This synthesis (not essay) explores critiques of (cultural) taste, status and performativity.

Note on exclusions

For cohesion’s sake, I won’t be branching out to more sociopolitical explanations, though I do (and will) acknowledge that those causes are there. I will also acknowledge and compile, at the end of the note, common counterarguments and counter-ideas as I’ve heard them, but again I won’t be exploring them just here.

These two chains of thought will eventually (hopefully) land their own mega-note as the associated ideas organically enter the vault.

Taste signals, status symbols, and status anxiety

“Taste signals” in culture and social studies are the behaviors of people (deliberate or otherwise) that show they have good aesthetic and cultural judgment, preferences, consumption habits, and lifestyles.

Cultural taste is commonly (explicitly or otherwise) associated with status and status symbols, which are then associated with having wealth and being elite. Status anxiety, therefore, is the consequential unease we feel in the pursuit of status, which we’re convinced we need in order to secure love and belonging in society.

Rickie Ho commonly writes about today’s taste signals and how they’re used as a weapon of exclusion by the elite, while Eugene Healey writes about “post-luxury status symbols,” where status symbols are now behaviors over products, causing the lifecycle to move faster and more viciously.

Performing taste and belonging

All of these give background to the rise of “performative” anything in trend culture discourse.

Sometimes the performative critique is a weird, invalid one, such as in the popular claim that reading in public is performative.

It’s called performative reading not just because someone might be pretending to read, but rather that they want everyone to know they read. The presumption is that they’re performing for passersby, signaling they have the taste and attention span to pick up a physical book instead of putting in AirPods. And we’re not talking about Colleen Hoover’s latest or a romantasy title; the books that qualify are capital “L” literature: Faulkner, Nabokov, Franzen. The heavier the better.
— Is it OK to read Infinite Jest in public? Why the internet hates ‘performative reading’| The Guardian

But we can’t ever divine a stranger’s intentions, especially of one who is presumably minding their own business in public. We can only guess that the accuser maybe has their own internal complex they’re projecting onto others. Maybe they thought reading made them better than others and they needed to come up with a way to also be better than fellow readers — or to invalidate them as “true” readers in the first place.

If this sounds familiar, you’re right. This is an echo of “I liked them before they were cool” ¹ and “Oh you’re a fan? Name five songs/members/titles.” (And it’s not a coincidence either that most instances you can think of are meant to gatekeep women, or criticize them for, well, enjoying anything.)

But occasionally, and in specific scenarios, I think it can be a valid critique.

When we criticize performativity as an indicator of anti-intellectualism, for example, or a herald of the epidemic that is the loss of identity, we mean to trigger self-reflection and to course-correct back towards critical thinking, anti-anti-intellectualism, mindful consumption, media literacy (or literacy in general), intentional engagement with the world, and the joy and beauty of identity formation.

There are two top-of-mind instances of this:

When people “cheat” the accomplishment of reading by reading the plot summaries on Wikipedia or, God forbid, from genAI and defensively arguing that “it counts.” ~~Counts for what???~~
When people read titles or genres they don’t really want to, and normally wouldn’t, if only it weren’t what everyone else seemed to read and love ² and they didn’t want to be excluded. ³

The sadder thing is when readers share that they’re unhappy with the books (plural) they’re forcing themselves to read, feeling like something is lacking in themselves for not liking or not understanding what everybody else seems to “get.”

Angel Martinez (@romcomsqueen) on TikTok similarly critiqued and challenged the trending buzzwords “disgustingly well-read/well-educated,” the personal curriculum (of which I was/am personally victimized), and the “aestheticization of intelligence” — an original term I adore and which I will be borrowing heavily.
Link to original

It’s great if the goal is to challenge yourself intellectually, to diversify and to broaden your perspectives — all noble, progressive and pro-intellectualism goals. But if, deep down, the hope is to be able to say you’ve read these books, all the while hoping to not have to think or talk about it any further than that — well, if you neither enjoyed it nor grew from it, what did you really gain?

Did you at least get to know and embrace yourself as a person who doesn’t enjoy the thing, or will you continue to force yourself into being a fan of something you aren’t, because you fear “losing aura points” ? ⁴

Obviously, it doesn’t end at reading.

Look again at the uptick of using genAI to “sound better” — to write, communicate and express better. For those whose insecurity is skill with words, they get to role-play as somebody intelligent and articulate, all while avoiding the work of becoming that person.

We’ve criticized performative travel and vacation since the dawn of the influencer trade (even though we didn’t have the expression in common use when it started), and the succeeding Instagrammification of everything ⁵ from brunch to art fairs and galleries ⁶ to, weirdly enough, our careers. ⁷

Even the “be more offline” trend of 2026 is semi-criticized when participants can’t help announcing online their intention to be more offline. And sometimes we can’t help it. When we pick up a hobby or interest through social media, the activity is married to the social aspect by default and must be manually separated through effort.

But it doesn’t end at the performing individual either.

Taste signaling in itself could be “not that deep,” especially when it’s a harmless undertaking like a hobby, and when we understand it’s all just an age-old appeal to be loved and to belong. Long before performative anything, we had the word “posers,” and it was dunked on way before social media.

Stretched far enough, though, performativity can extend to social/romantic manipulation, as criticized with tradwife influencers ⁸ and the performative male,⁹ and to allyship, often known as virtue-signaling.¹⁰

And when our performances become trendy and aestheticized enough (specifically in media, social or otherwise), they’re eventually watered down to things you can buy and display to signal status — a consumerism problem. Think:

leather folio notebook covers, specifically Louise Carmen dupes,
“journal ecosystems,” ¹¹
the Hobonichi hype ¹² (that left a lot of first-time users disappointed and bewildered about its popularity), ¹³
sticker and stationery hauls, ¹⁴ and
analog-style products.¹⁵

It’s when we join activities and we buy products to be publicly associated with certain romanticized opinions, lifestyles, traits and identities while uninterested in the “cringy,” unshareable parts: being a beginner, having ugly handwriting, wearing outdated styles and unfashionable supplies, liking music and books and TV shows that are either too mainstream or too obscure.

Soon enough, the association (by product or by virtue) is picked up by brands themselves such as with Coach’s bag charms,¹⁶ how the beauty industry coopted “mental wellness speak” ¹⁷ and, most ironically of all, how waste-heavy companies coopted sustainability ¹⁸ in a behavior now known as “greenwashing.” ¹⁰ More bluntly put, brands join in the performativity in order to sell us more stuff — and it usually works.

When amassed widely enough, the urge to do (and to be seen doing) what everyone else is doing can create economic harm in the form of overtourism and gentrification, ¹⁹ shortages and price increases as demand overturns supply ²⁰ and as foreign/tourist markets are prioritized over local/originating ones.

A tangent on ube

This is departing from performativity and hurtling into whitewashing, but Starbucks USA launched an “Iced Ube Coconut Macchiato.” There are now predictions of ube becoming “the new matcha,” and creating small debates over whether the Philippine government should capitalize on it. My stance on this should be pretty obvious.

The new Ube drink looks pretty but to me was extremely bland… : r/starbucks

For my filipino baristas: thoughts on the ube? : r/starbucksbaristas

[UBE IS THE NEW MATCHA! The World Wants More Ube. Philippine Farmers Are Struggling to Keep Up. : r/Philippines]

Last year, an independent brand called Ubatcha, seemingly formed by two white women, tried to capitalize on matcha and ube drinks and drink powders (?), comically referring to ube as “ceremonial ube.” They’ve cleaned up their copy on the website, but they appear to still be in business.

At this point… what even is real anymore? Is AI just colonizing now too? - @janvincentgonzales on Instagram

And finally, when trends die and the performative participants move on to the next taste signal, all the things we bought just become waste. ²¹ ²² ²³

Counterarguments

Posting about things is word-of-mouth marketing / Tourism is good for vacation spot owners/locals / Virality is good for small business owners / Enjoying things privately is lost marketing and therefore bad for businesses

The aestheticization of art/reading/hobbies is good because it brings in more people, and a fraction of those will be genuine

Any performativity argument is inherently misogynistic because only women’s interests ever get criticized

Any performativity argument is essentially gatekeeping, which is inherently classist and elitist (and sometimes ableist) because [thing] should be accessible to everyone

Apple's Notes

Explorer

taste signals and performative anything

Taste signals, status symbols, and status anxiety

Performing taste and belonging

Counterarguments

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Backlinks

Apple's Notes

Explorer

taste signals and performative anything

Taste signals, status symbols, and status anxiety

Performing taste and belonging

Counterarguments

Footnotes

Graph View

Backlinks