Internet ad economics collapsed the boundary between high and low taste within elite magazines

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

• SEED: A concrete instance for an essay on how advertising revenue models — hate clicks equaling love clicks — silently dismantle cultural hierarchies that editorial ideology alone would have preserved.
• XREF: connects to: The Internet ended editorial gatekeeping between content producers and audiences — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 147; Online advertising economics pushed foreign correspondence toward affluent young freelancers, worsening neocolonial dynamics — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 175