There has always been a cost for coolness, by coolness I mean being cool. We do not notice it that much, but there is a cost in being cool. No it's not money, but the how you act, or in short your whole behavior. Coolness in this case is not free. This means we have a "price" to pay.
There is always a downside of everything. It's like the two sides of a coin, or simply black and white. So I wanted to know more. In my research I stumbled upon an article about the problem of being cool. It was made by Joe Robinson. This article talked about how "being cool" deciding your taste and desires. It mainly talked about how being cool is to much for us to even bother doing. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-robinson/are-cool-people-more-inse_b_757462.html
"Cool kills the full expression of life" Joe Robinson mentioned. "It put your core needs in deep freeze by making you play the wrong audience" he added. He also mentioned that "Being cool is supposed to make us irresistibly confident in our up-to-the-minute blase-ness, but it actually feeds insecurity with the false belief that popularity or a certain image is needed for validation.". Another he put it was saying "Let's face it, the premise of cool is a stretch: You're cool if you're copying somebody else and devoid of specialness if you are yourself".
With all these statements he did you will put in mind that cool is slowly poisoning us to become someone who we are not. I mean cool is suppose to mean being who you are, being unique, and impressing no one else but you. He did say that "You are the audience" which means you need not to care what others think. Coolness adds up to your confidence, or it's suppose to be. But nowadays coolness becomes an enhancer for insecurities by means of needing to follow a certain image or other words mimicking. With all the things coolness has been through the premise of cool is now stretched. From all the different trend that came up somehow cool has been affected in today's perspective.
Going back to the price of being cool Joe Robinson said that "There's a big price to be paid for excess image concerns at the behavioral level." One price we pay is missing an opportunity because of the factors we need to consider if we are to be cool. Before we jump in and do it, we first must stay there and ponder if it is appropriate for you status, which is "you being cool". Enthusiasm is a way to propel you to try new things. But because of coolness, it "turns those engines off" as he puts it. Also spontaneity, he said that it's "a spur-of-the-moment geyser of authenticity." But because of coolness it shuts it off. I think there are more numerous prices that needs to be paid, but "being conscious" pretty much sums it up. If you are conscious, everything else follows. Your self-esteem, decisions and other behavioral things would be affected because of this.
The big fish of this whole article is to show us all the things to consider just to be cool. It just says how tedious it is to be cool. The costs are high too if you come to think of it. Being cool makes us different from who we really are. We are being masked by something society thinks is appropriate and not what we think is right. We are slowly being brainwashed by the idea of being cool. We better watch out and monitor what we do. If it still US.
Sunday, 24 March 2013
8 - COOL IS MAINSTREAM
Cool used to be a counter culture to the mainstream. Today it has become the opposite, cool is the new mainstream. From my point of view everyone is trying too hard to be cool. This causes being cool to be lame, boring, and stupid at the same time.
With all the positive connotations on cool I have been reading, I wanted to find out if there are people who think cool is not so cool. With that, I researched about this and stumbled upon an article by DanCitizen from his own website http://cooliskillingus.com. This article was about Cool being too mainstream and cool being hijacked by marketing and branding.
In his article he mentioned that man has never been obsessed in being cool than before. He said that it's like we need to consume just to be cool. But come to think of it "we consume everything from what we eat and drink, and to what we watch" as he said it. "Gone are the times we produced for ourselves" he said. He also asked "when was the last time you actually produced anything?" after what he observed.
After reading his article he did point out that cool is mainstream. After all the efforts of man has ever done to be cool and different, only ended up being too mainstream. Well, everything we consume does come from someone else. Nowadays it is harder to make something self-generated after all the efforts of mankind to simplify everything and make life easier. This is like saying everything has already been invented. But with that thought, it makes it more hard to be cool. Only few people are really cool if this is the case.
Cool used to blaze new paths, but nowadays cool is just a fashion statement or a trend people need to follow. Cool now means just following what's new. He said that "Cool means not questioning but following" this kinda means it's uncool to question how things came to be and it just being a waste of time. With that I think cool nowadays just means being a careless type of person.
With all the positive connotations on cool I have been reading, I wanted to find out if there are people who think cool is not so cool. With that, I researched about this and stumbled upon an article by DanCitizen from his own website http://cooliskillingus.com. This article was about Cool being too mainstream and cool being hijacked by marketing and branding.
In his article he mentioned that man has never been obsessed in being cool than before. He said that it's like we need to consume just to be cool. But come to think of it "we consume everything from what we eat and drink, and to what we watch" as he said it. "Gone are the times we produced for ourselves" he said. He also asked "when was the last time you actually produced anything?" after what he observed.
After reading his article he did point out that cool is mainstream. After all the efforts of man has ever done to be cool and different, only ended up being too mainstream. Well, everything we consume does come from someone else. Nowadays it is harder to make something self-generated after all the efforts of mankind to simplify everything and make life easier. This is like saying everything has already been invented. But with that thought, it makes it more hard to be cool. Only few people are really cool if this is the case.
Cool used to blaze new paths, but nowadays cool is just a fashion statement or a trend people need to follow. Cool now means just following what's new. He said that "Cool means not questioning but following" this kinda means it's uncool to question how things came to be and it just being a waste of time. With that I think cool nowadays just means being a careless type of person.
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