Over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself thinking about taste. Not really about whether someone has good taste or bad taste, but about why we build so much of our identity through the cultural objects we choose to display. Books. Films. Clothes. Furniture. Coffee shops. Tote bags. Music. Even opinions.
If you’ve spent any time on the same corner of the internet as I have, you’ve probably seen the recent obsession with taste. Suddenly, it’s everywhere. In a world where ChatGPT knows everything and the internet gives everyone access to the same archive, taste is supposedly what sets you apart.
And I agree. But I also believe we’re talking about the wrong thing.
The way I see it, taste is not aesthetic preference. It's the ability to make independent judgements.
Perhaps that’s why it has become so valuable - taste is one of the only places left where you’re forced to practise trusting your own judgement.
For what it’s worth, I believe taste lives somewhere between instinct and knowledge. It isn’t simply intuition, and it certainly isn’t just information. It’s what happens when curiosity meets experience.
The problem is that, at the very moment we’re celebrating taste as the last thing AI can’t replicate, we’re also flattening it into yet another branding exercise.
I can’t stop thinking about our growing lack of individual taste.
We all seem to be reading the same books, watching the same films, buying the same objects, having the same opinions.
The algorithm isn’t just recommending things anymore; it’s quietly teaching us what we’re supposed to like. And I can’t help but feel it’s lowering the bar.
It’s becoming urgent to break this cycle of sameness; somewhere along the way, fitting in became more desirable than standing out, but we need to develop our own personal taste - instead of celebrating our uniqueness within a group, we’re slowly mirroring each other.
(It also connects to another essay I’ve been quietly writing in the background - something along the lines of To be free is often to be lonely - but that’s a conversation for another day.)
As I was saying, we’ve gradually lost touch with the mechanisms that actually help us develop individual taste.
Some people argue that taste is simply about being deeply curious.
I would argue that curiosity is only part of it; to develop your own taste, you need perspective - and perspective rarely grows inside an algorithm designed to confirm your existing preferences.
I recently came across a sentence by Clayton Chambers on Instagram that has stayed with me:
“To have good taste, you need perspective, and you won’t find perspective on the algorithm.”
I think that’s exactly where the problem lives. I don’t think we’ve lost our ability to develop taste. I think we’ve become disconnected from the environments that allow it to emerge.
Of course, taste has always been socially constructed - we’re influenced by our families, our friends, our cities, the books we read, the people we admire.
None of that is new.
What’s different now is that taste itself has become content, an aesthetic, a marketing strategy, something to perform rather than something to cultivate. Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking: do I actually love this? and started asking: will this version of me make sense online?
The internal filter shifted from resonance to validation. That’s where the tragedy begins: people began curating identities instead of discovering them.
Taste became another optimisation game. It became so coded that it no longer signals discernment - it signals fluency in trends.
Fashion makes this especially visible, but I’m also talking about cinema, painting, photography, books, architecture, design, music, even colours.
A pair of ballet flats doesn’t make someone interesting, nor does carrying a New York Times tote bag, a Moleskine notebook and a copy of Joan Didion.
They’re just signals - the problem is that sometimes they’re honest. More often than we’d like to admit, they’re costumes.
Of course a pair of shoes doesn’t define a personality - and yet... is it really that absurd? Taste has always been one of the languages we use to communicate who we are.
So I guess the question is whether we’re expressing ourselves or simply borrowing someone else’s vocabulary.
Perhaps that's why I can't stop thinking about our growing lack of individual taste.
Eleni di Luzio once said:
Taste is autobiographical. It’s your life, expressed through your eye. It doesn’t come from a curriculum. It comes from boredom, friction, mistakes and time.
I love that.
Some say taste is an innate gift. I don't believe that at all. I think it's a skill.
One built through exposure, critical thinking, lived experience, curiosity, mistakes - above all, attention. We cultivate taste over an entire lifetime; we learn the subtle differences that slowly shape our preferences. We discover not only what we love, but why we love it and, perhaps even more importantly, we learn what we don’t like - and why (because if you can’t explain your own preferences, are they really yours?). Taste isn't about collecting references; it's about developing discernment.
Taste isn’t sexy to build. It’s slow, frustrating, and sometimes embarrassing. There’s a gap between your taste and your ability - and it’s uncomfortable to live in that space.
Jade Conner
Doomscrolling doesn’t build taste; it builds the fear of not belonging, and based on everything I’ve experienced, real belonging asks for exactly the opposite. Real belonging asks you to know yourself, to become yourself; it doesn’t require you to change who you are.
Copy-paste identities don’t represent our lives; they don’t express what moved us when we were twelve, or the exhibition that quietly changed how we look at colour. Or the film we hated the first time but couldn’t stop thinking about afterwards. Or the book that arrived at exactly the right moment. Those things cannot be reverse-engineered.
Taste cannot be downloaded; it can’t be prompted, it can’t be bought.
So go offline.
Read books nobody recommended. Walk into galleries because you’re curious. Talk to people who disagree with you. Follow artists because their work genuinely moves you - not because everyone else already does. Surround yourself with people and projects that set a high bar.
The more greatness you experience, the sharper your judgement becomes. The sharper your taste becomes.
Taste is built slowly, often by changing your mind, so take your time.
In a world increasingly generated by machines, perhaps cultivating your own judgement isn’t a luxury anymore, just another survival skill.
Perhaps what we're really missing isn't taste. It's critical thinking.
Reclaim your taste.
Protect your judgement.