You can’t step into a millennial’s apartment today without tripping over a piece of furniture with wiggly lines. From the resurgence of neobaroque furniture to the playful, almost cartoonish typography on product packaging, postmodernism is back, yet again. Once a rebellious movement that sought to undermine the coldness of modernism with irony and eclecticism, postmodernism, or PoMo for short, has mellowed into something a bit more cheerful and accessible, with the focus on visual delight rather than intellectual depth. But there’s a reason this trend is sometimes called “Avant Basic”—it’s avant-garde aesthetics stripped of their edge for the mainstream.

Of course, the new millennium has already seen one rehash of postmodernism: the Memphis Group–inspired aesthetics of the “Indie Sleaze” 2000s. In 2012, mixtapes and graphic tees alike indulged in clashing colors, squiggles, and geometric typefaces like Babyteeth (first made famous in a Bob Dylan poster by Milton Glaser, later resurrected on a 2006 album for the Rapture). But as the word sleaze may suggest, this second pass at Memphis Milano brought much of the same cynicism and cheeky bad taste as its predecessors. While 20th-century postmodernism used irony to question rigidity and dogmatism in modern design, Indie Sleaze PoMo widened its aperture to lambast the prosperity promised by the digital age and consumer-driven culture.

The latest iteration of present-day “post”-postmodernism (PoPoMo, if you’re in the mood) reflects many of the same aesthetic impulses as its predecessors: bold colors, quirky forms, and a mix of high and low cultural references. The only difference? We’ve stopped caring about critique. Aesthetic motifs that were once deployed as commentary have evolved into a surface-level celebration of the surreal and irreverent—an indulgent escape in a world that often feels like it’s teetering on the edge. If the greige Scandi minimalism of the past decade was like sending your inner child to a Waldorf school, this is more like giving it 24/7 access to Nickelodeon.

Given this return to unfettered joy, it makes sense that the new postmodernism has a decidedly childlike sense of humor as well. Unlike previous iterations of PoMo, where humor was tongue-in-cheek and layered with cerebral meaning, today’s designers embrace a more simplistic, accessible approach to cracking jokes. The goal isn’t to make people feel like they’re in on the joke; you just have to make them laugh. And if making people laugh makes money, the best way to keep a business running in 2024 is to make as many people laugh as possible.

Trompe l’oeil in particular has become a favorite punch line for contemporary neo-nostalgic designers. There is, after all, something universally appealing about stuff that looks like other stuff—you need only look to 3,000-year-old Bronze Age vessels shaped like animals, or pop artists like Claus Oldenburg and his oversized sculptures of shuttlecocks and garden spades for proof. Stores like Think Big (open from 1979 to 1994 in New York) made whimsical outsized design available to everyday consumers, and today’s examples—like Third Drawer Down’s corncob stools, Seungjin Yang’s balloon furniture, and Gohar World’s faux-food candles—carry on the tradition. These instantly recognizable and playfully absurd pieces are easy to style in any home simply because they were never meant to blend in. They pack a big punch with minimal effort—perfect for a generation of renters who might not be able to paint their walls but still want to make a statement.

Another trend in contemporary postmodernism takes a similarly literal approach like trompe l’oeil’s, distilling objects down to their most essential, impactful forms; they may be abstract, but they’re still one-liners. A good example is The Splat Table by Sophie Collé, which looks exactly how it sounds. The same goes for the Fortune Cookie chair or Squiggle Vessel by Jumbo, the latter of which is inspired by an inchworm, now reduced to a minimalistic pictogram: a monowidth, monochrome squiggle, devoid of any distinguishing features beyond its iconic bends. If trompe l’oeil is literally a worm, this kind of kitsch minimalism represents something more like the idea of a worm. Pieces that play with color and surface form alone, such as Dusen Dusen home goods or the Yinka Ilori x Momentum textile collection, represent the most reduced version of this trend—large-scale, immersive color therapy.

This trend toward simplified, easily parsed forms has also jumped from the world of objects into graphic design, especially brand packaging. There’s been an unavoidable surge in bold, shapey typography, representing a shift away from the minimal sans serif fonts that defined the CPG wars of the last decade. Frequenters of fashionable gift shops might be familiar with the bright yellow puzzle brand Le Puzz, which, like its first- and second-wave PoMo forebears, uses a typeface reminiscent of our beloved Babyface. This same block-letter style has also been used by trendy tupperware company Cliik, Venus Williams’s Happy Viking protein powder, and olive oil brand Good Phats. Functionality plays a role here: Just as an Ettore Sotsass’s Ultrafragola Mirror grabs attention even in the background of a Zoom call, blocky logos stand out on small screens without sacrificing detail—crucial in an age where visual impact is king. It’s also a sign of changing consumer attitudes; people no longer equate quality with a sophisticated, uniform aesthetic. (A Chippendale cabinet is likely less valuable than a Memphis Group one now, too.)

That the commercial arts of typography and packaging are now using the same forms once reserved for design-savvy circles is a clear indicator of how ubiquitous and sanitized postmodernism has become. You can snag Memphis-style home goods at Target or Urban Outfitters as easily as you would a pack of socks. And why not? Many of these PoMo items are now around 40 years old, making them ripe for reissue—a far cheaper option for companies than coming up with something new. Meanwhile, the original designers, if they’re still around, can enjoy a well-deserved victory lap. What was once a subversive force has become a staple of the mainstream, repackaged, rebranded, and sold back to us as quirky decor. Instead of critiquing or resisting mass culture, postmodernism has simply become part of it—proof that even the most subversive ideas can be tamed when there’s a buck to be made.