The Merchants of Cool

So you think you're a cool guy? So you think it is of your free choice? Think again. How much of modern youth culture is manufactured by the corporations? The following documentary will reveal:

1) How the youth demographic is the most profitable of all demographics.
2) How youth marketing works.
3) How corporations hire "coolhunters" to discover up and coming trends to capitalize on youthful rebellion.
4) The stereotype characters of the "mook" and the "midriff."
5) How the corporations are no longer discovering trends but rather creating them.
6) How just five corporations dictate what is cool or not.
7) How certain aspects of youth culture of today has come to prominence.


If you are a youth like me or have followed the modern day youth culture, you will probably find this documentary extremely interesting.

Google Video Link

[edit on 26-1-2010 by italkyoulisten]

reply to post by italkyoulisten


You ask if I think I'm a cool guy or if we all do, and I can only answer to what I think. Some days I do think I'm cool and other days I think I am possibly the biggest geek to ever stumble down the street. However, I know what I think is cool and it has rarely, if ever, had anything to do with what media or corporations market as cool. Perhaps that makes me a geek, or perhaps that makes an individual who makes his own decisions, and judges what is cool or is not based upon critical thought and sometimes even just the feelings I hold.

Here's what I think is cool:

I think individualism is cool.

I think ethical and honest behavior is really cool.

I think compassion is cool.

I think showing a willingness to be wrong and learn from ones mistakes is pretty damn cool. Conversely, I think a strong desire to be right and to act in ways that accomplish this is very cool.

I think reasoned discourse is cool.

I think intelligence and the effort to expand ones own knowledge is cool.

I think cool is cool.

Here's what I think is uncool:

I think abdicating ones own personal power for the privilege of being a victim is uncool.

I think blame is irrelevant and uncool.

I think expecting corporate entities to act in socially responsible ways is naive and I think willful naivete is uncool.

I think culture is learned and as such if one wants to learn only the "culture of cool" in an attempt to place style over substance that this is uncool.

I think trends are set by trendsetters not because they are necessarily cool but because they have acted in what they believed to be their best interest and all who would follow this trend just to be cool are really just followers and by extension, uncool.

I think an obsession with what is cool is uncool.

Back to the original question: "So you think you're a cool guy?" I think if one doesn't think they are cool, they should ask themselves why, they should reason for themselves what they think cool is and if they want to be cool, then they should be cool.

Whats cool?

1. Living free from the boob tube and the cablebox is cool.
2. Being cool to other people is cool
3. Expect coolness, and leave coolness behind you
4. Leave the uncool alone, some fools will never be cool
5. Its better to be dead and cool, then alive and uncool
6. Cool is a universal language, not a prepackaged deal.
7. Modern fashion is not cool - see rule five.
8. If your fashion statement comes from the mall - its not original, therefore not cool.
9. Even squares can be cool if they find the cool in the square - see Andre 3000.
10. You can't copy someone else's cool, original cool is always cooler than a copy of cool.

Inspired by the Fonz, and Tom Waits.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


What I am getting at is the mainstream perception of cool; it's not what you or me think is cool, but rather what the "general consensus" of cool is. Everyone has their own perception of cool. However, most young people don't think like what you have listed, and gratefully gobble up the manufactured perception of cool.

Originally posted by italkyoulisten
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

What I am getting at is the mainstream perception of cool; it's not what you or me think is cool, but rather what the "general consensus" of cool is. Everyone has their own perception of cool. However, most young people don't think like what you have listed, and gratefully gobble up the manufactured perception of cool.

Yes I understood what you were getting at, but as George Bernard Shaw once said: "Youth is wasted on the young" and I would follow with, wisdom is wasted on the old, as the older we get, the less worried we become about what any "consensus" is on cool. That said, it hasn't been that long since I was in high school and Jr. high school and I was less concerned with any consensus and more concerned with doing what I thought was cool. Of course, I had to learn how to fight and defend myself because being perceived as a geek comes with its own dangers, but "what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger".

I did get it too - I quit shopping in malls a long time ago and make sure my kids get clothes that I feel looks good on them and makes them happy. My older kids only recently got onto the fashion bandwagon and started asking for the Aber-zombie stuff... which I told them that they needed to get on their own as I refuse to shop there. Period.

I made my daughter think when I asked her why one company had the lock on 'cool' and she couldn't answer.

I keep trying to teach my 13 year old that cool comes from finding an original style and rolling with that. My 10 year old gets it somewhat, and my little ones are more into their own groove anyway.

No TV or cable really minimizes that issue, the prepackaged 'trendy' thing.

*edit - Big Brother demands spell check.

[edit on 1/26/10 by GENERAL EYES]

reply to post by GENERAL EYES


It's interesting/funny because true coolness is people who think for themselves, and that's where the corporations got all of their trend/fashion ideas.. from original thinking kids on the street. Then they sell that image to kids who don't think for themselves [uncool], which just so happen to make up 90% of the other kids.