Colour consultants. They have a conspiracy going to make us live in an ugly world. The way it works is, people instinctively like pretty colours. Nobody can make money selling us a decision to do what we instinctively like--we could have decided that all by ourselves. So the colour experts have a whole lot of clever sophistry designed to convince us it's very important for us to paint things ugly colours instead, and then we're like "I would never have thought of all those important considerations by myself--just think how awful if I'd naively painted the house a pretty colour that I liked! Good thing I consulted an expert!"
This explains all those buildings in horrible drab grey-beige, washed out greyed down versions of puke green, mushroom, and fucking taupe.
Do I detect a bitter personal experience with a colour expert?
Yeah, my strata recently repainted our townhouse complex. They brought in colour consultants. The results were pods in the abovementioned faded puke green alternating with a dismal beige; the other possible option was a yucky gray. Mushroom had been mooted about. No actual colours were ever discussed as near as I can make out.
Oh yeah, and then a few days ago I went to the house of someone I know and it had been repainted a similar faded puke green. He said his wife had gotten a colour consultant . . .
That's when I realized it was a conspiracy, not just a one-off.