I never did develop an appreciation of him no matter how many time I saw him do the same thing over and over. While I probably see Taxi as his high point I probably would have enjoyed it more if it didn’t make me think of his stand up stuff.
In my opinion, the “genius” usually credited to Kaufman was simply the fact that he got the reaction out of you that he supposedly intended. He’d say and do what it’d take to tick the audience off. In the back of their minds the audience could sense that perhaps it was a joke, but Kaufman’s behaviour was so blatantly convinving as ‘not going away’ that the audience would get angered, throwing fuel on the fire and spreading negative publicity. Which is still publicity.
It just seemed to be that he became a cult classic because he could annoy people very easily. People on this board have emulated his act, and much like Kaufman’s those acts get boring very quickly.
IMO, Kaufman was a troll people paid to see.