You didn't pick iPhone because of specs.
You picked it because everyone around you had one. Or because everyone around you had one and you wanted to be different. Either way, the choice wasn't yours. It was a reaction to a consensus you never voted for.
That’s…. not taste. That's taste operating on you.
Last week we unpeeled taste like it's this thing you cultivate. <**read here**> This superpower. The edge everyone suddenly needs in ‘the era of AI.’
What about the taste you inherited? The hierarchies you never questioned. The rules you follow without knowing who wrote them.
Most of your taste isn't personal. It's social.

Why does B2B sound like a board meeting and D2C sound like a text from a friend?
Not an accident. Enterprise software in the 90s was sold to VPs who wanted to feel important. The language evolved to stroke egos. Serious. Professional. Solutions-oriented.
That became the taste standard. The blueprint everyone copied without asking why.
Now if a B2B brand tries to sound edgy and frank, it feels unprofessional. The hierarchy decided casual isn't serious, and serious… costs more.
The taste rule keeps everyone in line.
Hermès doesn't make better bags than a $200 brand. They make bags that signal you can afford $20,000. The product is fine. The signal is the product. We all agreed to: Scarcity equals value. High price equals luxury. Accessible equals cheap.
Telfar tried to flip it. "It's not for you, it's for everybody." Luxury at accessible prices. The fashion world didn't know what box to put it in. It broke the hierarchy.
Luxury isn't a quality tier. It's a social agreement that got so embedded, we forgot someone made it up.
Same with "professional." Same with "premium." Same with "credible."
**Exposure outruns efforts **
You think you like that song because it's good.
You heard it 47 times. Cafés. TikTok. Instagram Reels. Your brain coded it as correct.
Helvetica feels clean and timeless because you've seen it a million times. Papyrus feels cheap because yoga studios overused it in 2009. Same mechanism. Different exposure levels.
Millennial gray. Subway tile. Farmhouse sinks. Open-concept kitchens.
None of these are objectively better design choices. Endless content made them ubiquitous. Ubiquitous became aspirational. Aspirational became taste.
Now they feel dated. Aesthetic didn’t change. Volume did.
Your taste is downstream of what you're exposed to. Tho exposure is controlled by platforms, algorithms, and media. Not you.
Finance, trust fund, 6'5, blue eyes.
Compressed taste. A whole personality flattened into a uniform.
Stereotypes are taste that stopped evolving. Shortcuts that worked so well, they became costumes.
Black turtleneck means tech visionary. Oversized blazer with tiny sunglasses means creative. Patagonia vest means finance bro who peaked in 2015.
Once taste becomes a costume, it stops being taste. It's cosplay. (performing, not expressing, you know!)
Supreme box logo used to mean you were deep in the culture. Then it meant you waited in line. Then it meant you bought it off StockX. The taste signal flipped. What used to mean "insider" now means "you paid for access."
The internet is full of "how to develop your personal style" guides that all recommend the same five things. Neutral tones. Quality basics. Timeless pieces.
Timeless according to who?
Timeless because it's been repeated so many times, it feels safe?
Safe isn't taste. Safe is the absence of it.
Rejecting taste is still taste
"I don't care about aesthetics."
That sentence is dripping with taste. Not caring is a position. Positions are taste.
Anti-design is design. Craigslist. Drudge Report. Old Reddit. Refusing to polish is a choice. That choice signals something. To someone, it means authenticity. To someone else, it means you're not serious.
Both are taste readings.
Choosing the default is still a choice. Google Docs with Times New Roman and zero formatting. That communicates something. Maybe you didn't intend it. Still counts.
Zuckerberg's gray t-shirts aren't "no taste." They're "I have so much taste I eliminated variables." That's a flex. Taste as constraint and control.
Meanwhile, someone wearing graphic tees with ironic slogans is also making a taste call. Different aesthetic. Same mechanism.
You can't opt out. Even opting out is participation.

SO WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY DO WITH THIS?

Audit your taste for inherited bullshit.
Ask yourself:

• Do I actually like this, or do I like that other people like this?

• Would I choose this if no one was watching?

• Am I following a hierarchy I never questioned?
  Strip away the likes. The comments. The group chat validation.
  What's left?
  Notice.
  Why you chose the window seat. Why you skipped that song halfway through. Why you reworded that text three times.
  The noticing is the work. Paying attention to patterns you're already running.
  Taste sharpens when you make things. It doesn't form in private. You test, fail, notice why. That's the education.
  Then, choose one hierarchy to break.
  Wear the thing that doesn't fit your industry. Choose the "wrong" font. Write the post that sounds nothing like your feed.
  That gap between your taste and consensus? Exactly where your point of view lives.
  Your job isn't to convince everyone. It's to trust it long enough to see if you were right.
  See you next week. 🥝