Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: Taste, Tasteslop & Tabis

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Hello EIChloe Sevignys, this week, one of the big cultural talking points is can AI ever replicate taste? And should we all be actively protecting our own, regardless of how good or bad it is?In March, Kyle Chayka wrote a piece for The New Yorker titled: Why Tech Bros Are Now Obsessed with Taste. In it, he quoted several key tech figures who present taste as the final frontier for AI tech bros - almost like the one human trait they’re finding impossible to replicate.In May, Trend forecaster and founder of the strategy firm Nemesis Global, Emily Segal, coined the term “tasteslop” to describe the repetitive, recycled visuals littering the internet that feel devoid of any human point of view, almost like gorgeous blandness. Lots of it, she points out, feels like this because it’s generated by AI and then replicated over and over.And of course, last week, Polyester released ‘The Polyester Book of Bad Taste’, a collection of essays edited by its editor-in-chief Ione Gamble. The book is described as an antidote to ever-creeping homogeneity and bland tastefulness. “In a world constantly vying for our attention, having faith in your own (bad) taste is more than a small subversion – it's a rallying cry to live our lives unapologetically.”We talk all things taste, with your help! Thank you so much for all of your takes on this topic we love being in conversation with you all! O, R, B xxThe Polyester Book of (Bad) TasteTASTESLOP: Notes on technological anxietyWhy Tech Bros Are Now Obsessed with Taste Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Ruchera. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything in Conversation. An extra zesty wedge of content. Remember, if you want to take part in the conversation, just follow us on Instagram at Everything is Content Pod. That's where we share topics and ask for your thoughts. This week we're asking, is personal taste the final thing we can protect in the world of AI slop?

So one of the big cultural talking points right now is, can AI ever reach? really replicate taste? And should we all be actively protecting our own, regardless of how good or bad it is? In March, Kyle Chaker wrote a piece for the New Yorker titled, Why Tech Bros are now obsessed with Taste. In it, he quoted several key tech figures who present Taste as the final frontier for AI Tech Bros, almost like the one human trait they're finding so impossible to replicate at the minute. Two figures Carl cites are famous tech forecaster Paul Graham, who predicted, quote, in the AI age, taste will become even more important. The second was the former bite dance engineer Kong Wang, who wrote in a blog post,

in the AI era, personal taste is the moat. Turns out moat is tech brolingo for an unreplicable advantage that puts you above your rivals. In many ways, it's obvious why AI oligarchs want to weaponise taste. It's a superpower in the internet age and is a way to predict what will blow up and therefore make money. But it's also a way to launder AI's image. At the minute, no one with taste thinks of tech bros is culturally significant. In fact, they're seen as losers, as is their tech, which works to make art and artistic pursues obsolete.

Well, Kyle makes the point that they're using culture to try and tastewash their image. So last year, Anthropic hosted a pop-up cafe in Manhattan and gave away basketball caps that were embroidered with the word thinking. And OpenAI's recent Super Bowl commercial was shot with faux-analogue cinema-style flare. Q the second part to this all, the rise of taste slop. So trend forecaster and founder of strategy firm Nemesis Global, Emily Siegel, coined the term taste slop early this year to describe the repetitive recycled visuals littering the internet that feel devoid of any human point of view, almost like gorgeous blandness. Lots of it, she points out, feels like this because it's

generated by AI and then replicated over and over again. Unlike Camp, which she points out, turns the serious into the frivolous, as argued by Susan Sontag, Tayslop turns the frivolous into something serious by making it feel dull and avoid of emotion, and also because of how it reveals our very modern fears around where cultural capital and taste come from. We're all looking for recommendations and inspiration from these sources so earnestly. It's quite chuggy, really. So some of the examples that she's given for Tase Lop are images of people wearing full wardrobe from the row while carrying a Ramoa suitcase, a grainy clip of someone smoking outside of Paris Cafe, and a shot of the

Maison Margella Tabbies, matchapored into a handmade ceramic cup, and a quote by Joan Didion. These images stripped of their idiosyncrasies mean that they're pretty much ultimately bland and emotionless. And we mentioned it in the main episode last week, but of course, polyester last week released the polyester book of Bad Taste, a collection of essays edited by its editor-in-chief Ione Gamble. We're absolutely going to get more into it, but the book is, is described as an antidote to ever-creeping homogeneity and bland tastefulness. In a world constantly vying for our attention, having faith in your own bad taste is more than a small subversion. It's a rallying cry to live our lives and apologetically, the synopsis

reads. So, I want to start this chat in a very honest way and ask, what from the AI ether or algorithm worlds have you been convinced into liking? I think if we can be honest about this, It sets off the chat in a good way. So weirdly, Joanne McNally actually spoke about this and my therapist goes to me, but mine isn't being tricked into liking. It's more like, I will look at interior. I think she tried to buy a table that was like Chrome and so it was beautiful. And she messaged the guy and he was like, sorry, this is just like an AI render.

And so I keep seeing AI renders that make you think things are possible that actually aren't. So I'm like, oh, I love that. That looks really nice. Like I'd love to have that. And I'm saving things. And I haven't quite clicked that actually it's not real. and there's kind of like no way of having that as a real thing.

That's what's kind of, it's more, it's definitely interiors for me, which is really upsetting because love interiors. There's definitely a tie in there with like taste as well. Your taste is being formed by something which is not possible. You're always going to be miserable. I do have one. I was thinking about this long and hard because I love to think that I'm above and beyond all of these things because me and style are sort of like not natural bedfellows.

But I realize it's those like flimsy Amy Winehouse S ballet, ballet, ballet, that we all wore in the 2000s and 2010s. Yeah. They fucking stink after three days. They wreck your feet. They whiff off into the road. But I mean, they are dainty and cute and whatever. But despite knowing better, because I wrecked my feet in them as a teenager,

those little top shop ones shuffling around my little town, absolutely honking. Like, you come, you get all your girlfriends home, like, after school, after sixth form, kick them off in the front hall. Your mum would come home, pass away from this mouth. They are disgusting. But my brain, I see so many. little Pinteresty things of girls wearing these very particular Amy Winehouse palms. And I think, oh, I might have to get some of them. Also, bleeding feet. I feel like I would just constantly

be wearing plasters on my feet all the time wearing those. But I'm so glad you said that, Beth, because I seem to go to a school where all of the girls had these perfectly slender, non-sweighty feet. And so I famously, a pair of, like, usually prime up ballet flats would honestly ask me about a week. And then I'd have friends wearing those really expensive, like French sole ones, which again, absolute waste of money. My mum was like, there's no in hell

you're ever allowed a pair of those. Your feet, you just like collapse them. And theirs would just be like, perfect. Wouldn't smell. It's really, you have to have a specific type of foot. Like I bet Zoe Kravitz has never had a smile

for the life. Can I tell you really, I don't think it's that funny, but I had a pair of these. And it was basically, my mom was like, we're going through these fucking things. And I was running from school.

I was wearing a black one to school. And I, me and my friend tried to wash us. We'd like wipe them out and stuff. Anyway, started raining that day. My feet were, foaming because I was walking up the high street home, my feet were foaming and I went, these are going in the bin. I need to get a sturdy pair of clerks. That is kind of hilarious. I do actually have a pair of belly flats though that I wear and they are

okay. They're a bit sturdy. Were you wearing them yesterday? Yeah, I was. Yeah, they look nice. I didn't smell them at all. No, I don't think, maybe I'm less smelly. I'm definitely less sweaty. I was not sweaty. We've really got off piece. Sorry. I was going to say, taste. What is your, what is your AI influenced or sloppy bit of what, what are you tempted to buy? Okay. So I've got two things for you. The first one is, I used to think the Mason-Margea tabbies were absolutely foul. I remember seeing them IRL in a window shop like five years ago. And I was like, that is fucking hideous.

That is disgusting. Clove and hoof. Why do you want a camel toe on your feet? Then, Q, a year ago, seeing so many of these pictures of the tabbies, just like, almost like in a flat lay with like a little handbag, gorgeous, shiny. And it felt like I was getting radicalized in real time. I was like, looking up, used tabbies. on Vinted. They were obviously like £800. So I saw myself getting taken in and now I still really think they're nice even though Emily Siegel in her piece talks about how they're so chuggy now

because everyone's had the same process. God, it's Mr. Tomlin's core. I have the exact same thing. But also she and she talks about her in the piece, but Chloe Savangé, I never know how you say her name. She wore tabbies when we were like, she's been wearing them for like three decades that she was the original tabby wearer. And her fashion sense to me, I remember being young and being so confused that she was this like lauded by everyone and it's like fashion iPhone because I could not quite get to grips with her style and her style is now the style.

It's like Adidas shorts, a little prairie blouse and then a pair of tabbies. And it's so interesting to think how she really was that is kind of what the whole piece is about but like the reason she has taste is she was doing stuff literally decades before other people didn't give a shit that it wasn't on trend actually had this vision.

And it does annoy me because I feel the same way about the tabbies and I do like to think that I have personal style and upsets me that I was so late to being like actually they're quite sick but I wouldn't I also have got like post tabby clarity now where I wouldn't be taken in. Post tabby clarity that's hilarious I yeah I feel the exact same way it's it's like a part of me knows it's way too late but I still just feel annoyed at myself for not getting there in time and then the second thing was I so in her piece in her longer blog post which we'll link in the show notes Emily Sequel talks about

it's not just even AI that can be taste slop even things iRL can appear to be taste slop or have the kind of of indicators of taste slop. And she talks about Jennifer Lawrence's recent style. And I got so taken in by this because I was working at Gratzi at the time. And we were all gagged about how cool she looked, really pared down, very much like the row head-to-toe aesthetic. And as I was reading the piece, I was like, yeah, I've never liked that kind of fashion. Why did I suddenly get bought into it? It was something about this feeling of utilitarianism. But as I was thinking about it and thinking about how it does really feel devoid of a point of view. It's almost like the plainest way to look fashionable. And I've never been into that kind of style. And I feel like AI, kind of the mood around

culture, trends, fashion has convinced me that wearing leopard print and garish prints, which is my natural state, I don't know. I just feel like it's encouraging me to move away from that. And I felt quite compelled by her saying, as a society, there can be things IRL were getting drawn to, which is the indicator of taste lock too. Her Jennifer Lawrence bit, the minute you see it, you can't unsee it. It's really, really fascinating. She does. It's like she is literally an algorithm plucked and checked for like tick every single point, like her hair, her face, the way that she kind of, like she said, she isn't, this sounds awful. Obviously, Jennifer Lawrence is a person. I'm not saying it. I'm saying it in the context of this. It's like she's not a person. She's a manifestation of the

algorithm walking down the road. And it is really, I do love that style. But again, I've always enjoyed that style on other people purely because it has specifically reflected their taste. That's the whole point of taste. It's like, like you're saying, Ritura, you didn't like it for you. But I'm sure that when you see someone in an outfit that makes sense on them, like you'll, I do it all the time. I'll see a girl on the tube and I think she looks so fucking sick. But if I wore that, I would look like an absolute idiot. And much like you, Ritia, I feel really at home in leper print and bright colors. And sometimes I'll wear like jeans in a t-shirt and I honestly feel mortified because I feel like I'm wearing someone else's skin.

And that is ultimately what taste is. It's like you have to, it has to embody who you are, but instead we are all just embodying, yeah, an AI algorithm. Completely. I mean, like, it's the sort of thing where I think of, like, we all, obviously, all have quite distinct taste, as we were saying, last night when we were together. Like, we look different. And I do think, actually, and only if you put me in last night's outfit, you wouldn't, you know, and it all fits me or whatever, I wouldn't be able to, I would be like, this is a lovely outfit. Something about this looks like I, like I, I would not look good because I would not feel good. And it does feel like, it, it, precisely, I.

think that is very clear. And it's like, what's the point of dressing uniquely or dressing at all, making any effort if you're not going to communicate something about you and make yourself feel? I do think that is the thing with trying on taste or trying, you know, taste is this curation of object to communicate something else. It's all external. And I think there is an essay actually in the book called The Algorithm A, My Taste. And it's specifically about food and eating out in restaurants and stuff. but it's also about how we've blindly allowed social media to guide so much of our discovery and so much of our taste. We go, oh, we've heard this is good, so I'll go. You miss out, you know, you get listicles and you miss out on the discovery and stuff.

And it's the personal cost of outsourcing your taste is actually enormous. Like that the pursuit of it is the point, whether that's clothing, food, places to eat, what you like, you know, to find out what you like rather than copy paste the signifiers. I think sometimes it's knowing you have bad taste in some things and really liking that about yourself and then knowing in other things. Oh, okay, actually I've put the work in because taste, I can't remember what it is. I think it's the conversation with Ezra Klein and Kyle. It says something like good taste is built on knowledge. And actually, that's the thing. It's knowing something. It's taking the time to do it. Whereas I do think if you are looking to someone else or if you're trying to take your car, you're missing the point. Yeah. And like even your point about Chloe, I don't know how you say her name.

I always say Savonnier. I'm going to go with that. Seveni? Savonnier, Blanc. Yeah, I think it's that one. I feel like her point of view was that she was always resisting trends. And she obviously had a point of view that goes beyond that,

but that in and of itself means that it can't be copied because it's just constantly like the choice and the resistance and the like identification of things that felt very Chloe. And I feel like that's the problem at the minute because everything is so led by culture and led by trend, nothing is saying anything. And it's also not really resisting anything. It's kind of being swept up into the Pinterest, the kind of influences that we see, even the kind of reference points, like the Jennifer Lawrence.

I remember even at Gratzi, we were talking about how amazing it was. And we were like, how to get the Jennifer Lawrence look and all this kind of stuff. And I feel like the pool of references and inspirations. feels like they're getting narrower and narrower and narrower. Like, I couldn't even tell you. I've mentioned before who my fashion inspirations are, but it's really hard for me to say because I don't think like that anymore. I feel like, I don't know, I feel less creative as a whole

because I'm not really like feeling fed by all of these like counterintuitive, provocative, subversive influences anymore. I agree. And we had a message from Fiona that said, The Hill I Will Die on is that money can never buy taste and that applies to big tech and AI too. I will bleed out. on that hill with Fiona because one of the things I think is so important in creativity and anything,

whether it's style, whether it's output, people talk about this with like, yeah, with creative stuff, when you're first starting out and you've got nothing to lose, you can like really pull from within. Then as you get richer in your world, gets smaller. We've spoken about this, you know, your world kind of narrows down. You're less in touch with reality. I think it is harder to create taste. And I think she makes such an interesting point in her substack about how like the people who really have taste are people who are in touch with culture, not as in they're sort of like tapped in and a light way. They are artists, they're writers, their lecturers, they're people that are in and off the world that are pulling references from, oh my God, I remember this

amazing Martin Scorsese film and there was this shirt and ever since then I've thought about this shirt or like there is a sense of a narrative that's been built and I feel the same way. This happened before with houses, the grey house, the minimalist, nothing in it. I love going to someone's house and there's knick-knacks, there's bits and bits and Bob's, they're telling you that this is from this trip. That's, that way about tattoos. I love it when everything tells a story. And right now it feels like the story everyone is trying to tell through their inverted

comma's taste is not who they are as a person. It's like how much they know to how to play the game of being cool or fit or fitting into whatever subset in society. But it's not born from an intrinsic understanding or just even like a collection of stories and things they bought. And that is also coming from, you know, fast fashion culture. and people just throw away culture and not keeping things and mending things

and changing them and wearing them differently. But I do think most celebrities when they get married, for example, I always think, God, I wish I was as rich as you because the dress I would have bought would not have been that one. I always think about stuff like that. So Fiona, I am with you.

Lauren Sanchez, cough, cough. Yeah, we are adding you right there. Yeah, and I think because the internet was kind of posited as this huge resource for culture and inspiration, we've forgotten that not everyone, has to derive culture and inspiration from the internet. And I think it's hard because at one point it was great for that and it was perfect for that. Things like Myspace and Tumblr, all these

incredible platforms were the birthplaces of subcultures. Now they are so homogenized. There is just no way to be, you know, an individual if you derive solely your inspirations from there. I went to a exhibition about, I think this is how you say his name. I apologize if I've got it wrong. Naigo, who is the founder of BAPE and then became the head of Kenzo and set up billion-dollar boys club with Farel and this incredible pioneer of streetwear from Japan. And it laid out all of his archive of clothes that he's collected through his lifetime vintage clothes. And right at the beginning before he set up Babe, he would research this huge amount of kind of army prints and he's obsessed by camo prints and he identified this one specific type of camo print that

he loved called the duck something i can't remember and he replicated that engineered it molded it did it over and over over again until it became babes signature thing and i think i forget that people who are tastemakers who are culture makers they are also nerds and they're geeky and they just go into the archives of iRL fabrics you know inspirations archives books whatever it's not Pinterest, it's not online, and I'm not shaming anyone for that because I do that too. It's just reminding me that you have to be a bit geeky and a bit nerdy and a bit obsessive and just kind of fall down the rabbit holes of culture offline, I think, especially now, to kind of get yourself to a point of being a real taste maker.

Well, there was all of that, which we talked about, all of that pushback to the TikTok creator, I forget her name, who had said essentially to have good taste, you have to go out and learn about materials, you have to feel things, you have to actually get a sense for them in their place, rather than just cleaning it from Pinterest and stuff. And there was a real pushback on that. But actually, as you're talking about counterculture and how things, the best things are born of obsession with something and, you know, that artistic dogged pursuit of not letting it go until you have found precisely the thing that will represent the brand and then that will be dispersed into the culture. I do think billionaires and tech people, they only understand that

in terms of like obsession with really money, capital power, tech supremacy, when we're thinking about taste and counterculture and how like interesting things emerge in a society often come from the deliberate rejection of mainstream culture and what the mainstream considers good and artistic and valuable and stuff and minds the space in between and like the opposite of that. I think that is inherently alien to, one, it's alien to AI, but it's also the kind of Silicon Valley tech rose,

Because taste is so separated from capital and profit, which is the language that these men speak, even if privately they might enjoy counterculture, like if it can't make money, it can't be central around their products and their output. Mass production and mass adoption is how you profit at scale. And mass production is opposed to countercultural taste and, you know, something to be rarefied, something to be curated and earned and filtered through the culture until it finds you. I do just think it's a contradiction in terms. And as Hannah says, you know, billionaires trying to buy culture is crazy. It is crazy, but it might actually just work, which is also crazy to say.

On that we had, I agree with all of that, that we had such an interesting master Milana, which is also touched upon in the piece, where she says, I think having good taste can have so much class bias. I was very fortunate to grow up in a house when my dad had been to art schools, so always wanted to take us to galleries

or show us interesting films. I do think it passed down an interesting concept of taste compared with friends or family who did not have the experience of childhood like my own. And so she then goes on to say, I think it's really lovely to be recommended something because you really enjoyed it and want others to enjoy it too. That to me is such a pure form of human connection. I don't think we'll ever die out. But ultimately, I don't think it matters if a book you read came from the algorithm. At least you've extracted

something tangible from it. And I think these are two really good points because she is right. It depends on how you're viewing taste, but there is some forms of, the way that some people define taste is a very class-based thing, whether it's like the way that you dress or how you do your hair and within the UK class is such a weird kind of enigma in the way that we look for these signifiers. And so taste in that sense can be class-based. On the flip side, I also think that taste as in like bad taste, what we might think is bad taste now in this current moment in time will become good taste. The very things that have been maybe previously seen as bad taste will become good taste by the virtue of the fact that they are not the thing that we're seeking to

do. But I do think class and taste do have a massive intersection. It is really worth examining because you're kind of taught in certain circles like the school that I went to. Like there's things that are good taste, that things that are bad taste, that there's pieces in the financial times or the Daily Mail and they do these things like you should say serviette, not a napkin. It might be the other way around. I don't know. And all of those things. But I do think that's maybe slightly dying out now. I don't think we feel that way as much, but I do think it's interesting. And I do think, I guess, Alana is right that like, we also shouldn't shit on people enjoying what they're getting from algorithms. But then it is going back to that conversation

we had probably last year that was like the necessity of snobbery in art and critique about, like, we can't always just say, let everyone enjoy things. Because actually, people might be being harmed inadvertently by enjoying the things they're being fed. Yes. Yeah, it's so complicated. Alana is bang on, I have to say, like I do actually agree wholeheartedly with that message. Yeah, so do I. It also reminds me of the fact that even if you are trying to have IRL experiences,

so many of them are shaped by the algorithm regardless. Like, I just finished the book, I Who Have Never Known Men, excellent book by Jacqueline Harlan. And I was in Bournemouth on a weekend away, I think a month ago, just finished a book, went into a bookshop, had this lovely exchange with the guy, I'm not sure if he owned the bookstore, whatever, and he was like, okay, what are you reading? What have you read? I can help you.

Told him I'd read yesterday, The Handmaid's Tale, loved them looking for something. And he was like, I know the exact book. He gave me that. Tell me why, weeks later, I told my friend about this incredible book. I don't know if she knew about it. And she was like, oh yeah, I know about it. Book Talks obsessed with that. They were obsessed with that a year ago.

And somebody else had also got the book and was planning. planning to read it because of book talk. And it just, I felt like, I felt like so embarrassed because I thought I'd had this really magical experience and it still is a lovely experience. But now bookstores are being led by obviously the kind of copies that are bound to be popular because they have to be profitable. You know, films, the amount of screening times they get in cinemas are going to be led by the popularity campaigns that they are getting pushed behind so they know that they'll be successful and it'd be worth having like an extra long run for Marty Supreme for example. It just, it feels like even in trying to defy the internet and the algorithm and these kind of

PR campaigns, it just came for me regardless. But it can happen in the reverse where you've had a thing you've always loved. And this is a really big thing about taste. And actually in the book about the polyester book about taste in the introduction, I only talks about this about how we cling on to having this really singular specific thing that we feel like we've discovered and it becomes part of us. And now with the way that things are proliferation. freighted online. It happens with music and songs that old music. Everyone knows everything all the time.

There aren't these like subsections. So something that you have spoken about for ages suddenly becomes so mainstream that your claim on it like loses all meaning. And that can actually be quite weirdly painful because you're like, no, I have a really special relationship with this book that I read when I was 15 and I want to be able to talk about it. And now everyone's talking about it. Yeah. But on the other side, I guess like to relate back to what Alana said, is that not maybe a good thing if everyone is then accessing these? things that maybe they wouldn't have known before. I think it's both good and bad. I think it's good on some level, but then culture, I think it does mean that we just lose

hell and a bottom cartus of the world, the people that really are just out there and doing their own thing and wearing two different shoes. Yeah, well, I think that's the fear, isn't it, that we will kind of silo narrow. The internet itself has become so narrow, a bang on it all the time. And culture could absolutely go the same way as we lose reference points. We don't incentivise people to create new ways of expressing themselves. You just then everyone's a mirror to each other. And I mean, it's so interesting. One example that in the Times piece that is used is how people dress for concerts now.

It's the kind of like culture of uniforms that spring up, not totally organically, but like, you know, in communication between the attendees or like not in communication with the attendees. Like Olivia Dean, for example, the thing is you wear polka dots. But the first, in the early shows, people were saying, I will poker dots because no one had told me to, but I thought, I'm going to wear polka dots. didn't expect anyone else to be, and it was very quickly. Everyone was wearing polka dots. Even when you're trying to be in communion with an artist,

like that ends up being a uniform. And I do think it's very interesting to think of. The whole other part of the conversation is having good taste puts you in the in-group. It represents safety. It represents a lack of rejection, you know, intentionally rejecting the cultural norms is very scary. And so it's such a human impulse to be like, if I can acquire a good taste with as little.

effort as possible. With that, I will gain more things. I will, you know, I'll be safe, I'll be accepted, maybe I'll get a better job, maybe I'll do these things. It's such a, it's so interesting to think of it in terms of human psychology and evolution when what we're thinking about is a certain kind of pump or a certain kind of book you're reading such modern day stuff, but it's so rooted in, do I look like the people around me, or at least do I look like this group that is perhaps even elevated? Do I look better than the people around me? Following the rules does, or subverting the rules in a safe way, does earn safety. Like, I don't blame anyone for trying to take that shortcut. We had so many messages on people who are now confused as well

with the kind of proliferation of taste slop. Kate said, I used to have a strong sense of style, and now I'm confused. And we had a message from an anonymous person who said, in my opinion, all the best food, clothes, art, books, music recommendations are from real people I know, so often disappointed by AI online clickbait wrecks, have wondered if this is due to younger generations, making more content on TikTok, for example, and having less life experience and chiming less with my taste. And they were very kind saying that they love our podcast for our wrecks. Thank you. But I really get that as well because it's not, and I hope I haven't come off shaming about it. I think I've been defiant because I'm almost speaking to myself in a mirror

and trying to be like, I want to have a point of view. I want to self-express. I need to like get offline. But I do really understand if you are like littered with all of this imagery around you and you're not even really consciously taking it in. With the tabbies, I genuinely did not realize that I was getting fed all of that messaging to then change my mind. It's really slow indoctrination. And I know that sounds really extreme, but it kind of feels like that when you realize and you trace it back. So I don't blame anyone for feeling confused about their style.

We're being shown so many different images. You're not really sure where they're coming from. It's a slow process. And then you're just like, okay, yeah, maybe skinny jeans are good. So I wanted to reply to Kate's message because, so I'd, this is really unhelpful, but Molly Goodfellow, friend of the problem, an amazing person. She shared a video from a literary talk.

It's a famous author I now can't think of, but he was in a 70s and he was saying when I was a writer, what I would do if I couldn't think what the next sentence was is I'd walk out the house and I'd think. And I'd walk up and down the road and I'd think. And now people just go online and they get an answer. And so you don't have any thinking time. And part of that is down to late stage capitalism

where we feel like we have no time. People have no money. And so we're always looking for the quickest shortcut, is AI as well. And with Kate, with the style thing, I think one of things that's harmed so many people is brands like ASOS, even the rental websites that I do, they do the graduation edit, the bridal edit, the holiday edit, the festival edit. So you don't even have to think, what do I want to wear? What do I want to do? You go on to an edit that shows you all of the things that you're supposed to be wearing to that kind of thing and then everyone is wearing

like the same dresses. And it's just a very slow erosion of our own process of getting from, A, I have a problem to B, I have a solution. And the journey from it. made to be used to be thinking, ruminating, reading, writing, looking around. Now you literally can just have a question, get given an answer or get given a selection of answers to choose from. So it feels like you'll have a bit of autonomy in that choice. But really, that's a Rulian Blue Jumper was picked for you by a group of people in this room. Oh my gosh. A perfect rounding off. The final thing I'll say is, and I do think I've heard this before from people who work in culture and work in, yeah, in the cultural space. I think there's a reason.

why newsletters are also getting really big around this time, people are really desperate for their tastemakers and their kind of mini idols in who they trust in cultural recommendations, in lifestyle choices, fashion, all those kinds of things. I think with the scattering of magazines and the kind of proliferation of AI, we are just kind of looking to the people we trust and we maybe have three in our life, but we will read their newsletters, we'll pay the subscriptions and we'll do that. On a positive note, we did have a message from Grace, he said, I'll wear my tabby's with pride and compliment all the other girlies with them, knowing that we all share such great taste.

Yes, great. I think that is nice. Sorry, I called them Mr. Tumner's core. I do think they're very beautiful. Did you say that? I miss that. I miss. She always does these asides of terror that we can't hear during the record for some reason

because she like slips them in and I only hear them when I'm editing or when I'm listening back. Oh my God. She's so cheeky. Thank you so much for listening. And for all of your opinions and takes on this topic, we absolutely love being in conversation with you all. Remember, go back and listen to our amazing episode with Gem Calder, author of I Want You to Be Happy, on the pitfalls and bleak realities of modern dating. We will see you as always on Friday.

Bye-bye!