Taste as Resistance to Algorithms

Taste dictates what music you listen to, your favorite food, your drink of choice, your clothing style, the books you read, the TV series you follow, the movies you watch — and rewatch. How you speak, how you flirt, how you react to other people. How you present yourself to the world. Beyond that, taste dictates who you're friends with, and that's either because they match what you value, or because you appreciate their own taste. In some wonderful cases, it's both of these things. Social media goes against all that. There are two agents in social media that facilitate finding cool things: influencers and the algorithm. Influencers Influencers pretend to be the modern equivalent of a tastemaker, the old character that curated things related to their passion: records, restaurants, movies, books, clothing. These individuals put a lot of work into finding gems and proudly showing them to the world. They had a reputation earned through their effort and their taste. Current influencers…