Here’s an ugly truth to kick this off. Thanks to modern women and black guys, the concept of “good taste” has forever been muddied and conflated with “lots of money”.
Go on, tell me I’m wrong. Then pull up literally any picture of a young black person attending a Hollywood gala, or posing on a red carpet. I don’t capitalize “black” just like I don’t capitalize the “red” in carpet, because it’s not a proper noun. I’m speaking to you like you’re a person and not a halfwit. Regardless, look at any picture like I’ve described.
Does the young black person look like they have good taste, or like they have enough money to be a media spectacle?
Now, let’s look at the example of “modern women”. I say “modern” because when I was a teenager, I could visit any American metropolis, glimpse over a hundred women, and never see one of the following:
- long fake fingernails in neon colors (not even in Jersey, where I grew up)
- tattoos on all visible skin
- “booger swings” or nose piercings of any kind
- pink or purple hair, or any hair color that appeared unnatural and/or sickly (excepting old and/or sickly ladies)
- artificially-plumped lips and huge sunglasses
- “gauged ears”
I saw plenty of shoulder-padded “power suits” on women, which you don’t see anymore. Wanna know why? Because power suits on women fell out of taste. Go rent the movie Working Girl, you’ll see why.
Everything I listed above is ubiquitous in modern women. Now, go through that list and tell me the least amount of money each thing might cost to have done professionally, in 2025. If you have to, look up the current rates for such practices. (Yes, I’m aware I keep telling you to do things. I’m sorry.)
It’s all $100 and up. There are no “discount options”, because the expense is the point. The entire purpose of the exercise is to prove to the public that you could easily afford the services required to have those things. No straight man likes garish fake fingernails on women; not just because they make women’s hands look like cartoonish beaver mitts, but because they’re unnatural. Plus it doesn’t help that everything in the universe suddenly matters less to a woman than keeping the dang-blasted nails from breaking or falling off. Because that would invalidate the expense, and thus substantially diminish the woman’s visible worth (in her own eyes).
You ever hear a woman talk about how she got a bargain on a new tattoo? No, because first of all women don’t function that way unless it comes to food and beverages, but mainly because unless you’re blind, you can look at a tattoo and tell if it was expensive or not. You know what “stick-and-poke” tattoos are, right? What is the conventional wisdom regarding women with stick-and-poke tattoos? If you gathered 100 stick-and-poked women in a meeting hall, and interviewed them, what do you think their commonalities of attitude and lifestyle would be? How easily slighted do you surmise they might be about the choices they’ve made regarding their skins, if pressed about it?
Do you ever see a famous young black guy wearing a tailored suit who isn’t a politician or Neil Degrasse Tyson? Of course you don’t, suits are “too white”. If you see a young black guy who’s legitimately rich and famous (you know, for rapping, or playing basketball or what have you), what is he wearing at public affairs that typically request formal attire?
He’s dressed like a fat slob soccer coach, except every item of clothing costs hundreds of dollars more than it should. Tally it up if you don’t believe me:
- Baseball cap with flat brim and gold foil authenticity sticker clearly visible
- Big designer sunglasses
- Official team jersey (or fashion-label version)
- Gold-trimmed “hoodie”
- XXXL designer velour sweatpants
- Diamond-encrusted or gold-plated wristwatch
- Limited-edition brand-name pro-baller-endorsed puffy sneakers that can’t be scuffed without a donnybrook
That’s in the neighborhood of thousands of dollars. All for substandard clothing and accessories that can be easily read by other young black people as “money”.
There’s a reason you get “cancelled” if you call any of this absurd; because it is. The scumbags behind the curtain who keep this whole crap game afloat get very threatened when you figure out that they exploit women and black people, so they invent mendacious epithets like “racist” and “misogynist” and “supremacist” to denigrate you in the public eye. Then once your threat has been neutralized, they go right back to hawking sweat-shop junk from third-world countries to people who should know better, and laughing the whole time. It’s not that they “own” the media, it’s that they pay the media’s bills and you don’t.
Fifty years ago, how a person dressed was a reflection of their own personal style. Children were dressed by their parents with an emphasis on function and longevity; most of us who were children at the time were given clothes that our older siblings and relations had outgrown. There were no fucking “fashion labels” for kids; all that mattered is that our bodies were properly clothed for school or church.
In 2025, every child is an unwitting walking advertisement and status symbol. Something as simple as a water bottle can be a tool of social judgment. If a woman picks up her kids from school in anything less than a giant black Escalade with limousine-grade child seats, then you can bet all the other women are clucking and hmph-ing about it behind her back, whether they call themselves her friends or not. And every last one of them lies to themselves that it’s all about the “children’s safety” and not social status. Because, you know, all of us who made it to school in a smoldering VW Bug or somesuch had malicious daredevils for parents, who couldn’t care less if we lived or died.
Oh wait a minute- kids are mostly homeschooled these days, right? Good thing there’s no way to judge social status based upon that, what with the expensive laptops and high-speed internet and direct view into someone’s domicile. Good thing it was forced upon everybody five years ago, for better or worse. What a bonus for the people who subconsciously need to know they’re better than everyone else.
Good taste does not require money. You can be dirt poor and still have good taste in your interests, and how you present yourself. You can be destitute and still be a multifarious, cultured personality of whom people genuinely enjoy the company. Meanwhile, big money and bad taste go hand in hand. You have better chances of finding a money-shitting unicorn than a billionaire with impeccable taste. Billionaires can buy the best of everything; that includes someone else’s good taste, because their own tastes are no more complex than those of your average crackhead. They care about their money and the secluded places it can take or buy them. They’re no different than the women with the dumb fake fingernails.
If you’re lucky, you will go your entire life without your good tastes being assailed with the frequency that mine are. My good taste, which I cultivated over a lifetime, is insulted literally every time I leave my home. Every single thing I see and hear is in bad taste. It’s like I live in a parody of 2025; every image is ugly, every note of music is foul. People dress like insane clowns and communicate by screaming, whether outdoors or in. People puff away under the huge “NO SMOKING” signs in the subway. Because I am a satirist, I do my best to make humor out of the absurd behaviors and aesthetics I witness whenever I walk out my door.
I’ve told this tale already, but twenty years ago I had a brush with mainstream media exposure when I was interviewed by Stuff magazine.
I’d written a review of the underground DVD Indecline Vol. 1, as well as its progenitor, the legendary Bumfights: A Cause For Concern. I once received an email from Ryen McPherson thanking me for the former and chiding me for the latter; I had hedged my bets vis-a-vis backlash, and written my Bumfights review from an ethical high horse. I didn’t want to let on to my public that I’d enjoyed Bumfights as much as I did. Not in 2002, anyway. I was still trying to get on Adult Swim.
Turns out, I was probably the only one who defended Indecline from an artistic standpoint, whereas most were eager to dismiss it as cheap shock because of the Bumfights stigma. Now, it’s twenty years old (as is the Bling-A-Long spin-off DVD), and the original Bumfights is even older. And I still go back to them all, and have with regular frequency for the past two decades. Why is that?
I was interviewed because I am something of a respectful authority on the Bumfights series, its stars, its makers, its detractors, and those who co-opted it. I’ve watched the videos more times than I care to admit, partly because of the unequaled frisson of truly underground footage, partly for the vicarious thrill of real violence. Any time I mention the title, uninitiated persons dream up the gnarliest snuff film their minds can conjure, filled with unwarranted abuse against innocent homeless folk. Then they assume that’s how I get my rocks off and shine me on. It’s a regular laugh riot, especially if I mention “The Bum Hunter”.
The truth is, Bumfights is probably about 15% genuine bum fights, and the rest is mostly high school kids pounding the crap out of each other in California parking lots. Future volumes only get worse, splicing in interminable sub-Jackass stunts and pranks. So if anything gets my rocks off, it’s when someone gets all huffy and righteous at the thought of anyone even watching a video called “Bumfights”. They say things like “I thought you’d have better taste than that”.
Which, frankly, they kind of have a point; there is a lot of openly trashy material in Bumfights; a stripper here, a prostitute there. So to make my case a little better, I’m going to throw in a sample, set to unlisted of course, so no feathers get ruffled.
Watch this video and tell me; what stands out to you the most?
Was it:
- the kinetic action and flow of the fight(s)
- how they don’t give the skinny guy enough time to remove his shirt so it ends up looking like a training bra
- that one of the fighters is apparently named Trevor
- the buffoon in the black hoodie who thinks everything should be about him
- the stripper who appears right before a glitch I had to fix (my disc is damaged)
- what a beautiful day it was
- the sun glinting through the heart-shaped tree
- the lack of actual bums
- the absolutely slamming drum-and-bass music.
For me, that last item trumps everything else. I have searched for years to find the author of that music, to no avail. That music, plus a dozen other amazing tracks, is what brings me back to Bumfights again and again. It doesn’t matter how vile or inhuman the video is; the music is what makes the content transformative. The juxtaposition of visual horror with excellent, appreciative ear candy. And the music in the Indecline video is even better.
Think of the movies of Harmony Korine, Gaspar Noe, Coralie Fargeat, Ari Aster, and Lynne Ramsay. All of them fuse discomforting images and subjects with some of the best music I’ve ever heard. Anyone can show you something gross or shocking; it takes taste to combine it with the right music and transform it into art. Here’s a classic example from film history:
You tell me which is more effective musical accompaniment for the horrors of the Vietnam War; Wagner’s absurdly bombastic “Ride of the Valkyries”, or CCR’s era-appropriate yet cliched “Fortunate Son”? More importantly, which feels more inspired?
How much of Oliver Stone’s 1994 film Natural Born Killers worked as well as it did because the score was a mixtape made by Trent Reznor and producer Jane Hamsher? Quite a lot, I’d wager. Love it or hate it, no one argues that the music isn’t good.
Like everyone else who’s aware of him at all, I’m sure you have an opinion about Sam Hyde. Whatever that opinion might be, know that I have been a fervent follower of Mr. Hyde’s work for fifteen years now. This is not just because I’m interested in his videos, but because I’ve seen dozens of them, and I can’t recall a single instance where I wasn’t enthralled by his choice of music. In the past, I’ve even gone so far as to copy it for personal use.
Glue70, cramped skunkman, Bill Jobs, Birdy Nam Nam, Orangy, Brian Ellis, The Soft Moon, John Maus, Haakon, Brakebill; that’s all stuff I was introduced to by Sam Hyde and Million Dollar Extreme. Every member of MDE has demonstrably impeccable taste; Nick Rochefort even operates an antique business with his wife. Perhaps the only criticism I could levy against the long-awaited second season of World Extreme Peace is that the music is partly stuff I’d already heard on Fishtank. The show itself ranges from almost as good as the first season, to the best sketch comedy I’ve ever seen. Charls Carroll and Erick Hayden are better actors than probably 90% of Hollywood. It’s ridiculous how good the show is. (Oh, I’m sure whatever’s on Adult Swim instead of MDE is just as good. Right?)
The difference between making art and making money often comes down to the judicious application of taste. When it’s good, you might make one or the other. When it’s impeccable, you can make both, as well as create something that people want to carry in their lives, forever. Even something normally considered shocking, or repulsive.
That’s the true benefit of having impeccable taste.
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