Almost none. Soooooo much of my interest is blatantly and explicitly based on aesthetics.
I was hesitant to post but so many of these responses have been awesome.
Depends. Some at least.
For example, I dug out this old screenshot of how I used to listen to DAB radio, because regular radio receiver is too simple:

Lots of visual stimuli.
You can bet I use --verbose with every command possible.More than I’d care to admit.
Depends on the something. I’m a big fan of 70’s furniture for the look specifically. The rich tones, the wood and brass, it’s damn fine. Same for 3D printing, I love the look and feel of it.
Water cooling computers. Pretty much all aesthetics. It’s expensive, hard to maintain, and isn’t that much better than decent air cooling these days. Looks really cool, and I still want to do a glass tube build.
Would not recommend to anyone else. You really have to want to do this just because.
I’m a furry. I can’t think of any real reason for it other than the aesthetics. 🤷♂️
Function over form for me, honestly speaking. Aesthetics is a bonus to me, unless the aesthetics are absolutely garbage looking.
I like something when it’s looks like it’s from the 2000s. Software? Give me all the info at one screen. Houses? Neighbour’s house in Home Alone. Clothes? Give me the most staurated T shirts and cargo you got.
The architecture in home alone is probably from 50 to 80 years before that.
Now that you say it, it makes sense. Those style of houses and interior would at latest be from the 80’s if not before. But 60, 70, 80 years before? I think that only applies to the actual house.
It’s like saying it’s V E R Y _ W A R M but really it’s just low-poly without textures.

Although it’s as much of a technical thing for me. I want the low-storage-data, rendered in native-res, old (and smart) technique even if everybody else moved on. Also, less to do.
I love the classic terminal. I grew up in the 2000s so everything had GUI but I like the simplicity of using commands and running programs that seem “hidden” to a regular user. Also nerd is my aesthetic and I like nerdy shit
I tried John Carmack’s “program something with just the OpenBSD base system” experiment and after some adjustment I got to like vi (not vim), ksh and bmake. For a long time this stayed my go-to happy place for hobby coding. Fun thing: on a hacker camp they had a PDP/11 running 2BSD and it was just immediately familiar. Same tools, same vi -> Ctrl-Z -> make -> fg workflow.
Very different but similar in a way: I still consider the general Windows 95 - 2000 peak UI design in many ways and I still regularly use Visual C++ 6 to play around with some Win32 programming.
I love old, heavy furniture, and have managed to aquire a lot of nice stuff for free at house clearances by being willing to turn up with a trailer and take something off their hands. I love how it looks, and it really suits our old farmhouse vibe.
But it can be pretty damn annoying to use. Drawers that are a struggle, inefficiently large spaces, and it’s dark and akward to find things in. Sometimes I think about being old and having to downsize, and how I’ll live in a nice bungalow with a fitted kitchen and have closets with lights and spinney gadgets and shit. But til then I’m going to man up and continue wrestling with solid wood armoires.
Aesthetics may draw my attention to something, but I’m mostly a form over function person.
Oh, it’s not subtle. Certain things make me go “Oooooh!”
Hmmm-…

A lot of it I suppose, but it really depends on how broad your definition of ‘esthetic’ is. Visual esthetics are important, but the way interests ‘feel’ are paramount.










