Brutalism has one redeeming feature: It is durable. If you like brutalism for its overkill in structural durability, that's perfectly reasonable. A bird can shatter a glass wall flying into it, but a nice yard-thick cement one?

An additional plus to brutalism is it is extremely simple and straightforward. Every design is "box", except the REALLY creative ones, which is "cylinder". That makes it much harder to screw up and turn into a ticking deathtrap when postmodernist intersectional studies majors get hired as architects because we live in hell. They are postmodernists, they can make only pain, failure, and despair, so diverting their output into entirely "despair" can possibly spare the pain and failure aspects.

The Wall is a bit of a combination modernist-brutalism mix. It's all exposed metal and cylinders, and can look perfectly impressive, for its purpose in demoralizing those who'd attempt to cross it, intimidate those near it, and fuel despair in those around it.

I am still trying to figure out who unironically likes Brutalism.

(Shrug)

My understanding is Ghetto in the Sky has never had difficulty staying near capacity.

I am still trying to figure out who unironically likes Brutalism. Other than Tankies of course.

Accountants. Brutalist structures, having the ability to be thrown up from pre-fab concrete slabs, make for brilliant cheap, utterly shite, mass housing. That's why tankies love them.

Me. I unironically think it looks cool when done sparingly and well. For a good example, look at the game Control. That being said, I also like the hyper modern aesthetic alongside more classical architecture.

Most brutalist architecture looks like absolute dogshit, and doesn’t match the purpose of the building so like why?

I enjoy looking at pictures of Brutalist architecture, even stuff like in the OP, because I'm from eastern Europe, I grew up in this kind of environment, and it gives me nostalgic feelings. You can take a nice picture of a Brutalist building, with good lighting, and when I see one of these, it reminds me of childhood.

Also by the way, that photo of the commieblocks in the OP looks terrible, but it's taken in winter and there's a crane. At least in my town, these commieblocks might look ugly on their own, but commies had the advantage of not having to worry about property rights, so these high-rise apartment blocks are surrounded by greenery. Trees and parks and big patches of grass aren't part of brutalism, but they're linked together in my mind because that's how it was done here.

Nowadays, modern property developers mostly build shit where the buildings look as ugly as these, if not worse, and on top of that there's not a single tree in sight, because they have to pay for land and it's expensive. I'm far right, but I honestly shudder to think what the housing situation in this country would be like today if literal fucking Bolsheviks didn't spend half a century building Panelaky.

I do love modern efforts to build with actual aesthetics, though. Hungary seems to be making huge steps forward there.

They don't want diversity of thought. It's why everything creative they do (architecture, fiction, etc.) turns out the same.

Your linked example is universally reviled andthere have been tonnes of petitions for it to be torn down.

It looks interesting the first time you see it, and depressing the next 100.

Eh, it's like the cubicle thing. Office cubicles were originally invented as a way to improve the workspace ... but they lend themselves so easily to cubicle farms that that's the way they are just about universally implemented.

Similarly, Brutalist architecture doesn't have to be implemented as some abomination you'd never choose for something you actually use ... but it almost always gets implemented that way.