Running a newsletter like DD is, at its core, an expression of taste. It’s me saying, ‘Here’s what I think deserves your attention this week.’ A process that Stepfanie Tyler describes beautifully in her piece on taste as the new intelligence:

“Curation is care. It says: I thought about this. I chose it. I didn’t just repost it. I didn’t just regurgitate the trending take. I took the time to decide what was worth passing on.”

She defines taste as “a deep internal coherence. A way of filtering the world through intuition that’s been sharpened by attention.” It isn’t about aesthetic snobbery or cultural capital – it’s about developing an internal compass that can navigate the endless noise.

“Taste is how you protect your mental environment. When you sharpen your discernment, you stop being swayed by trends. You stop needing consensus. You stop reacting to every new thing like it’s urgent.”

Our ‘personalised’ feeds, paradoxically, made our tastes boringly predictable and our attention spans alarmingly short. The content algorithms have flattened our sensory experience, training us to crave whatever triggers the quickest dopamine hit rather than what actually nourishes us. Tyler calls for a kind of principled withdrawal from this.

“Most people online are just echoing whatever is already echoing. Repeating frameworks. Recycling language. Riding hashtags. But taste requires subtraction. It means not participating in every viral moment. It means not resharing something just because it’s getting attention. It means opting out of the churn. That doesn’t mean being contrarian for the sake of it. It means noticing when the culture’s default setting no longer reflects what’s true for you – and walking away.”

Developing taste isn’t about consuming more thoughtfully – it’s about ruthlessly opting out of systems designed to exploit our worst impulses.

“Taste is how you teach the world to treat your attention. Taste is how you live a congruent life. Not in the sense of brand consistency, but in the sense of spiritual alignment. You can change your mind. Explore new spaces. But your values stay intact. Your center holds. And in a world where the cheapest dopamine wins by default, taste is how you opt out. Not to impress anyone. But to protect your soul.”

So, welcome back to this short weekly exercise in taste-making – my attempt to protect both my soul and yours from the algorithmic wasteland. – Kai

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