The added complication is that in an age of algorithmic curation, it becomes difficult even to distinguish genuine interest from manufactured preferences. Do you genuinely like Phoebe Bridgers, or do you just like the idea of being someone who likes her? We enter a simulacra of sorts - taste as a copy of a copy of a copy, so detached from any... See more

This creates a tension: the necessity of gatekeeping insider knowledge to preserve the cultural capital of certain spaces butts up against the economic benefits of being the one who shares it with the world. Aided by the algorithm’s ferocious distribution mechanisms, this shrinks the gap between niche renown and cultural omnipresence, which is now... See more

Taste has always had a role in defining class. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that elites use cultural capital to distinguish their social class from others through subtle behaviours. But this is different. This is cultural signalling within the same economic class.

And of course, unlike what you wear, knowledge lives on the inside. So this internal accumulation has to be performed externally through taste, references, opinions. It echoes the boom of platforms like Goodreads or Letterboxd. We no longer enjoy knowledge silently. In a wider culture where value is tied to metrics and monetisation, knowledge that... See more

So instead, status is being fought on different terrain. YoPros in big cities distinguish themselves from one another through what they know, rather than what they earn or own. Through their taste. Through their cultural references.

Put another way, it is class war that created the performative male.

If everything is accessible, nothing is valuable. So status comes from knowing what to know. It’s knowing which books, which artist, which creator filters best for you to consume what “matters”. Those capable of analytical thought outside algorithmic recommendation gain disproportionate power, while the rest sink deeper into passively generated... See more

The link between status signaling and knowledge being externally performed rather than enjoyed silently is sharp. When algorithms mediate so much of what we consume, taste becomes less about authentic affinity and more about strategic curation.

It’s curious that knowledge is having a cultural renaissance at the same moment the institutions that made it accessible to accrue are collapsing. For decades, knowledge was the great democratiser. State investment into public education and cultural infrastructure gave the UK some of its most important contemporary cultural movements: kitchen-sink... See more