Taste Now

Taste used to be a gate. You had to travel to see the painting. You had to subscribe to read the journal. You had to know someone to hear the record. The scarcity was the curriculum. Access was education. To have seen something was already to have demonstrated taste.

The internet destroyed the gate. Everything became available. Every painting, every record, every out-of-print book, every obscure film — all streaming, all searchable, all free. The gate was not merely opened. It was vaporized.

And taste, suddenly, meant nothing. Or meant everything. If anyone could see anything, then seeing was no longer a sign. The old markers collapsed. The collector was replaced by the algorithm. The curator was replaced by the recommendation engine. Taste became traffic.

But taste did not disappear. It mutated. It stopped being about what you could find and started being about what you could refuse. In a world of total access, the act of choosing not to consume is the only act that means anything. Restraint is the new taste.

Post-internet taste is not about knowing more. It is about caring less about knowing more. It is about building a room with fewer things in it and insisting that the fewer things matter. It is about the confidence to say: this is enough. This is where I stop.

The feed will always offer you more. Taste is the ability to close the tab.