In good taste?

Taste as status signaling versus attentive self-awareness

Dear Friends,

Is taste merely a social construct to signal our status? Or is it a window into our essential self?

Before diving in, I’d love to hear about one of your favorite pieces of culture from this past year: a movie, magazine article, podcast, TV show, art exhibit, performance, anything.

I’ll start:

My favorite movie of the year was Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days about Hirayama, a Japanese toilet cleaner. Since he hardly speaks, only his tastes offer glimpses of his personality. His cassette tapes — Patti Smith, The Kinks, Lou Reed — suggest an introspective rebel. Each night before sleeping on his futon, he reads stories by William Faulkner, Patricia Highsmith, and Aya Kōda, hinting at a rich but unknowable inner world.¹

In the final scene, he drives into the sunrise, listening to Nina Simone’s Feeling Good, and experiencing that overwhelming emotion of the right song at the right moment. He smiles, laughs, cries. And I cried too, tears streaming down my cheeks while watching the movie alone on my iPad.

The movie reminded me that taste is more powerful than mere trends; it shapes how our experiences.

Do I have good taste?

I was recently in San Diego, where I rediscovered the taste of my 20s. (Somehow in my 30s and early 40s, I convinced myself I was “too busy for taste.”)²

At my favorite cafe in Golden Hill, I pulled out my Midori paper journal, and wrote out my taste in fashion, music, cinema, novels … even some of my favorite objects and software.

Then I read back over the list and wondered, huh, I wonder if I have good taste or bad taste? Am I a basic bitch or a hipster snob? And really, who cares?

People care a lot! Why taste matters

Ezra Klein suggests that our taste will set us apart as AI devalues our intelligence. In the age of algorithmic sameness, taste becomes both a commodity and an act of resistance.

But taste isn’t always so noble. As Samantha Irby writes in a funny essay, it can also make people feel shitty:

One of the tools that people who are shitheads use to make people who are not feel like shit is the casual dismissal of things those people like …

People really are shitheads. (Sorry, Chi, for making fun of Shawn Mendes.)

There is no such thing as bad taste, just a lack of curiosity

For me, bad taste doesn’t exist—only a lack of curiosity. I am bummed when a tourist shows no interest in the local cuisine. Or when my barber, baker, or barista doesn’t know what’s on the stereo: “Oh, I dunno, some random Spotify playlist.”³

But let’s admit without judgment, we’re all tempted by algorithmic playlists. They’re almost always good enough, and sometimes they’re even great. But mostly they are mindless background noise.

Real taste comes from intention and curiosity. As Kirby Ferguson argues in a recent video, we can break through algorithmic sameness by seeking art that moves us.

And he’s so right: Once we develop our taste with intention and curiosity, we break through the algorithmic homogeneity and rediscover culture that affects us deeply, changing the way we see the world and ourselves.⁴

Cultivating desire, taste, and selfhood

Tahirah Hairston

’s Substack,

Ridiculous Little Things

, captures this beautifully. She writes:

We are humans with a sense of belonging, so we are always going to be signaling something about who we are in hopes of attracting the appreciation and acceptance from those we want to be in community with. But, many people don’t have taste because they are more interested in getting it right, which results in copying and pasting an aesthetic, than in taking the risk of being themselves.

Cultivating my taste has meant honoring a commitment to remain curious about the world, to indulge my desire to learn as much as I can about something that piques my attention, to be unafraid to change my mind.

Tahirah on the left, her great-great grandmother on the right

Taste, for Tahirah, isn’t about projecting an image but about deepening self-awareness. Each month, she interviews someone about their taste, concluding with the same question: “What does it mean to have taste?”

Mexico City-based writer Ana Karina Zatarain responds:

Taste is a cool and casual assertion of self-knowledge. It's a lack of anxiety — knowing what things and ideas interest me and honing them for the pleasure of it, and being able to appreciate different aesthetics without needing to align myself with them.

At first, I wondered how Ana Karina exudes such confidence and self-awareness. Then I blinked and saw another slender figure posing just so in stiletto high heels. Is she genuinely in touch with her authentic self? Or is she—are we all?— performing what magazine marketing and algorithmic advertising want from us?⁵

Confident self-awareness satisfying desire? Or glossy aspirational consumerism? How do we know!?

Taste at its worst and best

I understand Scott Alexander’s skepticism that taste is anything more than a way to signal status and make others feel small. At its worst, that’s exactly what taste is.

But at its best, taste is about paying close attention to what truly brings us joy. The anonymous author of

sympathetic opposition

suggests that “good taste” is the natural result of spending time deeply engaged with a medium. If you read 100 novels a year, your taste in literature evolves; if you design dozens of user interfaces, you develop a refined eye for detail.

That’s the definition of taste I aspire to — awareness about what gives me pleasure, and greater attention to detail through joyful repetition.

Sharing taste with friends makes life more interesting

One of my closest friends and I have wildly different personalities but similar niche tastes.⁶ (In March, we’re headed to the Big Ears Festival with 1,000 or so others who share our love of slow, improvisational music, film, and performance.)

It’s a gift to dive deep into culture with someone who knows you well. But I’ve learned not to limit myself to those who share my tastes. Thanks to

Iris Calderon

, I have more of a sensibility for fabrics, fibers, and dyes. A neighbor has introduced me to the world of glassblowing. And

Michael Bateman

even convinced me to give Charli XCX a listen (though, no, I’m still not a convert).

In 2025, I’d like to be more intentional and less dismissive about taste and sensibility. I want to savor it slowly in the company of friends who appreciate an unhurried commitment to self-awareness, desire, and pleasure.

What do you think? Would you share some of your tastes with me?

Yours,

David

PS: This is the last newsletter of 2024. See you in 2025 with a reflection on the poor performance of my 2024 predictions, and new predictions for 2025. Happy holidays.

PPS: Many thanks to Dulce, Revaz,

Kiet T

, Hackim, Crystal,

Iris Calderon

, and

Alejandro De La Cruz

for their comments on a draft that helped improve this week’s newsletter.

1. My friend Dulce, influenced by Bourdieu’s writing on taste and class, reminded me that part of Hirayama’s appeal is he is a working-class toilet cleaner with high-brow taste. But then we learn that he grew up upper class, and his taste was the one part of his former life he couldn’t give up. Jonathan Menjivar produced a great podcast, Classy, about the opposite trajectory — growing up working class and developing upper-class taste.

2. Barack Obama famously told Michael Lewis that he only wore two kinds of suits so that he wouldn’t waste time or energy deciding what to wear. More recently, he’s become something of a fashionista.

3. Fortunately, my barber Jerry always knows precisely what’s on the stereo.

4. I loved

Max Read

’s review of Kyle Chayka’s Filterworld: If you’re so worried about algorithms making culture boring, then why not just get off the algorithms? Go to bookstores, subscribe to Substacks, ask friends for podcast recs. (Also, the idea of an international McDonalds with all the menu items from all McD’s around the world is so good.)

5. Food writer

Alicia Kennedy

writes, “It’s hard to know what we really like in this world, what we’re really responding to when we see someone’s outfit and it looks like it jumped straight off of TikTok.” She suggests that only our tastebuds stay true: “It’s why food is so good for bringing us back to ourselves, to real life: we either like it or we don’t. You can’t pretend.”

“What really matters is what you like, not what you are like… Books, records, films—these things matter. Call me shallow, but it’s the fucking truth.” ~ Rob Gordon in High Fidelity

6.