Show Notes
We suddenly seem to care a lot about what the person next to us is reading. Between celebrity book clubs, literary moments on the runway, and the rise of the professional tastemaker, taste itself has never been so public. You may even have started wondering whether the book tucked under your arm on your morning commute is something you love, or something you’d like to be seen loving.
This week, Alice Griffin and Jannah Anderson unpack the performance of taste, exploring the psychology of signalling and impression management, the trends and people shaping contemporary reading culture, and what it means to cultivate preferences that exist beyond aesthetics, algorithms and social capital.
☆ If you're also spiralling about technology, loneliness, and the human condition, Klara and the Sun has your name all over it. Gather the group chat accordingly. In cinemas from 22 October. ☆
Plot Twist! All the Books Guests Brought to the Valentino Show by Anna Cafolla and Francesca Faccani, Vogue
Bring a book: how reading became fashion's favourite accessory, Cur(AI)tion Substack
Watch: Jack Edwards’ Valentino Book Swap video
The Curious Notoriety Of “Performative Reading” by Brady Brickner-Wood, New Yorker
Read: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances by Hugo Liu
Impression management: A literature review and two-component model by Leary & Kowalski
Basic Or Pretentious: The Anxiety Of Spotify Wrapped Perceptions by Sofia Appolino, The Diamondback
Want to support our show? We'd be so grateful if you hit 'follow' or left us a 5-star review so we can bring you more Coping content.
Plus, you can follow along with us on Instagram and Pinterest. Find out more about what we're up to (and how you can get involved) at copinginc.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Coping
This week, we're coping a little differently ! Following our AI takeover spiral a few weeks ago, we thought it only fair to balance things out with a timely celebration of what it really means to be human.
Harry Styles is rumoured to be retiring. Amelia Dimoldenberg is bringing the Chicken Shop Date era to a close. We all remember Simone Biles stepping away from the gymnastics mat. More and more, we're watching people opt out of goals they've built their identity around and spent years publicly pursuing. Quitting seems more socially acceptable than ever, so why does walking away still feel like failure?
It seems everyone around us is moving through life at exactly the “right” pace: getting engaged, having babies, buying houses, building careers, finding purpose. Meanwhile, we’re left wondering, are we running late to our own lives?
AI experts, executives, and inventors themselves are sounding the alarm – warning us that an AI takeover could threaten all of humanity within just the next ten years. In other words, the call is coming from INSIDE the house.
Are you Type A or Type B? (Justice for Type C !) Maybe the label you’ve given yourself feels grounding (and that’s okay!). Maybe it’s limiting – something you’ve been trying to shake off..? Or maybe you’ve turned a label into a sort of playbook, a personality shorthand we were never really meant to rely on. This week, Alice Griffin and Jannah Anderson dive into self‑imposed labels – dissecting the logic of Myers-Briggs and comparing their own Enneagram results as they unpack the universal urge to categorise ourselves. And can you ever truly shake off a label once it’s been culturally assigned… sometimes en masse? (Raygun made peace with hers two years post-Olympics – and you probably would too with Sammy Sex in your corner). TikTok’s Obsessed With “Type A” and “Type B” Personality Types - Here’s Why by Keyaira Boone, Cosmopolitan The Carl Jung Quote You’ll Love Based on Your Myers-Briggs Personality by Susan Storm, Psychology Junkee Why Myers-Briggs Is Totally Useless - But Wildly Popular by Anna North, New York Times To Promote Inclusivity, Stay Away From Personality Assessments by Quinisha Jackson-Wright, New York Times Mindfulness by Dr Ellen Langer Thank You For Smoking: How Big Tobacco Created the ‘Type A’ Personality Myth Uncertainty-identity theory Hogg, M.A, in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 39 Schema Theory in Psychology by Charlotte Nickerson, Simply Personality Isn’t Permanent by Benjamin Hardy All I Ever Wanted Was To Be Hot by Lucinda Froomes Price The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson Untold: Raygun Breaking Badly, Netflix Want to support our show? We'd be so grateful if you hit 'follow' or left us a 5-star review so we can bring you more Coping content. Plus, you can follow along with us on Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Find out more about what we're up to (and how you can get involved) at copinginc.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.