added by Keely Adler and · updated 5mo ago
Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste
- There’s obviously something shallow about trading genuine cultural affinity for cosplay, yet it also reflects an understanding that style can signify a fleeting personal or societal mood more than a fixed identity.
from Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste by time
Keely Adler added 2y ago
- Where good taste is demure, bad taste is bawdy. Where good taste is minimalist, bad taste is maximalist. Where good taste whispers, bad taste screams: “Look! React! Feel!”
from Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste by time
Keely Adler added 2y ago
- What TikTok teens, white collar workers marooned in home offices, and the gatekept super-rich all have in common is the kind of physical isolation, if not the sense of doom, that makes a person desperate just to feel something.
from Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste by time
Keely Adler added 2y ago
- The upshot of taking mass culture seriously has been a growing awareness that much of what we call good taste is merely an aesthetic like any other.
from Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste by time
Keely Adler added 2y ago
- Perhaps the backlash isn’t coming because there’s so clearly nothing of substance to get up in arms about. Who but the dourest prudes are left to trash the bad-taste aesthetic, when we’re all busy trying to shock the pandemic into submission by living—vicariously, if not physically—as if we’re immortal?
from Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste by time
Keely Adler added 2y ago
- We have entered an era of exuberant, even apocalyptic, bad taste. Call it a vibe shift if you must.
from Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste by time
Keely Adler added 2y ago
- It makes sense that norms are shifting in this direction as Gen Z’s influence spreads. Raised on social media, with access to once illicit bad-taste touchstones like Rocky Horror just a click away, they’ve largely replaced IRL subcultures with a constellation of aesthetics—cottagecore, dark academia, Y2K—to be performed, then discarded or demoted t... See more
from Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste by time
Keely Adler added 2y ago
- The old high-low spectrum was policed by people who shared identity markers, experiences, and educational backgrounds, so it reflects their prejudices.
from Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste by time
Keely Adler added 2y ago
- And nothing kills numbness like a sensory onslaught—color, sound, hedonism, melodrama, sleaze.
from Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste by time
Keely Adler added 2y ago