Why does everything want to be Notion?

I’m invested a lot more in UI-aspects of my projects these days; probably because there’s so many different frameworks available there’s no excuse to build a shitty-looking site anymore. I’m still a bit confused about what makes up each part. Components vs CSS frameworks vs everything. It’s a nice problem to have. Back in the day the customary (wrong-headed) thinking among devs was function over form. It was more religion than anything based in actual fact. We all just wanted to work on what we were good at, and who cared about usability, right? Think “Lord of the Rings” but with neck-beards and multi-tools.

But with the embarassment of riches available to us in the world of plug-and-play UI, I’ve noticed something really odd. Everyone (not everyone, but indulge my exaggeration) wants to look like Notion for some reason. Why is that? I’ve used Notion before and found it to be useful, but as far as UI goes I find it pretty easy to ugli-fy it with emoji. It’s clear enough to read, I guess, but so is regular Markdown with a good stylesheet.

This extends beyond web-apps to the iOS/Android world, too. Apps like Craft seem to operate as of Notion is the only style of UI that ever existed. A number of other apps I’ve been looking at lately are following the same style guide, and it’s not a great choice, IMO. The introduction of cross-platform emojis introduces a lot of mess. Sizes and spacing easily get out of whack when you use elements with unenforcable structures.

I’m not saying everthing needs to be monospaced. I’m just saying that Notion, as a baseline UI, seems a little messy to me.