This can often be the actual experience of it, though. Part of why it's so divisive. Personally I'm on the "looks great, wouldn't want to actually live there" side.

The Barbican is an example of how good it can be when properly maintained by a community. There are plenty of less prestigious examples where the community cheered their demolition.

AFAICT Sam is in the UK, and that is most British people's lived experience of Brutalist architecture in the UK.

Outside of a few notable examples like the Barbican, many towns and cities in the UK were saddled with ugly concrete behemoths that were poorly designed and poorly maintained.

Many of us actually find it very frustrating when people lionize brutalist principles and talk about 'real' brutalism. If a movement is what it does, rather than what it says it aims to do, then brutalism is a movement that left Britain looking dull(er), grey(er), water-stained and with plenty of dark corners and weird spaces that smelled of piss and were havens for petty crime.

Sam's brutalist laptop stand is entirely representative of brutalism as it really played out in many places across the country.