I'm sitting under a tree on the riverside. The grass is bright green, only the occasional puddles remind the viewer of the flooding that took over the green just two days ago. Fall is coming, the yellow patches interrupting the green curtain of leaves are testament to that. If you close your eyes a little, and the colors blur, it looks like an impressionist painting capturing the essence of ephemerality.

Trees pulling nutrients from their rich green clothing to store it for winter. Yet, today, as if reminiscing summer, the sun is shining brightly, and the beer garden - its usual territory still flooded - has set up store on the cycle path next to it.

The smell of barbecued sausages is mixing with a whiff of wildflower's perfume, dressed up in vibrant colors, going all out before the gloomy days of autumn and winter will turn it all into a melange of grey and brown.

That's the backdrop to my thoughts today. I don't know why, but with all that talk about taste eating Silicon Valley, and Rileys' comment that even essays are now part of the microtrend cycle, I couldn't help but conclude that this too shall be replaced soon by something else eating SV.

Tbh, my bet is on SV eating itself.

Taste - what even is that and how does a person go about finding theirs?

A question on my mind for some time.

They say you can argue about taste, but that's a futile endeavour. We like what we like. You can try and convince another person why they should adopt similar preferences to yours, or feel superiority in your taste - whatever that means - or simply acknowledge that it's true. We can argue, but not come to a conclusion.

The taste referred to in the essay was largely speaking to some sort of aestheticism. Applied to brands, this means they need to look and feel tasteful. So that, the educated user will feel like this isn't just a product, but they're signing up to something that allows them to elevate their life.

That's barely news to me. I mean, ever since we got too many products that people don't actually need produced by companies that still want to grow, marketing has become a means of achieving that.

Instilling desire where it didn't exist before is the way to do that.

That's also why in alcohol ads you'll see happy people at a party or captains sailing through rough waters without breaking a sweat or healthy kids in chocolate marketing.

Sure, we all want to be happy and healthy.

Depending on what you buy, you can signal status -especially when hosting people. Although, I'd argue, if someone told me, they absolutely love the $5 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from Aldi, who are we to judge.

Maybe we should congratulate them instead for not giving into the peer pressure of buying fancy wines whose price dynamic is influenced largely by short supply and marketing, not its enhanced gourmet value. If they serve it from a different bottle to mislead their snobby peers, honestly, they deserve a medal of honor.

But I digress.

Back to taste.

Finding one's own, is more than just following the crowds. It's not a coincidence to me that you can "acquire" taste or tend to it.

It's also about much more than choosing your browser based on which company has the nicest gradient grainy background in their marketing materials and therefore is signalling... taste.

That's nice to have. And "soft" selling points like your use positioning you as edgy, certainly matter a lot in our system of sign, especially when you could live just as well without the thing. At the end, SV platforms will still need to deliver an actual product.

Else they're just putting lipstick on a pig. Still a pig.

Sorry to the pigs, it might be a little offensive to compare them with Silicon Valley tastemakers.

I don't believe SV bros will become stewards of taste anytime soon. Considering what they did to culture, it's in our best interest if they don't. Plus, I don't even think taste scales that well...

"How do you even find new things you like?"

One of those casual questions I jumped at a friend, whose main source of book recommendations has become BookTok.

I got here into reading, so I am part to blame.

Eventually, the conclusion of our discussion around defining one's taste was that, doing so outside of the algo's recommendations was exhausting.

This goes beyond books.

The way we find things we like is also how we limit the potential options to build our taste on.

After some contemplation, I recalled a scene from the movie "Vengeance". You'd think it's about bloodshed, and human drama, but for me it registered more under culture critique.

In one scene, the protagonist of the movie who's in Texas to investigate the murder of a woman he had hooked up with - talks to a local record producer.

Producer: "So what music do you like?

Journalist: "Hmmmm"

Producer: "I bet you're a playlist guy. You listen to playlists and you genuinely like the music. Then you listen to the next one put together based on your favorites. You get more of what you like without even knowing who sings."

Obviously, in that scene the journalist admitted to that.

Yet it got even better.

"Playlists are like dating apps for music. You're not hearing other voices, just your own voice played back at you. How are you supposed to fall in love?"

How did we go from taste to love?

It's quite simple. Taste is an accumulation of our personal preferences. It's deeply individual, as we all bring our own backgrounds to a piece of art, or a piece of cake.

"What makes great art depends on who we are and what we live through. It depends on our feelings. It's easy to forget love."

Claire Dederer in Monsters

When we love something, it's not rational.

That's why taste can be fought over without any resolution. We love what we love, not for rational reasons. We do so because of something deep inside us. The unconscious maybe, the feelings the work generates in us.

And like with love, Taste isn't something to passively consume.

"Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an ordination of character which determines the relatedness of the person to the whole world as a whole, not toward one object of love."

Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving

Taste is something to build and acquire. An act of commitment if you will.

Sure you can signal it by buying whatever sells for a lot. You can hang up a Beeple in your room to impress everyone visiting.

And maybe the people will even say "oh wow, what a stunning piece" while cringing inside.

You can't fake loving something you don't for too long.

So maybe don't.

And if taste is indeed an act of love, should we really be sourcing it out to Silicon Valley?

Or anyone else entirely for that matter?

Life is rich. It's worth spending time on finding stuff you love.

Who knows, the next thing you fall in love with might not be related at all to the things you love now.

It could be a song played by a street musician, or a graffiti you discover on your walk home. It might be a book left behind by someone in the train, or an essay shared with you by a friend.

P.S: I'm not anti-playlist. I'm just against purely passive consumption of them. If you end up finding songs on playlists you really like, it pays off to find the artist, and check out their other recordings. I've found quite a bit of music that I love that way. And through friends who send me theirs. If taste is about love, so is curating. I even made a Life is cruel but also beautiful playlist recently. You can find it here.

P.P.S: If someone tells you you shouldn't enjoy a certain piece of art anymore because the artist was a misogynist, antisemite, criminal or otherwise culturally cancellable - tell them that, the heart wants what it wants. And anyway, people shouldn't look to consumption as the place for ethical gestures.

Thanks for reading 💚