Embracing corniness let less sophisticated millennials still signal taste

Evidence

This aesthetic trickled down to less sophisticated millennials as an unabashed embrace of overwhelming corniness. Good taste, after all, is a mask—and the mask of no mask gave young people permission to jettison traditional constrictions of sophistication. This shift was particularly easy in a poptimist world where their elders rejected any elevations of art over kitsch. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 349

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s omnivore monoculture mechanism — the ‘mask of no mask’ as a status dynamic that flattens subcultural distinction.
• DEEPTHINKING: ‘Good taste is a mask, and the mask of no mask’ is a dense capsule argument about how sincerity itself became a performable status position — central to the whole ‘death of the sellout’ mechanic.