Good taste has always been both rare and hard to define. Thanks to social media algorithms, everyone seems to believe they possess it. In fact, algorithms have flattened taste entirely, writes Tiffany Ng. Her dispatch on taste, below, is essential reading. —Michael Sebastian, editor in chief
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Technology has made it easier than ever to broadcast the things we like. Do any of us actually know anymore why we like them?
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What even is taste?
Taste can be easiest—or perhaps only?—described indirectly. In 1964, Susan Sontag wrote in Notes on “Camp” that “taste governs every free—as opposed to rote—human response.” She argued that taste is active and unruly, not something one can just subscribe to, not something that can arise from consensus. The pursuit of taste shouldn’t be straightforward. “Any sensibility which can be crammed into the mold of a system, or handled with the rough tools of proof, is no longer a sensibility at all. It has hardened into an idea,” she adds.
Taste requires intention. One must make choices to demonstrate it, and being simply drawn to something without reason is frivolous. At the same time, following trends is not cultivating taste, much as quoting Shakespeare isn’t authoring literature. Taste becomes a trope the moment it becomes tangible. Sontag, again: “To patronize the faculty of taste is to patronize oneself.”
Is taste a commodity? Today, we often describe it as such. It’s something—a hardened idea—that you either have or don’t. We think this way because we’re lazy. We owe that to the Algorithm. First it helped us, then it overtook us.
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After nearly eleven years and 1,801 episodes, Stephen Colbert has left the desk of The Late Show. It wasn’t entirely his choice, of course. But in a media landscape where billion-dollar mergers, lawsuits, and political pressures suck up everything in the room, the Emmy-winning Colbert has been unjustly thrown into the void like the One Ring at Mount Doom. (Eerily fitting that the entity people are blaming for bending their knees to power is called Paramount.)
But in the last-ever broadcast of The Late Show on CBS on May 21, the veteran host went out with his heart on his sleeve. He kicked off the show with a sincere two-minute speech where he thanked his audience for their “reciprocal emotional relationship.”
Throughout the rest of the broadcast leading up to Colbert’s actual final interview with Paul McCartney, the set was plagued by technical glitches and freaky, cosmic aberrations. It led to one of the final sketches for Late Show’s storied history, in which Colbert finds an all-devouring green wormhole plaguing other late-night TV studios. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jon Stewart, Elijah Wood, and yes, the Strike Force Five (Meyers, Oliver, and both Jimmys) all gathered in a pre-taped segment lampooning the existential dread underpinning late-night comedy amid Trump 2.0. Turns out, the ever-consuming gaping hole sucking up everything isn’t just an ever-consuming sucking hole. It’s a metaphor.
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I'd question your sanity at this point if you don’t own a white t-shirt. My bosses have trod this path, and it’s mind-blowing to me. No man’s closet is truly complete without at least one, and I think you should go brooding Carmy-mode and have it be the backbone of your wardrobe. The white tee is, quite simply, infallible. It’s your cornerstone.
Collectively, though, the Esquire editors take our white tee game very seriously—and have spent years figuring out what separates a decent one from a truly great one. To help you navigate the sprawling world of white T-shirts, we narrowed it down to the 13 we absolutely swear by. From the curved-hem tee one editor has worn religiously for half a decade to the wildly affordable Hanes shirt our entire staff keeps buying in bulk, these are the tees we reach for more than anything else in our rotations. And there’s truly something here for every kind of guy and any budget, with plenty of variation in cut, weight, and price point.
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