[gonehome]

The wine example is a tricky one because there's another metric aside from like/dislike or good/bad that wine falls into. Maybe class related status bullshit?

I enjoy wine, but I also recognize a lot of the snobbiness about it (particularly at the high end) is a mixture of snake oil and rich people looking for a place to buy more status.

I remember some interview on NPR with a wine expert. The host was asking why in all the double blind trials people aren't able to consistently rate wines or even have consistent preferences. The wine expert complained that it's the fault of doing it double blind and 'when they're present with the people' (and likely giving them obvious clues about what's supposed to be good or not) 'they can tell the difference'.

There's good/bad, like/dislike, but there's also true and fraud, high status and low status. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference, sometimes there isn't a difference.

[TeMPOraL]

The middle-class version of this is craft beers. Oh god, the grief I was getting from my friends once almost everyone got infected by the "I only buy expensive craft beers, and I care for taste" showmanship. To each their own, but I really do think that a particular brand of cheap, mass-market beer that I like tastes better, and it's also cheap. I have other things that I like to pay premium for.