Kyle Chayka

You can't say 10.

It would be tasteless to say 10.

And I think you have taste in different areas, right?

Like my fashion taste, I would not say is that amazing.

My contemporary art taste, I would give myself an 8.5 at least.

Thank you.

Do we qualify as tastemakers?

This would be a great title for a lost Susan Sontag essay, I think.

What do we talk about when we talk about taste?

So the piece I wrote was talking about this kind of fad for Silicon Valley tech people to talk about taste.

And I think there's a difference between what they mean and what a lot of people mean.

And I think what they seem to mean is this instrumental, functional idea of having taste in what makes money, basically.

But I prefer to think of a deeper, more fundamental idea of taste, which is

What do we think is beautiful?

What moves us?

What feels like part of ourselves?

Like, what has changed our lives?

And I think that's what most people think of when they're really thinking about their own taste.

I think so.

I mean, I think as Kate was saying, you can't really have taste without other people and without a community of people experiencing things with you.