The Taste Recession

Why everyone's aesthetic sense is converging into algorithmic mediocrity

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Open Instagram. Scroll for five minutes. Notice something?

Every photo has the same warm filter. Every caption follows the same vulnerability template. Every carousel uses identical fonts, layouts, and color schemes. Every "aesthetic" looks exactly like every other "aesthetic."

Now open Dribbble. Same thing. Gradient backgrounds, geometric shapes, the exact same purple-to-pink color transitions. Every portfolio looks like it was designed by the same person.

Switch to TikTok. Every popular video uses the same trending sounds, the same editing techniques, the same visual hooks. Millions of creators, one creative voice.

We're living through a taste recession. Not an economic recession —an aesthetic one. Individual creative judgment is being systematically replaced by algorithmic consensus, and we're all complicit in it.

The Great Convergence

I've been tracking this pattern across platforms for two years. It's not subtle anymore.

Design work: Every website looks like every other website. Same fonts (Inter, obviously). Same layouts. Same component libraries. Same color palettes pulled from the same design systems.

Photography: Every Instagram photo looks like it was filtered by the same algorithm. Because it was. VSCO presets, Instagram filters, TikTok effects—all optimizing for the same engagement metrics.

Writing: Every newsletter sounds the same. Same casual tone. Same vulnerability signaling. Same structure borrowed from whoever's getting the most opens this week.

Music: Every bedroom pop song uses the same reverb settings. Every lo-fi track has identical production choices. Every pop song follows the same algorithmic formula for Spotify placement.

We're witnessing the death of individual aesthetic judgment in real time.

How Algorithms Killed Taste

Algorithms don't optimize for interesting. They optimize for engagement.

What gets engagement:

• Familiar patterns that require no cognitive effort

• Visual elements that have worked before

• Content that feels safe and immediately recognizable

What gets ignored:

• Novel approaches that require mental processing

• Aesthetic choices that challenge existing norms

• Creative work that doesn't fit established categories

So everyone optimizes for algorithmic approval instead of human impact. The result: creative work that performs well in feeds but looks identical to everything else performing well in feeds.

The feedback loop: Algorithm rewards conformity → Creators optimize for algorithm → More conformity gets rewarded → Individual taste gets systematically eliminated.

Instagram's Visual Dictatorship

Instagram didn't just give us filters. It gave us a universal aesthetic philosophy.

Before Instagram: People took photos that looked like their lives. Messy, unfiltered, personal, weird.

After Instagram: Everyone's life looks like the same lifestyle brand. Perfectly curated flat lays. Golden hour selfies. Minimalist coffee cups on marble counters.

The platform trained us to see the world through its aesthetic lens. We stopped asking "Does this represent my experience?" and started asking "Will this perform well in the feed?"

Individual visual taste got replaced by platform-optimized visual choices.

The Design System Trap

Design systems were supposed to solve consistency problems within products. Instead, they've homogenized the entire internet.

Everyone uses the same design systems (Material Design, Ant Design, Chakra UI). Everyone pulls colors from the same palettes. Everyone follows the same accessibility guidelines that prioritize readability over personality.

The result: Every app looks like every other app. Every website follows identical patterns. Visual distinction has been optimized away in favor of "best practices."

The uncomfortable truth: Good design has become indistinguishable from generic design because "good" now means "algorithmically optimized" rather than "distinctively appropriate."

TikTok's Audio Homogenization

TikTok's algorithm is particularly ruthless about taste elimination.

Original sounds die quickly. Trending sounds explode across millions of videos. Creators who use trending audio get distribution. Creators who don't use trending audio get buried.

So everyone uses the same sounds, creating an acoustic monoculture where millions of videos become variations on identical themes.

The pattern extends beyond audio: Same transitions, same visual effects, same joke structures, same emotional beats. TikTok's algorithm has essentially created a global creative template that everyone follows.

AI's Final Aesthetic Blow

Now AI is accelerating the taste recession exponentially.

Midjourney aesthetic: Everyone's AI-generated images look the same because they're trained on the same dataset and optimized for the same "quality" metrics.

ChatGPT writing style: Every AI-assisted blog post uses identical structures, transitions, and tone patterns.

Design AI tools: Every AI-generated logo, layout, and color scheme pulls from the same training data, creating infinite variations on identical themes.

AI doesn't just homogenize current aesthetic choices—it locks them in permanently. The algorithm's taste becomes the only taste.

The Engagement Optimization Trap

Creators face a brutal choice: develop personal taste or optimize for algorithmic reach.

Personal taste: Unique, interesting, polarizing. High aesthetic value, low engagement rates.
Algorithmic optimization: Generic, familiar, safe. Low aesthetic value, high engagement rates.

Most creators choose reach over taste because platforms reward distribution metrics, not aesthetic innovation.

The result: A generation of creatives who are technically skilled but aesthetically identical. They know how to make things that perform but not things that matter.

Why Taste Matters More Than Technique

Technique can be learned from tutorials. Taste can only be developed through experience, exploration, and personal aesthetic courage.

But we're optimizing for technique over taste because technique is measurable and teachable. "Use this color palette." "Follow this layout grid." "Apply this filter preset."

Technique without taste creates competent mediocrity.
Taste without technique creates interesting failures.

I'll take interesting failures over competent mediocrity every time. At least failures teach you something about your own aesthetic preferences.

The Cross-Domain Pattern

The taste recession isn't limited to visual creativity:

Web3: Every DeFi protocol has identical UI patterns. Every NFT project follows the same aesthetic templates. Every DAO uses the same governance structures.

Architecture: Every new building looks like every other new building. Same materials, same proportions, same relationship to context.

Fashion: Every influencer wears variations of the same algorithmic style. Fast fashion copies trending looks within weeks, creating global wardrobe convergence.

Food: Every trendy restaurant has the same industrial-minimal aesthetic. Every food Instagram post uses identical styling and photography approaches.

The platforms change, but the pattern holds: algorithmic optimization eliminates aesthetic diversity.

The Cultural Cost

We're losing something essential: the ability to develop and trust our own aesthetic judgment.

When everyone's creative choices are mediated by algorithmic feedback, we stop learning what we actually like. We only learn what performs well.

Previous generations: Developed taste through exposure to diverse aesthetic approaches, personal experimentation, and direct human feedback.
Current generation: Develops taste through algorithmic validation, platform metrics, and viral pattern recognition.

This creates creators who can optimize for engagement but can't recognize or create genuinely distinctive work.

The Rebellion Opportunity

Here's the thing: aesthetic homogenization creates enormous opportunity for anyone willing to develop actual taste.

When everyone looks the same, looking different becomes incredibly powerful. When everyone follows the same creative templates, breaking the templates becomes revolutionary.

The most memorable work I've encountered recently:

• Uses weird color combinations that don't test well

• Ignores established design patterns in favor of functional innovation

• Prioritizes aesthetic personality over algorithmic optimization

• Takes creative risks that might confuse or polarize audiences

This work stands out precisely because it refuses to optimize for algorithmic approval.

Taste Cultivation as Creative Rebellion

Developing personal taste is now a radical act.

What taste cultivation actually requires:

• Consuming weird stuff: Seek out creative work that makes you uncomfortable, confused, or curious. If it immediately makes sense, it's not expanding your taste.

• Making bad things: Create work without optimizing for performance metrics. Make things that might not work. Learn what you actually like by making things you don't.

• Ignoring best practices: Question why everyone does things the same way. Test approaches that go against established wisdom.

• Developing aesthetic courage: Make creative choices that can't be defended with data. Trust your instincts over audience feedback.

• Studying pre-algorithmic work: Look at creative work made before social media optimization. Notice how different it feels from current work.

The Technical Taste Problem

Even technical choices have become aesthetically homogenized.

Every startup uses the same tech stack. React, Node, PostgreSQL, AWS. Not because these are the best tools for their specific problem, but because they're the tools everyone else uses.

Every design uses the same interaction patterns. Infinite scroll, hamburger menus, modal overlays. Not because these create the best user experience, but because they're familiar and expected.

Technical taste - the ability to choose tools and approaches based on aesthetic and functional appropriateness rather than industry consensus, is disappearing.

The Measurement Trap

We've replaced aesthetic judgment with performance metrics.

Instead of asking "Is this interesting?" we ask "Will this get engagement?"
Instead of asking "Does this express something unique?" we ask "Will this algorithm promote it?"
Instead of asking "Do I actually like this?" we ask "Do the metrics suggest this works?"

The problem: Metrics measure algorithmic optimization, not aesthetic value. High-performing work isn't necessarily good work—it's just work that feeds the algorithm what it wants.

Breaking Free

Escaping the taste recession requires deliberate aesthetic rebellion:

• Stop optimizing for platforms. Make creative choices based on what interests you, not what performs well algorithmically.

• Develop aesthetic opinions. Notice what you actually like versus what you think you should like. Trust your instincts over industry consensus.

• Study diverse influences. Look at work from different cultures, time periods, and mediums. Expand your aesthetic reference points beyond current algorithmic favorites.

• Make uncommercial work. Create things that can't be monetized, optimized, or scaled. Rediscover what you're drawn to when performance pressure is removed.

• Question aesthetic assumptions. Why does everyone use the same fonts? Why do all websites look identical? What would happen if you did the opposite?

The Taste Recovery

Individual aesthetic judgment can be recovered, but it requires conscious effort and creative courage.

Start small: Make one creative choice per project that ignores best practices and follows your instincts instead.
Track what you actually like: Keep a collection of work that moves you, regardless of its algorithmic performance.
Experiment without sharing: Create things you don't post, don't optimize, don't measure. Rediscover what interests you when no one's watching.
Find taste references: Identify creators whose aesthetic judgment you respect and study how they make choices differently from algorithmic optimization.

The most powerful creative work in the next decade will come from people who resist algorithmic homogenization and develop distinctive aesthetic voices.

Algorithmic optimization creates immediate reach.
Personal taste creates lasting impact.

Note: Written with AI assistance, edited with human judgment, published with zero apologies.