Hmm, I claim neither refined taste nor superior marketing ability. I’ve only cultivated minimum viable mediocrity at both. But I’m indifferent to both in a very specific way that makes them marginal concerns to me. Except I can’t name the central concern they’re marginal to.
For years people have accused me of both a) leaving $ on the table, by not marketing myself enough and b) trafficking in middlebrow non-aesthetic stuff. But these are not a result of deliberate intent to self-sabotage or offend connoisseurs. They are side effects of solving for X
True tastistas are dismayed even by wom success. They do not want taste to be profitable either socially or financially. The average tasteista sees suffering as proof of genuine pursuit of the essence of taste, and palliation of pain as betrayal of aesthetic true north.
Yes I understand that. But that's my point. Regardless of whether you want to think you're adopting a "strategy," you are. Not acknowledging that you're playing the same game as everyone else is part of the strategy that you're using in the same game as everyone else.
I disagree. Calling being a starving artist and suffering fir your aryristc vision nobody else gives a shit about” a marketing strategy (conscious or unconscious) feels vacuous. It’s a marketing strategy the way swallowing poison is “eating food”