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Rephrased: Any artistic direction done in the interest of creating or increasing profits is overwhelmingly likely to be tasteless. I don't think that's particu
by banannaise 1y ago
Rephrased: Any artistic direction done in the interest of creating or increasing profits is overwhelmingly likely to be tasteless.
I don't think that's particularly controversial. Profitability doesn't imply tastelessness, but profit motive certainly does.
- bluGill 1y agoI would argue that if you can't make a profit you have shown you are tasteless. If other people don't enjoy it enough to pay you, that says a lot about how out of step you are.
- yifanl 1y agoMaking profit with art and making art for profit are tangentially related topics at best.
- i80and 1y agoThis would make a number of great artists of history "tasteless".
- bluGill 1y agoA would agree with that for a number of well known artists often called great.
- cwnyth 1y agoIf I were to bet on whether the critical consensus or some random person on HN had no taste, I would certainly bet on the latter. This post reeks of "Am I wrong? No! It is the artists, critics, collectors, and community who are wrong!"
- bluGill 1y agoThere is no objective measure here. What i call good and bad is right for me and doesn't apply to anyone else- wait - I though I was arguing for consensus here and everyone else was calling me wrong
- cwnyth 1y agoDid I mix that up? Regardless of whoever it may be, taste is indeed subjective (de gustibus and all that jazz).
- watwut 1y agoThe "only thing that matters are money" ideology at its peak.
- bluGill 1y agoMoney isn't all that matters but it is one of the few objective signs we have.
- NateEag 1y agoMoney is subjective. Like countries, it exists only in people's minds. Its value comes from agreement by a large number of humans that it is valuable. A stack of Benjamins would be nigh-valueless to people from 9th-century China.
- nradov 1y agoNot at all. The actual value of money comes from violence. This is objective, not subjective. If you have a certain amount of taxable income in the USA (or subject to US legal jurisdiction) then you're required to pay tax in US dollars: the IRS won't accept Euros or gold or anything else. If you fail to pay then eventually IRS employees will seize dollars from your financial accounts, or seize other assets and sell them for dollars. And if you try to physically stop them then they'll arrest you, or even shoot you. And to be clear, I don't think this is a bad thing. It's necessary to keep civilization working.
- NateEag 1y agoA good point. Thank you. The violence, once enacted, is an objective fact. The threat of violence is still there only due to the collective subjective agreement that countries exist. The IRS would have no functional power if Washington, D.C. and other major US cities were destroyed in a nuclear exchange. I could imagine many citizens still choosing to pay taxes of some sort and/or respect the value of physical dollars in such a scenario, but it would likely not be due to fear of the federal government. Possibly fear of local police, though.
- saubeidl 1y agoA true artist is ahead of the tastes of the common rabble.
- muststopmyths 1y agoaren't you then equating taste with popularity ? not sure if that's a popular opinion. In which case it would be tasteless.
- bluGill 1y agoThere is no objective measure of taste. Popularity says that at least a lot of other people agree there is taste here.
- tavavex 1y agoPopularity says that a lot of other people agree there is value there. While I'm not informed enough to say what 'taste' means exactly, the common understanding that seems to be present in this comment section is that it's not a direct proxy for goodness, usefulness etc, like what you imply. I think most would agree that there are tasteful things that aren't also mass-marketable immediately useful goods or services.
- dingaling 1y agoProfit is surplus revenue, which means money that people paid you but which you didn't spend on improving your product, paying your staff better etc. That's why making profit is sometimes seen as greedy, because it's money that could have been reinvested in the product. Amazon in its early expansion phase never made a profit, because every cent was reinvested. And they didn't need to pay a cent of tax for that reason.
- nlitened 1y agoProfit is “how much your whole is more valuable than the sum of parts it consists of”. If your taste is what makes it valuable, then more profits reflect more taste.
- tauroid 1y agoSaying "out of step" rather than "out of touch" seems like a bit of a Freudian slip.
- rhetocj23 1y agoKinda. But also not true. When music production was tightly controlled, the competition among labels produced some really, really great songs. Timeless type stuff. I dont hear anything of that quality anymore. Tradeoffs. They exist.