notes on cool: the 'cool' person is not a rebel

the first time i was called "cool" it was by two chubby, big boned girls who were smoking cigarettes outside of the depanneur that the juniors at my highschool used. i was eating a giant oatmeal cookie and drinking strawberry milk. that depaneur is gone. am i still cool?

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there is a war for our attention called marketing. 'coolness' is the ability to decide for one's self the quality and more importantly one's COMPATIBILITY with any given cultural product.

the 'cool' person functions exclusively in the cultural realm, constantly self-positioning in relationship to both cultural things and other actors on the street. without the culture industries there would be no cool. the person who is antagonized by the educational institution is not cool, but could be called a rebel, for instance. ditto for people who enjoy road racing or any other form of significant anti-authority behaviour.

the 'cool' person is an agent/consumer, deciding with grace what choices are appropriate and never failing because those choices can be canceled or are perpetually self-renewing—the 'cool' person can just "bail" on a "bummer" time

the rebel, on the other hand, is an agent/actor, and whose decidedly anti-establishment actions have sometimes (often, sadly) harsh and non-negotiable consequences (the rebel is expelled from school, the rebel is executed by the government and so on.) fundamentally, rebellion necessitates both far more action and far more risk than simply being 'cool.' and while iconic rebels in pop culture certainly employ coolness, they also "live dangerously" and have clearly exited the cultural sphere. (culture doesnt kill anyone, politics does. (even the politics to road race, or drive drunk and pop too many pills.))

rebels—pop culture or otherwise—often employ self-sacrifice to achieve their goal. the 'cool' person's goal is