be in the hands of an amateur, giving them the potential to completely sabotage the purpose of the landing page.  Let's say this is you, and your color choice and graphics kill the readability of the landing page, what's the point of it then?  But I digress, I haven't actually tried the yahoo thingy, probably won't either because honestly, just logging into the bread and butter type login page is good enough for me, as it is for any other new sites.  I trust the designers at most ".coms" to display the content in a aesthically pleasing way  and also a way that leads to ease of readability.  If the site looks like a dog turd, well, I probably won't visit it again (until they redesign it).

Sometimes the Henry Ford philosophy of "you can have any color you like, so long as it's black" applies.  I mean that in the sense of more choices, chances, is just more time directing away from what you're actual purpose is; to check your e-mail, see what the news is, whatever.  I get the logic behind customization, to make the page more personable so you continue to visit the site.  But really, and sadly, it means more of you life wasted tweaking you stupid design and sitting in front of a computer, which I resent.

So my point is this: customization is rarely good, questionable, often bad and unneeded, and ultimately, a waste of money as well as your precious personal time.  Granted these profiles they have templated are most likely designed by professionals, but in the grand scheme of things, only one user is going to see it: you (that is if you decide to customize your landing page with the leopard skin background so you can be "unique").  I just shake at all the time and money wasted on template creation and the ability to add the "customizable" functionality skin to a landing page that arguably no one will ever see.  And isn't it about sharing it with all of you friends to show how slick and hip you are?  And are you really all that unique if you have a repeating low quality photo of Jack Sparrow in the background?  And what is going on in the world today?  Oh, you can't read it?  Stupid colors.  Let's give the designers the time and opportunity to create a better landing page from the get-go, then people wouldn't be compelled to change it, because if it ain't broke, they won't feel compelled to fix it.