Taste

Taste is judgment about what is good: the ability to select, curate and recognise quality. It surfaces in the wiki as a contested word. In February 2026 a run of X articles argued over what it means and whether it is the answer to “what are humans for once the models get good enough?”; in AI-content practice it appears as the part tools cannot supply; and in the long-reads it appears as something that resists being optimised.

The February 2026 argument (mapped in The Taste Debate — February 2026)

• holyn’s “What happened to taste in tech?” holds that taste always mattered in software, citing Apple’s early historians, poets and musicians, and Rick Rubin’s line that he is paid for “the confidence I have in my taste” (Tweet By @Holyn… (tweet)).
• Will Manidis’s “Against Taste” calls the taste thesis “a fundamental demotion” of human agency and contrasts it with patronage, in which the patron “animated the work before it existed” (Tweet By @Willmanidis… (tweet)).
• Karri Saarinen’s “Against ‘Against Taste’” defines taste as “judgment built through experience under constraint”, which tools cannot shortcut, and distinguishes it from passive selection (Tweet By @Karrisaarinen… (tweet)).

Taste in AI content. A condensed memo of seven guides to AI video organises itself around “You can’t prompt your way into taste,” arguing that footage is cheap and judgment is expensive (This Post Literally Shows You… (tweet); it also appears in Building a Following).

In the long-reads

• Infinite Midwit: the “light on the inside” that cannot be quantified or checklisted, and so cannot be optimised toward.
• The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial: taste and strategy as genuinely different pursuits, where choosing taste has a cost.
• You Are What You Consume: repeated small consumption choices as the mechanism that trains a habit of self-examination.

Related concepts: Tastemakers, Curation, Craft. The essay King-Making vs. Taste-Making is the nearest published treatment.

Where this appears

Tweets

• Tweet By @Holyn… (tweet)
• Tweet By @Willmanidis… (tweet)
• Tweet By @Karrisaarinen… (tweet)
• This Post Literally Shows You… (tweet)
• On Care… (tweet)

Long-reads

• Infinite Midwit
• The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial
• You Are What You Consume

Concepts and discourse

• Building a Following
• The Taste Debate — February 2026