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Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste"

Kyle Chayka · 26 Mar 2026 · kylechayka.substack.com

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  1. A.I. companies need to associate themselves with taste precisely because their tools are not very palatable, much less cool, to anyone outside of Silicon Valley.
  2. We might call what's going on now "taste-washing," an attempt to give anti-humanist technologies a veneer of liberal humanism.
  3. Another conclusion might be that the online ecosystem has become so polluted-so fragmented, deceptive, overstimulating, ersatz-that it has warped our ability to exercise taste at all.