What is taste and how do you get it?
On slowmaxxing, staying curious and cultivating good taste
In my grandma’s care home, there is a shelf filled with old VHS tapes of classic cult films; Blue Velvet, Scarface, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. They belong to Malcolm, a retired solicitor my mum admits to having a small crush on, even though he’s, like, 80 years old. Yet he’s still such a catch because he can talk about books and films and music with so much knowledge and passion. In short, he has taste.
So, new life goal unlocked; I have to have the best taste in the care home one day, for some reason.
Taste is the basis of our relationship to art and culture. It shapes our worldview and sense of self. Historically, ‘good taste’ has been wielded to reinforce existing privilege. In Josh Cook’s 2023 Lit Hub essay, ‘On The Binary of" “Good” and “Bad” Literature’, he writes that, “The biggest difference between the humane good taste I’m trying to cultivate and the weaponised good taste used as a tool of cultural authoritarianism is the latter is something you have and the former is something you do.”
What I mean by cultivating taste is going out of your way to discover things you love rather than relying on all of it coming directly to you through arbitrary, mainstream — often algorithmic — forces. Recent online discourse has been overstating the role of privilege in access to art and culture today as an excuse to not engage with challenging works. The internet exists! It is literally all at your fingertips!
With this in mind, here is my guide to cultivating good taste in 2025. It is not the best way or the only way, it is just a way.
Be an obsessive, precocious, pretentious teenager (preferably with a huge individuality complex and a burgeoning social media addiction.)
This will form the beating heart of your taste. So develop obsessions that keep you up all night. Spend too much time online. Participate in some form of stan culture. Let it get in the way of your schoolwork. Good taste is more important than good grades.
You will probably never let go of loving the stuff you loved as a teenager, so make sure what you love isn’t shit. If you feel like you already missed the boat here, read on.
Never (ever) say there’s no good music/cinema/fashion/literature anymore.
The quickest way to sound old and out of touch is to complain that no good art is coming out these days. (Honestly, if I start saying this, know it’s time to take me out the back and shoot me.) If you’re not satisfied with the mainstream offerings then seek out stuff you do like!!
Have a complex with relationship with personal style.
Have many, many outfit disasters. If people comment on them, tell them it’s camp. Don’t buy fast fashion. Stay chameleonic. Don’t subscribe to trends or subcultures unless you’re using them as a portal for discovery. Never stop having outfit disasters. If you do, you’re playing it too safe.
Look for connections in everything.
Find something you love then follow your nose. Read your favourite author’s favourite books, listen to your favourite artist’s favourite music and watch your favourite director’s favourite films. Then start making your own connections. Your taste will become a complex web of cultural touchpoints.
Spend some time partying too much.
Don’t equate staying indoors reading and watching films with having good taste. The people I know with the best taste are party girls or reformed party girls. Go out often. Go out too much. Chat to strangers in smoking areas. Listen to different music in different settings. Go to a rave in a warehouse and realise you’re not above listening to electronic music — there have been many such cases. After some time partying too much, reign it back in. It’s hard to engage deeply with art if you’re in bed hungover all the time.
Don’t confuse taste with consumption and personal branding.
Are you a Joan Didion-pilled, Carrie Bradshaw-coded Substack thought daughter? Or does that sentence make you want to stick pins in your eyes? Resist the commercial urge for personal branding and aesthetics. Spend less time worrying about carving out a hyper-specific niche. You’re your own niche. Stay eclectic.
Don’t like things just because they are cool. Like things because they are uncool. Uncool ≠ not good (ie. The Muppet Christmas Carol, Taylor Jenkins Reid books, some Taylor Swift songs etc.)
Read magazines (voraciously and in print, when you can.)
If I can credit any offline factor with developing my taste as a teenager, it was reading magazines (voraciously and in print.) Solely consuming news and features via social media or online magazines can be overwhelming. Not to mention the amount of clickbait and content for the sake of content (and I say this as someone who has written both at some point.)
Some of my favourite print magazines at the moment; The Fence, Polyester, Bricks and Crack (not just saying this because I work there.) Vintage magazines on eBay and Etsy are also a goldmine; The Face, Playboy, Sleazenation.
Consume less short form media. Embrace slowmaxxing instead.
2025 is for reading books that are 500+ pages long, watching films with subtitles and listening to albums the whole way through. Anything that forces you to be more present. Resist the urge to move onto the next thing as quickly as possible.
Go to art in times of crisis.
Struggling to get out of bed? Watch a film. Play some music. Pick up a book. Watch as your own problems disipate as you’re absorbed in the problems of people you don’t know. It’s like magic. This is a prime example of the voracious reader child to mentally ill young adult pipeline, but people are really cringe and annoying about this.
Avoid obsessing over logging and sharing.
I love Letterboxd and Goodreads as much as the next person — probably more, actually. I’ve been logging away since 2012, but I’m trying to ween myself off from reaching for my phone the second the credits roll. If logging encourages you to read and watch more and find art you love then that’s not a bad thing. But avoid using these apps to chase cultural validation or craft a personal brand. Don’t spend the whole reading or watching experience distracted by thinking up a rating or pithy review.
Read reviews (not just on Letterboxd/Goodreads.)
Read and watch reviews from professional critics. This isn’t to shape your opinion or understanding, but to deepen it. One thoughtful, well-written review is worth a hundred tongue-in-cheek, horny, irony-fuelled Letterboxd reviews.
Make your own art, even if you don’t share it.
Write bad poetry. Paint messily. Sing out of tune. Take iPhone photos of random shit you see on your way to work. Learn three guitar chords then play them over and over. Bad art is punk. Resist the capitalist pressure for all creation to be good and productive. Social media has made unintentionally unrefined art feel embarrassing.
We were never meant to see so many people doing things so well. It’s better to create bad art than to create nothing at all. You don’t have to share anything. Unless you do it badly for so long that you accidentally start doing it so well that you want to share it with the world.
Was this whole post a build up to me sharing my outdated 2024 lists? Maybe!
Some things I loved in 2024:
Books:
Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex by Sophia Giovannitti
Milk Teeth by Jessica Andrews
Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh
Berg by Ann Quin
Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker
A Stream Of Life by Clarice Lispector
It Lasts Forever And Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken
Films:
The Apartment (1960)
Little Women (1994)
I Saw The TV Glow (2024)
Le Bonheur (1965)
Polyester (1981)
La Chimera (2023)
Revenge (2017)
Past Lives (2023)
Romance (1999)
Albums:
Great Doubt - Astrid Sonne
Tristwch Y Fenywood - Tristwch Y Fenywood
Lily of the Valley - 22° Halo
Backstage Raver - Joanne Robertson, Dean Blunt
World of Work - Clarissa Connelly
40 - Jawnino
Endlessness - Nala Sinephro
Allt Sem Hefur Gerst - Supersport!
iiyo iiyo iiyo - Sam Wilkes
Greatest Hits - Double Virgo
this inspired me so so much!! Xx
this essay is all i want to become 💗