Let’s take a moment to be honest with ourselves.
When was the last time you made a discovery independently? Not because it was on your “For you” page. Not because everyone at school got it at once. Not because your favorite influence decided that you “couldn’t live without it”.
But because you found it by chance, and fell in love with it before anyone told you to.
As the world dives deeper and deeper into the new age of technology, that is the question that more and more of us are starting to ask: are we actually developing our own taste, or are we slowly being trained by algorithms?
The Invisible Stylist Behind Your Screen
An unseen system operates in the background whenever you open Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Spotify— any social media app. It keeps track of the things you pause on, rewatch, even the ones you send to your best friend at one in the morning. It picks up on everything, including the videos that you covertly watch through even though you “don’t like it”.
After that, it starts to adapt.
You see more of the media you choose to cling to. More videos about what drew you in. More of the things that capture your interests for a fraction of a second. And that feels fantastic at first. Your feed feels curated. Personal.
But your feed doesn’t mirror your taste. It creates it.
The Aesthetic Pipeline
Perhaps you were curious and watched a “clean girl” morning routine. An iced matcha, a matching workout set, gold hoops, a sleek-back bun. It appeared serene. Organized. Effortless.
Three more appeared on your feed the next day. Next, ten. Then, all of a sudden your scroll was glowing and beige. It stops feeling like a trend and begins to feel like a standard after enough repetition. Like this is what put together looks like. As if success looks like this.
And maybe you do truly love it. But it’s still worth asking if you hadn’t seen it fifty times that week,would you still find it as compelling?
These days, social media trends change so quickly that your sense of style can feel different every month. One month its soft cottage-core. Then it’s Y2K. Then minimalism, then hyper-maximalism. The speed makes it hard to tell whether you’re growing, or just adapting to like what you see.
The Psychology of Repetition
But don’t worry— it’s not just you. There is a real psychological effect behind this.
Our brains process information more readily when repeatedly exposed to it. Liking something can be the result of that ease, that “oh I’ve seen this before” feeling. To the brain, familiarity is true, and more importantly it is safe. This isn’t something that we consciously choose, it’s because repetition improves processing fluency and lowers uncertainty.
Research has proven that even brief, barely perceptible repeated exposure can increase our liking of something. This effect doesn’t just apply to lab created goods or shapes, this applies to faces, ideas, styles, slogans, and stories. Something can already change how appealing or true it feels just after two or three exposures.
Therefore, your brain begins to identify certain body types, aesthetics, humor, opinions, or lifestyles as familiar when they are constantly promoted to the top of your feed. And they begin to feel normal once you are accustomed to them. Then they seem appealing. Then they just feel right.
Meanwhile, what you don’t see doesn’t get that repetition boost. It remains strange. And because your bran hasn’t been exposed enough to lessen that uncertainty, new things frequently seem less appealing or just “off”.
This doesn’t mean that your preferences are fake, though. It doesn’t imply that you are easily swayed, or shallow. It just means that our brain runs on repetition. And that can be dangerous, especially in an algorithmic world.
Reclaiming Your Taste
It used to take friction to develop taste. You had to sift through racks. Check out CDs. Explore the strange corners of the internet. Pose inquires to others. Take the chance of not liking something. It seems like nowadays, everything comes pre-filtered.
So what can you do?
Well, taste has always been shaped by culture. So maybe the real rebellion isn’t deleting social media. Maybe it’s the decision to occasionally to step out of the norm. Looking for something wholly unrelated. Listening to an album that doesn’t fit your typical mood. Wearing a piece of clothing that may not garner the usual attention.
Maybe it’s just asking yourself: “Do I really like this or do I like that other people like this?”
The answer will most likely never be straightforward. And there’s no shame in that. It’s quite impossible to study the inner workings of your mind to trace where a certain liking was developed. The point isn’t to untangle every influence, but just to be aware that your preferences are always being shaped.
The Takeaway
It’s okay to adore trends. It’s okay to enjoy what’s popular. You are free to build Pinterest boards with images that were most likely recommended to you.
However, you are free to doubt it as well.
Because real taste isn’t just what you choose to consume. It’s about what speaks to you. It’s about what you would choose if there were no amount of likes and comments and influence telling you what to chose. If there was no algorithm studying your every interaction.
And the next time you feel like your feed is telling you who to be, consider this:
If the algorithm vanished tomorrow, what would I still love?
