Even Vogue capitulated because attention value had detached from taste quality
Evidence
But now the magazine needed to embrace elements of “distasteful” pop culture to maintain its influence. Even Vogue could no longer deny the internet logic that hate clicks were as valuable as love clicks. As with Wintour’s endorsement of reality TV, there was no longer a meaningful line between good and bad taste. The palace walls had crumbled: High fashion, hip-hop, and reality TV now occupied the same cultural milieu. Wintour’s capitulation signaled yet another victory for poptimism. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 371
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: This is a concrete instance of the ‘omnivore monoculture’ thesis — the collapse of taste hierarchies into undifferentiated attention. Directly feeds the reader’s counter-case about what the era’s actual signature is.