After being traded to the Philadelphia Eagles, NFL quarterback Kenny Pickett sold the house he had built just two years previously in order to move across the state. And when people caught sight of his home's $2.7 million real estate listing, they flocked to online forums to ogle its excessive size.
One such forum was the subreddit r/McMansionHell, which is dedicated to mocking the large, cheaply built homes that have become so popular over recent decades. Investopedia defines McMansions as the "overly large and opulent mass-produced homes that lack architectural authenticity or class … [and] are considered generic and a cliched reflection of new wealth and superficial lifestyle."
And indeed, commenters on the subreddit were quick to criticize Pickett's extravagant home; one person called it "hideous."
"5 car garage, 3 turrets, a giant staircase in front of the door Gone With the Wind style. What is the ugliest carpeting you can find?" another user joked. "Oh, and chop down every tree for a quarter mile in every direction."
Someone else said, "This is what happens when you hire an AI as your architect."
An article about the six-bedroom house on Realtor.com said it had a footprint of 8,750 square feet. "The main bedroom feels like a separate apartment, complete with an enormous walk-in closet, a fireplace, and a small living room with bookcases and a library ladder," it reported, adding that the home also included a four-car garage.
Aside from panning the aesthetics, people express distaste in this style of home for many environmental reasons. The primary issue is the sheer size. A McMansion generates a significantly larger climate footprint than a smaller home, both via the resources used to power it and the size of the lot. And considering the median new home in the United States has more than doubled in size in the last century, per The Hustle, this is — pun intended — a big issue.
The best solution, experts say, is to build homes that are designed to be energy efficient over their lifetimes, with low-pollution systems and equipment and appliances such as heat pumps, solar panels, and induction stoves.
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