Somehow this reminds me of the history of lobster as cheap food for the poor and imprisoned. People detested it. Until of course the status of lobster changed.

Somehow this reminds me of the history of lobster as cheap food for the poor and imprisoned. People detested it. Until of course the status of lobster changed. Or the fact aluminium used to be extremely expensive and thus used for the most precious cutlery, ornaments etc. Until of course it became dirt cheap to produce. Some things really are related to the ideas we hold, not reality itself. You can see this in blind tests of foods or drinks like wines, the blind ratings often don't correspond with their reputation or price. Bourdieu's book la distinction is quite a good treatise on this topic. Taste and what we consider artful or high quality is much more constructed by our environment than by any innate or objective measure, we tend to fool ourselves on this point.