The Three True Tasteboy Outcomes

Harry on Tasteboy Aspirations

I’m one of the only guys brave enough to speak out about a problem secretly tormenting men everywhere – Male Instagram Vibe Missialignment. 

I’m not talking about All men. Of course Not All Men. Some fellas post on Instagram less than once a fiscal year, abruptly announcing they’ve gotten engaged or started a SaaS company or went to Puerto Rico. I’m not talking about these guys. I’m talking broadly, about Taste Boys. 

Taste Boys are everyone else. It's a group that I’ll broadly define as men who extract some real value out of sharing what they are interested in with like-minded people.

Some Taste Boys find a way to have this itch scratched without engaging with social media, but most…maybe 95%...don’t. And those people, the taste boys with any aspiration of a cohesive digital vibe are the victims of a sweeping clandestine epidemic.  

Three True (Tasteboy) Outcomes

Men with Taste Boy aspirations see three paths for their digital sevles. The first path is the one they want to take. They know they want to be Chris Black for hip hop…or Pastry ThemJeans. Tri-State Blackbird Spyplane. Baltimore Ion Pack. They can look out and run their hands through what it might feel like to interact with microcelebrity the way Jimmy and Larry of

Throwing Fits

do with an endearing and grounding online self-awareness…and yet that path–the specifics–are opaque and confusing and blurry. Where you are and where they are is crystal clear, but there is a deep unswaggy valley between you and them…with no guide on how to traverse. 

Then there are two other options: a tepid demure taste boy performance, or GRWM guy. 

GRWM 

GRWM guys should go to jail, but they should also be given a medal of honor for their bravery. There's a real Nietzchian “Will To Power” going on here. Just being like “ok im an influencer now” goes truly crazy.  

I have to admit, when I see a GRWM guy in the wild (Reel Pull) I am disgusted. I want to jump through my phone and into his living room right as he’s blessed his pleated vinty Ralph with a spritz of Chantal for men, and body-check him into the wall. How Dare You. ‘3 must cops for the summer’ and one of them is a blue ALD button-down? IDK the most famous streetwear brand in the world riffing on a blue Oxford? Thanks dude. 

For most, the path of GRWM-Guy is too dangerous. What would mom think?

So most with TBA take the safer route. Any vibey fit pics they’ve begged their friends or girlfriends to take stay firmly in the camera roll, MAYBE…MAYBE a close friends post. 

(The one strange exception to this is men who grew up LA. They seem to believe it's ok to do stuff like this all the time..but that is a conversation for another time!)

Tepid Taste Boy Woes

I am a TTB. The TTBs are not as embarrassing, but we are tormented. With one side of our digital selves, we gesture towards the idea that we believe we have Good Taste. With the other, we gesture towards how totally lame and uncool it is to proclaim one has good taste. We’ll be subtly prescriptive about what we think is Swaggy, while doubling back on the idea that prescriptive fashion takes is passe. Supreme is cooked, but believing supreme is cooked is also cooked..and so on…

The Tepid Taste Boy path is the sort of proverbial ‘touch grass’ approach. It acknowledges that something that supersedes having Good Taste in Scandinavian button-downs, is knowing how bad, unhealthy, and perhaps most importantly in this case, swagless, beaming oneself online is. Even the most tasteful fit tossed on in the context of that totally fucking CIA-sponsored ‘paging doctor beat’ trend signals 500 things about your relationship with yourself and the internet before it signals one thing about your Personal Style. 

AND YET! AND YET!!!!!!! Sure the Tepid Taste Boy avoids being a GRWM guy, but at the cost of something actually very real and human. We don’t get to fully engage with the most essential part of BEING a taste boy!!

What is fun about fashion, taste etc. is it puts you in a position of constantly playing with shifting mores. There is a three ring circus going on where plates are spinning with shifting fashion trends, ones shifting relationship to those trends, and ones shifting relationship to having a relationship to trends. That's the fun part! And you know what? Just as releasing this blog so it gets perceived and read and engaged with is part of my creative process, blasting a fit into the digitspace and seeing if any beautiful women (or discord boys) fuck with the vision is part of the Taste boy creative process. I feel robbed of that right now not in a i-want-to-be-an-influencer kind of way, just in a garden-variety urge to express myself through what i like! I know there are other TTBs with me.

Plus i hate to use the C word here but there is a community. Kamala Harris was right: willie brown did have unspoken rizz We do exist in a context! Our digital performance, or lack thereof, of course, seeps into how we move through the world IRL… especially when it comes to making friends, lovers, and building a community. 

Mid-pandemic, I had a new colleague hit me with a ‘nice shirt’ as he saw 1/5th of an online ceramics t-shirt popping through the framing of my zoom camera and I instantly felt closer to him in some small way. Years later, post-pandemic, we drank 3 beers at a bar called Floyd and talked about Karl Anthony Towns. If that's not a wholesome argument for Posting Fits on Main Behavior I don’t know what is.

Which Way Western Inspired RRL Boot Cut Denim Man?

So what really is the problem here? I can’t post fits on IG without feeling cringe? I guess yes… that’s the problem.

Mostly i think all of this is probably fine. I’m 29 i don’t need to post fits on Instagram. But it is a teeny tiny bummer to me that we don’t have a way to tell the difference between someone earnestly posting about fashion and culture and art that they like because it makes them feel good and feel a part of something, and someone who posts about fashion and culture and art on because they’re totally lost in the sauce.

I’ll leave you with one final thought, adjacent to all this. At some point, a shift took place as the recommendation taste apparatus completely imploded. Taste, real taste, is displayed more coherently now in what trend (sartorial, intellectual, memetic, or otherwise) someone decides to sit out. Knowing what seems sinister, corny, and cynical is in higher demand than knowing what looks cool. This is good i think, but it does affect the aspiring taste boy uniquely. How do you signal to your squad that you adeptly decided not to post Tim Walz hitting the griddy or whatever? This is why what is ultimately aspirational about the TFs, BBSPs, HLGs of the world and why there are so many keen on imitating them. I don’t think it is the pull of fame and clout but rather the permission to levitate slightly above the rat race recommendation apparatus– enmeshed in it without being dominated by it.