Tyler’s connective tissue is his taste: a self-authored operating system he updates, destroys and rebuilds with each project.Each cycle pulls in a slightly different cluster of people: skate kids and Odd Future diehards in one moment, soft-focus internet romantics the next, then luxury-curious preppies, then filmmakers and architecture students.

There’s a strange side effect of algorithmic culture: at scale, irony is indistinguishable from appreciation. Content spreads whether people love it or hate it—so long as they share it.

If you stay within the algorithmic whitewash, you’ll just move with the trend tides — wash in, wash out — forgotten. Paddle out and catch a big one. Maybe you get dumped, maybe it’s the best ride of your life but either way you’ll be remembered for it.

Tyler, The Creator is a master of curation. He never gets caught in an era. As other artists catch up to his sounds, he’s already busy creating the next thing. Letting go to stay ahead is the drum that he bangs.

In the end, taste shouldn’t be an algorithmic formula but a navigational system. Crucially, it’s how artists, audiences and brands learn to move through a landscape where everything looks the same on the surface yet lands very differently in the gut.