speaking personally I don';t feel like there is anything insincere or ironic about my appreciation of salt things
I mean, a lot of things in this thread I would hesitate to call "good" art in any conventional sense, but something doesn't have to be aesthetically pleasing to be interesting or fun
it's not really a matter of trash for trash's sake so much as sometimes really trashy or capitalist or otherwise "low quality" aesthetic things often have emergent phenomena, compelling flavors of experience that nothing else really does. self-assuredness is a frequent element of this. like, for instance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwNrPcWT540&feature=youtu.be this grotesque image of cultural icon m. mouse, for all of its uncanniness, is something someone put a lot of effort into making. did the maker intend it to be off-putting and "weird", or is this the product of a mind that has no appreciation of the type of aesthetic experience this dancing 3d "mouse" creates? the ambiguity of artistic intent compounded with its morbid distortion of what is, in reflection, a very absurd cultural symbol* is a sublime experience
*mickey mouse, seen from the eyes of someone without cultural understandings of cartoons and their aesthetic conventions would probably be perplexed by this whitefaced talking alien humanoid caricature. how the hell is it a mouse? why is it wearing gloves, and why do its hands have only 4 fingers? why the hell does it have a pet dog when one of its friends is a dog?? is this a rigid caste society where some animal creatures are possessions or wards to be patronized??!
again, I can't speak for other people, but that's my take on "salt"
I think your outline really hits the nail on the head on a lot of the other elements, though. I just wanted to make comment re: sincerity