A taste of taste

If you’re reading this, you clearly have impeccable taste. 

Which is good, because it turns out this is now very important. Silicon Valley tech bros have become the unlikely champions of taste, with the term now so ubiquitous among a certain set that the New Yorker compared it to how “disruption” was thrown around in the previous decade. 

In a world where anyone can create anything, taste is now the ‘moat’ that separates success from slop.  There’s even concern that AI systems will have poor taste, conjuring an image of Claude decorating a lonely virtual apartment with art from Kmart and IKEA.

The question of taste is seeping into everything. The FT asks whether not having a TV is a signifier of good taste. Dazed wonders about outsourcing taste to let AI choose your next tattoo. The Guardian states that cream sherry is a forgotten taste worth rediscovering…wait, no, different kind of taste.

As with so many buzzwords, taste seems to have quickly lost its meaning. The tech bro definition of taste is a data-driven understanding of what customers actually want, discovered through market research.

That’s not taste. That’s demand. Taste is not what lots of people want, it’s what a few people do that influences what others like and replicate. Using market research to define taste is going far downstream of what taste is. By the time the masses define it, it’s almost certainly on the way out.  

This is hardly surprising. From clothing to innovation, Silicon Valley has become increasingly iterative. Defining taste as what sells is a natural evolution. 

The taste conversation will get boring fast, if it hasn’t already. But as more provocations and thinkpieces spill forth, it’s comforting to know that taste remains an ineffable, human experience.