The curation complex

I scored an 18 out of 30 on The New York Times/T Magazine’s “How Cultured Are You?” quiz. I did a lot of guessing. I know my cheese and wine. I do not know my classical music or fine arts. I remain a rube who has retained most of the lyrics to Ludacris’s “What’s Your Fantasy?” and none of the words to Maya Angelou's “Still I Rise.”

“How to Be Cultured” is a striking package, as far as editorial feature presentation is concerned. There’s insight on avant-garde films, poems worth memorizing, notorious art controversies, how-tos for eating tricky foods (honestly, this is helpful), can’t-miss operas, and more on theater, architecture, and fashion.

In her editor’s letter, T editor in chief Hanya Yanagihara suggests the goal of “How to Be Cultured” was to acknowledge that we can’t know everything, but we can be inspired toward curiosity. But after perusing the feature, I commented to Dave that I don’t mind not knowing the names of artists, or of being pretty clueless around topics like theater or art films (put me in the Criterion Closet and watch me have a panic attack). It’s not that I don’t want to experience any of these things, but I won’t be earning my Cultural Curation merit badge anytime soon. What the “How to Be Cultured” feature stinks of, to me, is our recent desire to prove or perform acts of taste.

“Knowledge has become the ultimate status symbol, and everyone wants to cash in,” Camille Charrière wrote in her inaugural column for Air Mail. She refers to this obsession with looking smart as a certain strain of millennial anxiety: “the idea that taste is not a journey but a virtue. It is no longer a personal endeavor, the stuff you love (or don’t), but another thing to optimize, a tool to stand out in the attention economy.”

In his New Yorker column in March, Kyle Chayka wrote about how tech bros are obsessed with “taste,” in that developing it gives anti-humanist technologies like AI the illusion of humanism. Now it’s starting to feel like we’re trying to humanize ourselves: posting our excursions and curating our social media grids to show that we’re being oh so mindful about who we are and how we spend our time. Could an uncultured swine do this (intersperse moody photos of their omakase dinner with Rupi Kaur Instapoetry)??

“I’m curious why seeming intelligent has become more important than being. Not being intelligent, but being, full stop,” Charrière writes. “You stop reading books and start quoting them (or taking pics holding them). As someone who has lived performing for social media for over a decade, I can attest that the trade-off is real. The more time you spend projecting, i.e., wanting to seem like you are invested in something by posting about it, the less time you spend deepening your knowledge of the world—not to mention yourself.”

I’m man enough to admit that I’ve had spells of envy toward people who can curate an Instagram presence or home decor that carefully adheres to their specific vibe. I’ve absolutely feigned knowledge of artists when spending time with folks who are actually in the know. And I have felt deep embarrassment when shooting a pour of whiskey that was apparently a very nice brand intended for sipping thoughtfully. Unfortunately, some of us just cannot fake it.

It’s taken many years before I’ve learned my helter-skelter interests, styles, and propensity toward dabbling (rarely committing) is its own type of intelligence, one that I think largely leaves out the performance. Collecting — not curating — is living for the sake of it, rather than designing a presence that makes you the ideal consumable. I am so much more than the stack of (mostly unread) library books next to me. I am also two hot dog vendors in a trench coat.

I promise I am still impressed by how many people have curated themselves, but I’m starting to notice when it feel performative versus honest. I’d love to see more people out there doing and just existing, and maybe even admitting their low-brow tendencies. That’s emotional intelligence — that’s relatable!