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Latest column. Britney, Bowie, and the unavailability of cool.

The Rules Of The Game #14: The Death Of The Cool

Key sentence: "But where coolness - or any knowledge - stumbles is when it becomes the attribute of a particular class."

So what's been your experience with "cool"? Is there such a thing? What would it be now?

Links to previous columns. (And they've finally added the paragraph breaks to last week's column. Comments didn't make it through, however. LVW got the italics too, but missed them this week, and I'm not going to press the matter.) UPDATE: That link "to previous columns" no longer works, but I've got the whole set here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

(Also, here's a link to that Michael Ventura article I refer to, "Hear That Long Snake Moan," about the African sources of cool, and the New Orleans source of everything. Ventura cannot be accused of understating his case.)

Date: 2007-09-06 12:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] katstevens.livejournal.com
Around the age of 8 I was determined to be 'cool', however my interpretation of this was terribly skewed into 'having everyone like me'. I say terribly, because I had no idea how to go about this, and as soon as I started trying to be cool, everyone started HATING me (beforehand I had always received either genuine friendship or indifference). I lost what few friends I had and became thoroughly miserable for most of that school year until I stopped caring so much. My method of achieving coolness was deeply flawed: never showing enthusiasm, trying to appear as though nothing affected me for better or worse - this mutated into being highly defensive at all times & not trusting my own judgement. Arrrrrgh. I look back and think of all the grief I could have saved myself. It sounds cliched but as soon as I relaxed and stopped worrying whether people thought I was cool or not, I became much happier.

I don't think I could actively try to be 'cool', and be happy at the same time.

Date: 2007-09-06 12:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] katstevens.livejournal.com
(ps I really enjoyed this column!)

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Frank Kogan

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