🚪 Why We Gatekeep Taste

I Like Taylor Swift and Olive Garden and I Don't Care Who Knows It! Plus — Crypto Week in DC and Earnings Season Is Here

Author

Katie Perry
July 15, 2025

Welcome to Tuesday Thursday Saturday! I share a snapshot of trending stories across business, tech, and culture three times a week. Subscribe for more! - KP

The Big Story: Let People Like What They Like

Ever feel embarrassed to admit you like something ... because too many other people like it too? 

Same. Whether it’s Taylor Swift, Peach Vibe Celsius, color-coded Google Calendars, or Abercrombie + Fitch, there’s an unspoken pressure to keep your tastes just obscure enough to be respectable. 

Especially in New York — although, ironically, the people who strive most to be exclusively different all end up looking like each other.

But here’s the thing: that impulse to be cool, unique, different isn’t just aesthetic. It’s structural. And it tells us a lot about how we learn, how we grow, how we market things, and how we judge each other.

As per usual, let’s start with the science.

Psychologists define interest as a kind of “emotional magnet.” Interest is a state of energized curiosity and sustained attention that can be both a flash of “huh, that’s cool” and a longer-term gravitational pull toward certain ideas, objects, or aesthetics. Paul Silvia, a researcher who’s seen as the godfather of interest studies, calls it a “knowledge emotion.” It pulls us toward novelty and complexity, but only if we feel like we have the tools to make sense of what we’re seeing. Think: abstract art after you’ve read the placard.

And interest matters. A lot. It’s more predictive of long-term success than talent, test scores, or even personality. A Myers-Briggs whitepaper I dug into over the weekend showed that interest alignment is 83% more predictive of future income than ability. It’s also more predictive of college persistence, career satisfaction, and whether you’ll finish the damn thing you started. Not because it’s fluffy, but because it drives actual engagement.

Of course, interest isn’t random. It’s deeply social. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu laid this out in Distinction: the way we like things becomes a way of saying who we are. Taste is social capital. Do you prefer oat milk or whole milk? Trader Joe’s or Erewhon? HBO miniseries or Love Island? All of it signals class, culture, and what rooms you think you belong in.

$30 smoothies? Knock yourselves out, LA friends!

And we learn to like things based on those cues. We mirror the interests of the people we want to be like. This is fine, until the mirroring gets policed. That’s where “basic” comes in.

A hill I’ll die on: the term “basic” is the worst kind of cultural weapon. As someone who did not grow up in a big city with access to the fanciest things ever, it bothers me when the term is used to refer to someone as shallow, unoriginal, or overly feminine. I will spare you the tangent, but I think we can all agree that “basic” is a term that is almost exclusively aimed at women.

(Even though a LOT of dudes like: sports betting, Bitcoin, Joe Rogan, Kith, weight training, sneakers, brutalist architecture, minimalist design, video games, for some reason the Paul brothers, F1, hating on Taylor Swift, Marcus Aurelius and stoicism as a concept more so than something to actually read about and/or study, beanies, the NBA, Carhartt not worn as workwear, Aesop soap, navy fleece vests, Dior Sauvage, “older brother core” — yes, really, and Drake. Sorry, I definitely did NOT spare you the tangent.)

I love this Instagram account because it’s an equal opportunity basic-accuser.

Why is it that when people like things that are fun, comforting, or popular, we judge them for it? The things are working exactly as designed! These are relatively accessible things that give people simple moments of joy.

When we judge people for what they like, we create hierarchies where being into things that are emotionally resonant or widely beloved makes you less than. And the price of admission to “good taste” is pretending you’re too cool to care. 

Which brings us to brands and the business angle to it all. If taste is social and interest is emotional, what’s a marketer supposed to do when every cultural pocket has its own vocabulary, its own cringe-trigger, its own version of cool?

Being relevant is a tough balance to strike. If you’re in New York, you’ve probably seen the subway ads designed to tell us that a brand “gets us” as New Yorkers. Usually, the references are off. It’s an immediate red flag.

The answer is “yes.”

That’s why the best brands don’t chase culture; they embed in it and, in very rare cases, they can even create it. This second piece is a high bar to hit because it necessitates a brand being capable of making something at least adjacent to art. That’s not even the right approach for many brands, and even the ones that want to be doing that do not have access to the talent or capital to do so. 

The Shinola Hotel in Detroit curates art representative of the brand.

For most marketers, the trick is not to force your way into someone’s interest graph, but to understand the emotional logic behind those interests. What do people get from these interests? Is it confidence, comfort, status, self-expression, or control?

The brands that win understand that people don’t want to feel marketed at. They want to feel (genuinely) seen, empowered, or maybe just less alone. Nike doesn’t make runners love running. It reflects the identity they already have. Liquid Death doesn’t manufacture chaos so much as it rides the energy drinkification of every cultural behavior.

Why is Carhartt so popular in SoHo? Because in the tech and AI revolution, we’re increasingly glorifying manual labor and an “honest day’s work” (even if we clock in at Barclays six days a week).

My favorite business case study: Carhartt sells the same hats at its Soho pop-up for like 2x more than the ones it sells via its original workwear line. 4D chess!

Why do we watch Love Island? Because for many of us, we spend all day doing things that quite literally make our brains hurt, and we never feel like we’re doing or achieving enough, and so we like to watch young adults utterly embarrass themselves in tropical settings.

And why are people appending glorified Furbees to their handbags and belt loops? I don’t know? Because Labubus are adorable and seemingly represent nothing other than having something random and plush to carry around with you in a world that feels more chaotic and messed up by the minute? 

Admit it: they are adorable.

I’ll spare you my full explanation for why people love Taylor Swift, because it’s going to bump this even more over my self-mandated word count. But in short, she is talented, she makes people feel seen who don’t always feel seen, and she doesn’t take herself too seriously. It’s not hard.

She really is a menace with the pen.

If you’re a marketer, instead of trying to guess what your target customer likes (you won’t, because even amid “basic” trends, everyone’s interests are a kaleidoscope of their tendencies, upbringings, and influences), start with the reason why people have these interests in the first place. Because things that build communities do so for reasons that go beyond the superficial. They generally meet a need, address a challenge, or fill a void.

And when something crosses over into the mainstream? So what? Sometimes it’s okay to ride the wave of popular taste without irony.

Because let’s return to the science for a second. Annie Murphy Paul writes about this beautifully in her essay “How the Power of Interest Drives Learning.” Interest, she explains, isn’t just a feeling; it’s more so fuel. It activates critical thinking, deepens memory, and helps people overcome learning obstacles, even dyslexia. It literally rewires your brain to keep going when things are hard, because you want to know more.

When we deny or suppress our interests, or when we perform disinterest because we don’t want to be mocked, we’re cutting off that fuel source. We’re stunting our own curiosity.

Hell, I love Olive Garden (unironically) and I’m not afraid to admit it. They have the best salad dressing, the best breadsticks, and when I’m there, I’m family, goddamnit.

Liking things is how we learn. It’s how we grow. It’s how we build relationships, and how we make sense of the world. Which means, for marketers, creatives, teachers, or anyone trying to communicate something meaningful, your job isn’t just to be attention-worthy. It’s to understand the reasoning behind people’s interests.

So the next time you find yourself about to roll your eyes at something “basic,” take it easy! Ask what it says about the person. Ask what it says about you. Don’t like something? Maybe it’s less the case that it’s lame, and more the case that it doesn’t have higher order meaning for you. Maybe it’s not “basic” — it’s just not for you.

And that is OK.

Daily Rip Live Recap: Space Goes Beyond the Spectacle, JP Morgan Wants Fintechs to Pay Up, and BTC Hits All-Time Highs

Start your day with one full hour of market news & headlines — every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Every weekday, my co-host Shay Boloor and I cover the biggest market news and events LIVE on Stocktwits’ morning show, The Daily Rip Live. On Monday’s show, we covered a range of topics, including the imminent earnings season, a new space economy IPO, CRYPTO WEEK IN DC, and why JPMorgan is trying to make life harder — or at least more expensive — for fintechs.

Here’s your rundown:

⇢ 2:00 My co-host, Shay, is on the injured reserve with a gnarly basketball injury!

⇢ 4:20 Crypto bulls really need to stop texting me. I get that you’re rich. I’m happy for you! (CC Taylor Crane). $BTC.X ( â–Ľ 0.46% )  

⇢ 5:20 AI value chain players reporting earnings this week: $TSM ( ▼ 0.09% ) and $ASML ( ▼ 2.1% ) .

⇢ 13:00 Drone wars heating up, $UMAC ( ▲ 9.46% ) trending on Stocktwits

⇢ 15:30 $AXON ( ▼ 0.45% ) — the command center for public safety?

⇢ 17:50 Musk's mega vision: $TSLA ( ▼ 0.58% ) shareholders to vote on investing in xAI, which is now worth $200B (!!!)

⇢ 23:05 Consumer vs. Enterprise AI battles are bifurcating! $GOOG ( â–˛ 0.18% )  

⇢ 26:30 Why Jensen Huang pits AI models against one another. $NVDA ( â–Ľ 0.1% )  

⇢ 29:50 xAI’s early recruitment advantage in AI wars

⇢ 34:10 Crypto Week in DC! Robinhood sells “AI as infrastructure.” $HOOD ( â–˛ 1.53% )  

⇢ 39:30 $JPM ( ▼ 0.15% ) wants to get its cut of open banking; potentialq impact on $PYPL ( ▼ 0.72% ) , $COIN ( ▼ 0.6% ) , and Plaid.

⇢ 48:00 $FLY ( â–Ľ 1.06% )  files for IPO, hires up CNBC space economy reporter to lead IR efforts (smart!)

⇢ 52:10 Shay’s top 3 space stocks to watch: $RKT ( ▼ 2.2% ) , $ASTS ( ▼ 1.26% ) , $RDW ( ▲ 0.58% ) . These represent "space beyond the spectacle."

We’re live every weekday, Monday-Thursday, at 9 AM ET. Tune in!

Now Here’s a Chart

Simpler times. Here’s what the Billboard Hot 100 Chart looked like in July 2004.

Whatta summer.

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Tuesday Thursday Saturday is written by Katie Perry, owner of Ursa Major Media, which provides fractional marketing services and strategy in software, tech, consumer products, professional services, and other industries. She is also the co-host of Stocktwits’ Daily Rip Live show.

Disclaimer: The contents here reflect recaps and summaries of pre-reported or published data, news, and trends. I have cited sources and context for the information provided to the best of my ability. The purpose of the newsletter is to inform and educate on larger trends shaping business and culture — this is NOT investment advice. As an investor, you should always do your own research before making any decisions about your money or your portfolio.