Prompt Engineer Your Way To Analgorithmic Taste
The best way to develop a sense of taste is to log off. The second best way is prompt engineering.
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I felt my sense of taste snap into sharp focus while standing in front of a Hammershøi painting in 2015. Up to this point, my taste was informed almost solely through Lana Del Rey reblogs on Tumblr. I thought I liked cheetahs and diamonds and flower crowns and splashy Supreme-esque logos— womainsplained as Barbara Kruger ripoffs to anyone that would listen. I had a bad case of algorithmic taste, and Hammershøi broke the fever. Shit, I thought, I need to log off. I’ve kept my screen time under thirty minutes per day since.
Just kidding. Like you, I am addicted to my phone. Since my Hammershøi awakening, I’ve been vulnerable to each trend wave– the “parental advisory”-style graphics, the weird expanding foam mirrors, the unflattering (on me) slick-back bun. My life preserver is inflated every second that I spend offline. Even so, I’m floating in it, chin just above water, legs kicking. But I don’t have the time or the means for vintage shop globetrotting; alas, here I am, lit by the glow of Etsy 2 inches from my face. Here in this trance, my home is most vulnerable to turning into algorithmic slop.
Your goal is to become analgorithmic. “Analgorithmic” is the first induction into the official there y0u are Book of Language (ie I made it up). It means outside the bounds of the algorithm; unable to be summed up by AI. Je ne sais quois. How do you beat the algorithm? You don’t— you join it. You become a prompt engineer.
Search terms are the difference between your home feeling like the product of the algorithm, and your home feeling like you. They separate the men from the boys. Say you love the look of the Herman Miller Wire Base Table Low. The novice would stop their search term quest there. The prompt engineer lifts the hood. Close-read what you like about the table and utilize your offline tool belt. How would your grandmother explain this table, as someone who isn’t algorithm-pilled like you? Would she say MCM? Probably not. Case study? No. Try getting literal. Maybe even get a little “wrong”. Chrome base. Short. Plywood. Unfinished. Pedestal. Metal. Moreover, the more time you spend educating yourself offline, the more expansive your vocabulary becomes for prompt engineering. You pore over a stack of design and art books, and suddenly you’re tossing around “figurative”, “bauhaus”, “modular”, “anthropomorphic”. No big deal. Things start clicking when you can combine the grandma vernacular with your newly-informed vocab.
Below, some killer (shoppable!) pieces (ranging from $25-$495) and the search terms used to find them: