do you care about being cool?

yes what can u do

Yes, but I'm positive my personal definition of cool is way off the mark compared to what actual people find cool

I'm a middle aged woman. "Being cool" stopped caring about me a long time ago. I don't miss it.

this vanishes before you're 40, usually, but I always preferred Oasis to Radiohead.

I'm not sure if it's "being cool" that I care about, but yes, I am horrifically wracked with self-doubt, misery and anxiety that I'm somehow not... enough, I guess. Not just not cool enough, but not enough at all.

I'm pretty sure I stopped caring about being cool once I had my first kid

care more about being funny, and kind (when I can spare the emotional energy)

i dont care but i have had coolness thrust upon me against my will

I really wanted to vote no but I think if I'm being honest (and ILX polls demand honesty above all else), I have to say yes.

are u cool enough to admit you care about being cool?

Yes I still care about it, but about 30% as much as I did 5 years ago. I moved to about as uncool a neighborhood as one can live in, most of my clothing shopping is for work and consists largely of ordinary chain retail, I don't spend much time going to shows or art galleries or checking out hot new farm-to-table gastropubs, I have memberships in various childrens' museums, etc. If anything, I like to imagine there's a certain cool in my ability to stay sort of aware of things while not flailing to be some brooklyn "cool dad" that puts black flag onesies on his baby. You know, a sort of dignified, adult cool.

i am cool but i do worry about losing it sometimes

well, obvs not a brooklyn cool dad since I live in queens, xp, meant that more as an archetype. I do wonder if I'm the "kewl dad" described by hannah horvath in that one girls' episode, but I don't think I do the "ironic dad" thing either.

I guess to a certain extent I would like to be cool, but I make zero effort in order to be so. I guess that's not exactly the same thing as not caring, but the result is basically the same.

always hated the idea of cool but i don't really want to be a dork so i dunno

Depends on what we're talking about. If we're talking about clothing and style, yeah I try to be "cool" (i.e. have an idiosyncratic style that requires a bi of effort). If it's music/movies/books/etc, I couldn't care less about what's cool, I love some of the corniest stuff. And with other human beings, no, coolness is not good, warmth is better.

cool thread

more or less yeah but I tend to strive for situations where the bar for cool is kept low

http://media.giphy.com/media/d5LoJwi7aj612/giphy.gif

Yes, I'm 31 and I still care. Hopefully I will stop within the next 5 years or so.

One thing I have def noticed in my mid-30s is that certain things have lost their aura of *cool* for ME, which is probably the flipside of becoming less cool. Like I feel much less of an urge to check out new bands, and a lot of new bands of the type that once would have had a mystique of cool for me now just look kind of young and try-hard and desperate, and don't actually seem all that cool to me. I think you start to recognize ageless patterns in marketing that lay bare that what you're witnessing is just that -- marketing, and not some deeper sign of ineffable "cool." I don't know if I'm explaining this well, but I think I've lost some of the ability to suspend disbelief that comes along with buying into certain kinds of cool.

emil.y strikes me as one of the ilxors who could try not to be cool and it'd just keep sticking to her

Generally, yes. Although it depends how cool is defined. I've always been more aware of various trends, music, fashion etc than a lot of people my age who I know. But I think I went slack on trying to be cool a couple of years ago and it had the effect of chilling me out quite a lot but also making me a bit more slack in other areas of my life too. Most of the people I work with are a few years younger than me and I can't help feeling a bit like a desperately unfashionable fogey in front of them. And when you think like that, you start acting like it.
I felt kind of old, washed up, lacking in the vitality which comes with being young and exciting. When you live in a small town and work an office job it's easy just to start dressing-down and going sedentary. In the last couple of months though I've decided I need to change or else I'll stagnate. I went out and bought some new clothes; ones that suit the age I am (early-mid 30s) without making me look like I'm hopelessly trying to be down-with-the-kids, but also not like I'm ready to embrace middle age just yet.
It's funny, the base psychological effect of wearing a new jacket. You just feel better walking around and people sometimes even compliment you, which does ridiculous wonders for the ego. At the same time, I find myself acutely aware of how facile this is, and how just because I spent some dosh on a piece of clothing, it shouldn't mean anything. I should be able to wear whatever I want (I know a lot of cool people who don't dress in any particular way at all, they're just 'cool') and still be able to project myself in a cool way if I want.

i guess i care about it sometimes but mostly in the sense of just trying not to be a complete tool the whole time, rather than coolness as some sort of ideal state that i'm ever likely to attain. but maybe that's a different thing?

The many-layered onion of cool

i don't worry about being cool because i have a nintendo

Back when I was young enough for cool to still care about me, I was always of the impression that *cool* was something like zen, in that, the harder you tried to attain it, the less you actually attained or were it.

Therefore the most "cool" thing to do, is actually not to *care* about being cool. Which might just end up in one of those Godel Escher Bach recursive loops of brain-hurtingness if you think about it too hard, so let's just unthink this thought.

P much what marge simpson said, tho, so by definition uncool im afraid

Nah, not interested -- happy to have let those considerations fall away. The times I have embarrassed myself most have been the times when I cared about coolness.

xxp I reached a similar conclusion after hearing Elvis on the album 'Having Fun With Elvis On Stage' - that being genuinely cool meant doing whatever you wanted, without a moment's thought for how 'cool' it might make you seem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0M2xWs8zsc

i care about being cool, cuz i long for an invite to the private 77 board

Don't care.

Am.

I think I care more about being cool at the age of 28 than I did when I was 18, which is tragic, but there you go

i don't think that using an elvis as a comparator for cool is going to be very useful to yr everday person

He was cool because he didn't care about being cool.

there he goes, etc.

can't believe this isn't on youtube

Homer: So, I realized that being with my family is more important than being cool.
Bart: Dad, what you just said was powerfully uncool.
Homer: You know what the song says: "It's hip to be square".
Lisa: That song is so lame.
Homer: So lame that it's... cool?
Bart & Lisa: No.
Marge: Am I cool, kids?
Bart & Lisa: No.
Marge: Good. I'm glad. And that's what makes me cool, not caring, right?
Bart & Lisa: No.
Marge: Well, how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we've tried everything here.
Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you're truly cool, you don't need to be told you're cool.
Bart: Well, sure you do.
Lisa: How else would you know?

that's nonsense tho snobes

he was cool, so he didnt need to care about being cool

P much what marge simpson said, tho, so by definition uncool im afraid

― treeship's assailing (darraghmac), Tuesday, March 25, 2014 6:01 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is otm

If you could be generally well liked and respected by the people around you, and they enjoyed your company, but did not consider you 'cool' would that be enough for you or would you still be bummed you weren't cool?

but did not consider you 'cool', would that be enough for you or would you still be bummed out you weren't cool?

i like to think idgaf abt being cool but the other night i had a drink with a friend of a friend who is like, two kids, lower middle class suburban house, ugly wife (probably), sneakers polo dad jeans, smoking on an e cigarette and in my mind i was like this dude is wack as fuck i hope i don't end up like this.

I suspect that the formalised idea of 'being cool' is one of the illusions that advertisers use to try and make us dissatisfied with our lives and therefore more likely to buy stuff.

If you care, then you aren't cool.

no there is def such a thing as cool besides the marketign idea of cool which (pro tip) isn't cool

if you answer this question, you're not cool. if you post in this thread, you're not cool. actually maybe if you post on ilx you're not cool.

are u cool or wack as fuck

y/n?

when I think about being cool I think about a tweet I once saw

Matthew Sullivan ‏@EkheinLTD Feb 21
"I was nearly 40, bandcamp sales were at an all-time low and my folks were still paying my rent".

I just am.

once you start to lose your hair you can never consider yourself cool again

aint that the fuckin truth tho

define "cool"

everyone who posts after this post = not cool

http://www4.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/3rd%20Annual%20Celebrate%20Sundance%20Institute%20Los%20-3sworJ6gxDl.jpg

Say it ain't so. xps

also, there's a difference between anti-cool and not cool. anti-cool people will brag about how they listen to uncool music and watch bad movies and not care about how they dress. this is just another permutation of cool. I mean, if you're listening exclusively to nineties hip-house and watching Ellen reruns, that's a style. You are consciously thinking about the things you like - however idiosyncratic you have 'taste'. I guess not being cool is not having any particular taste or preference, no insider knowledge of anything whatsoever and therefore not privy to any world where someone might consider you cool.

xpost zinedine zidane is the only living person to have made male pattern baldness look remotely cool. but he was yknow, ZIDANE.

no, none of those things are cool even if you're doing them on purpose dl

being uncool can't be handwaved away with 'no, no, i meant it'

yes and no

of course you can be balding and cool. you can be most anything and cool. it's partly a matter of ~owning it~, but more to do with that mysterious irreducible kernel of coolness that resides deep within the truly cool person.

personally i care about being cool because i've somehow stumbled into being the coolest i've ever been at the ancient age of 29, and now that i have it (a little bit) i don't want to lose it.

xpost zinedine zidane is the only living person to have made male pattern baldness look remotely cool. but he was yknow, ZIDANE.

Its actually amazing how untrue this is once you think about it

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XF7Vcmq8pSo/TpLyLW5U-kI/AAAAAAAAAKo/ZzuSEauCN2s/s320/warholsassoon1985.jpg

There is no single concept of cool. One of the essential characteristics of cool is its mutability—what is considered cool changes over time and varies among cultures and generations.

Nick Southgate writes that, although some notions of cool can be traced back to Aristotle, whose notion of cool is to be found in his ethical writings, most particularly the Nicomachean Ethics, it is not confined to one particular ethnic group or gender.

Nick Southgate was born in an unremarkable part of South London where he grew up in an unremarkable way. He went to Durham University in 1991 where he was seduced by philosophy. After many years of study and teaching he emerged at the turn of the century with a Ph.D. on the metaphysics of personal identity. He then traded in communicating very complex ideas to a very small number of people for communicating simple ideas to millions by joining Ogilvy advertising.

Despite devising campaigns to make people pay their tax and listen to Radio 2 more he couldn’t shake the philosophy bug and wrote a version of Descartes’ Meditations for market researchers and a paper on Aristotle & The Notion of Cool. The latter paper was the beginning of the quest that culminated in The School’s Class on ‘How To Be Cool’.

Aristotle is pretty fucken uncool imo

The School of Life is devoted to developing emotional intelligence through the help of culture. We address such issues as how to find fulfilling work, how to master the art of relationships, how to understand one’s past, how to achieve calm and how better to understand, and where necessary change, the world.

Headquartered in London, we operate around the globe, delivering our services down a number of channels to suit your different needs. We offer classes and therapies in person. We also publish books, film our events and make and sell a range of objects & tools that will assist you in the quest for a more fulfilled life. We also run a consulting and training service for businesses.

The School of Life is a place to step back and think intelligently about central emotional concerns. You will never be cornered by dogma, but we will direct you towards a variety of ideas from the humanities – from philosophy to literature, psychology to the visual arts – ideas that will exercise, stimulate and expand your mind. You will meet other curious, sociable and open-minded people in an atmosphere of exploration and enjoyment.

ah yes aristotle's celebrated notion that 'cool is something you learn to be by being it'

http://i62.tinypic.com/5mwd2r.jpg

I didn't realize how important a social force this was. Apparently the world can be looked as as a big high school. Very interesting concept.

coolness is easy as shit, u just need to look indifferent and detached. zen monks, cats, yoruba priests, starving models = cool

i had to read darraghs post twice before i realised he wasnt talking about nick southall there

jeez another vote of confidence in my character

i am not very cool in the sense of hip but i am pretty chill about everything, so i got that going for me.

i like to think idgaf abt being cool but the other night i had a drink with a friend of a friend who is like, two kids, lower middle class suburban house, ugly wife (probably), sneakers polo dad jeans, smoking on an e cigarette and in my mind i was like this dude is wack as fuck i hope i don't end up like this.

― adam, Tuesday, March 25, 2014 10:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I feel old and boring now until I get around like really straight and normal ppl and then I'm surprised at what they're surprised by.

My grandfather would always tell me "you're the smartest person in every room you walk into until you open your mouth," meaning that the key to social success was being laconic, keeping things close to the vest and thereby achieving a dignified sort of mystique. I never went in for this advice but I think it really is the key to coolness.

All the bad guys are not cool though. Not saying all people who aren't cool are bad guys, but are there any cool bad guys, or even cool libertarians?

http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

loads of cool bad guys

http://www.imgbase.info/images/safe-wallpapers/miscellaneous/fantasy/18904_fantasy_jesus_vs_satan_arm_wrestling.jpg

look at that dork on the right ffs

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a82/bobbysixer/nmeawayday1976_zpsddea3be7.jpg

NME journalists' office-awayday team building session, Brighton, 1976

cool is my brand

bill murray -- cool dude, good guy
chevy chase -- uncool dude, bad guy

also if you do something bad, people will tell you that's not cool, dude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_HH_jher3c

idk about aristotle, socrates didn't give a fuck and eventually died of hemlock drink

badass cool guy

Yes, but not that much.

I don't know what kind of cool I'm supposed to be, but I desperately want it.

if you answer this question, you're not cool. if you post in this thread, you're not cool. actually maybe if you post on ilx you're not cool.

this is a p good response, notwithstanding the fact that some brentwood yuppie isnt going to be able to say definitively whether or not someone is cool

the fact the the only other good post was by someone from la is interesting, feel like la is a p cool place rn, not as cool as it used to be but way cooler than like, portland

the whole marge simpson thing is wrong, being cool is a lot of work, think of anyone you know who is actually cool, they are working really hard at it. the fact that they may not seem like they are is probably why they are cool in the first place

also people arent really cool or uncool, sometimes i am cool but mostly not, it was easier to be cool when i was younger like it was easier to have a really flat stomach when i was younger, i like seeing what is cool and what isnt though, what context something can be cool in obv not everything or everyone is cool to the same people in the same way

i care about being cool a lot but less than i used to, now i care more about whether the amount of effort it takes to be cool is 'worth it' but i also wonder if caring about 'whats cool' is embarrassing i do think its p cool to decline the invitation to treat being cool/whats cool as this ineffable, mysterious thing because it isnt really, generally you can see the shape of things and understand the throughlines even if specifics can sometimes be obscure

l.a. is at a pretty high cool point, higher than it's been probably since the '70s. idk I've only lived here 14 years, in our Brentwood home for only six. It does tend to isolate me from the cool areas more but Gaucho does sound tremendous on the stereo here if nothing else. the acoustics are sublime.

Los Angeles is never cool as it is too consciously affectationally "cool"

i definitely do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_of_the_Cool.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_of_the_Cool.jpg

OK that's definitely not cool

posting urls instead of images is the new posting images instead of catchphrases

I am 59 and therefore deeply, terminally uncool, so it's ok to post in this thread. I struggled with being cool for a few years when I was an adolescent. Then I gave it up as hopeless. tbph, I gave it up with great reluctance and many relapses.

Being uncool stopped bothering me at about age 21, of which fact I am somewhat proud.

That's when I put away the desire for coolness, along with other childish things, and I started putting all my effort into being perfectly and unarguably right about everything, including things I knew next to nothing about. It has taken my wife decades of effort to effect even a partial cure for that one, but, bless her heart, she's still chipping away and may yet succeed, one of these decades.

it's why we listen to music, to feel cool ~~~~~

Really? I never realized Georg Philipp Telemann was able to endow me with cool.

(starts to feel cocky)

I think "cool" is easily misunderstood. Coventional wisdom tells us that detachment is a key element, but really, it's quite the opposite. Cool is very much about attachment. Attachment to the notion that there's something urgently at stake in how we live. "Cool" is really a sort of seal of approval that we look to that signals to all (especially oneself) that we are living the good life, close to the marrow of what most matters, and alive to the energy of one's era. "Cool" is actually deeply corny.

you're just using "cool" as a synonym for "good" or "attractive" there. "cool" is a distinct concept.

I don't think so, Treeship. I'm very much thinking specifically of coolness per se, as a distinct concept, and trying to get at what I feel is its central, though mostly unrecognized impetus. You may disagree with my theory of course, but if what I wrote just reads like dilution or distortion of a distinct concept then I've done a poor job of articulating my thoughts.

i still agree with my grandfather's idea that coolness is about cultivating a mysterious aura, like you are in on some secret. i'm really chatty and open in a guileless way so i don't think i'm good at doing this.

i really don't think it's about the good life or focusing on what matters. like, coolness is about disdaining things for your own mysterious reasons and having enough confidence in your judgments that the people around you feel guilty for not agreeing.

I think your grandfather is on to something. maybe it's as simple as being a person that people feel they need to impress rather than the other way around.

yeah i think that's it, basically. it's amoral, a kind of social power that can be used for good or evil.

cool as aloof or cool as chill?

Cool as chill makes more sense than cool being aloofphones of the same coolmeme

Playing it cool for me has the sense of managing difficult or challenging circumstances lightly or even with humour, rather than aloofness.

Wish I could do it more, but unfortunately I get indignant and rather obviously rattled under pressure.

Your own perspective changes over time ...in the NME group photo I posted above I'd guess Charles Shaar Murray felt somewhat cool at that time (and from body language I'd guess he regarded Mick Farren as the height of cool), while the washed up post-hippy Miles looks somewhat isolated. But who feels cooler now looking back?

(l-r Miles, CSM, MF, Chalkie Davies)

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/kerouac-cobain-and-the-photos-that-define-american-cool/

pretty sure ilx, or even a Shoreditch passer-by, could collate a better collection (and that's not issuing a challenge)

It's always odd when ILX takes your words away from you, changes them to distort the meaning and attributes them to some cartoon character, but at least they were honest itt that that is what they did.

"Cool" and people's conceptions of it are actually quite interesting. Especially as the word encapsulates two quite different ideas that got tangled together.

I was under the impression that the word and concept of "cool" in the 20th Century sense originated with African-Americans. In an oppressive environment where to display powerful emotions - such as anger, distress, passion - was physically dangerous, an attitude of "being above it all" was a carefully cultivated survival technique. To be literally "too cool for this" where "this" is a potentially dangerous situation. And this is the core of "cool" concept - calm, even, slightly disdainful, keeping one's true thoughts and opinions to oneself, being slightly mysterious and unreadable.

But then there's another raft of associations that have grown up around the word, where "cool" means hip, edgey, on-trend (or, more specifically slightly ahead of trend). Which is, I think, what a lot of people mean when they talk about "cool" - and it is also the thing that one is automatically disqualified from ever attaining, by getting too old (too suburban, too parental, too "mom jeans").

And the talk of effort - the former was what I meant by referring to zen. Zen-cool is this mythical state of "not being bothered" and *appearing* as if you give no fucks and it should appear effortless. But, like zen, it often takes a huge amount of effort (in the form of practising restraint and self-discipline) - like a cakewalk in the original sense, where a huge amount of effort and control is required to make something look easy.

But with the whole sense of "cool" meaning "hip" or stylish or edgey. Obviously this takes a huge amount of investment and knowledge and the time to engage in cultural exploration. This takes a huge amount of work. (And if you show your workings, you run the risk of being dismissed as "try hard"). But although this is what people often mean when they say "cool" in terms of "the cool kids are doing it" - this is not actually what I think the word or concept means.

I don't know that "cool" is anything inherently good or to be aspired to, in either sense of the word - I can certainly see the uses of the Zen-cool state, but the problem is, inhabiting that state too completely leads to apathy. Some passion, some emotion is necessary in life.

Thinking this hard about "cool" is definitely not cool. But I still find it interesting to think about.

x-post, but christ, that PBS link that NV posted is infuriating. Because:

“We were not going to play politics just to create a gender mix,” said Dinerstein.

moments after:

if Queen Latifah or Missy Elliott should represent women in hip-hop (the votes went to Elliott, Latifah landed on the alternative 100 list).

Because of course, only *one* woman can represent "women in hip-hop" whereas they are perfectly happy to have 5 or 6 white men representing... "men acting in films" or whatever.

But there's your lesson: "cool" is gendered, and "American" is raced.

there's something about creating a canon of cool that feels quite uncool

and it doesn't allow for the shifting nature of cool that Lamp mentioned up there - it isn't a fixed quantity. god knows James Dean is long past being cool in the UK at any rate

i really hate cool tho except in its original black usage and maybe the beatniks too. it pains me to think about this shit. this is probably cos i'm v uncool but i've had this affliction since teenagerdom.

still i look round my office this morning and obv i'm easily the coolest one in here but what kind of status is that?

obv my obsession with documenting lame-oid local councillors is just a way of boostering my own self-esteem

Well, that's the other thing: that "cool" like "hip" is always a relative term, used in relation to others. There is no independent and inherent quality of "cool".

Like, Lamp can say upthread, with some degree of confidence "LA is cooler than Portland" but I think it is impossible to make a qualitative statement of "LA is cool" because "cool" is always... "compared to what?"

On a point of information, marge said it first tbrrwu

the whole marge simpson thing is wrong, being cool is a lot of work, think of anyone you know who is actually cool, they are working really hard at it. the fact that they may not seem like they are is probably why they are cool in the first place

also people arent really cool or uncool, sometimes i am cool but mostly not, it was easier to be cool when i was younger like it was easier to have a really flat stomach when i was younger, i like seeing what is cool and what isnt though, what context something can be cool in obv not everything or everyone is cool to the same people in the same way

i care about being cool a lot but less than i used to, now i care more about whether the amount of effort it takes to be cool is 'worth it' but i also wonder if caring about 'whats cool' is embarrassing i do think its p cool to decline the invitation to treat being cool/whats cool as this ineffable, mysterious thing because it isnt really, generally you can see the shape of things and understand the throughlines even if specifics can sometimes be obscure

quality post

not sure it's a lot of work though so much as being in a zone, there's a sense in which you're going to be cool at some point because you're cool in a transient context and you just sort of have to be cool about it and know when it's your time to be cool

I thought about this stuff super, super hard in my late teens/early 20s and now idgaf but it's still fun to talk & think about

Id long given it up by 20s, i was well out of it by 13 id say, maybe ill be a cool 60 yr old

Conflating "I first encountered this concept or idea on the Simpsons" with "this Simpsons character is the originator of this idea" is pretty much the most ~ILX~ thing a person can do.

otm

lol yeah you guys that's not a human tendency at all, nobody else does that anywhere

Yeah dont steal my words or w/e the normal complaint is there

Well there is this raft of things (The Simpsons, "NPR", "pomplawotsit" etc) which I only ever really encounter on ILX and almost never encounter in my day to day IRL or other internet social life. So I think of them as being "things ILX0rs are concerned about".

Which is probably the odd inverse reflection of exactly what I'm talking about. Context.

i care about dave cool very deeply

The Simpsons is a very niche programme, I must say.

What is the opposite of "cool"?

Being a dork? Being passionate or easily wound-up? Being jaded?

in general, others should decide to be "cooler" than they are. "once in a while i enjoy drinking a glass of wine with my friends, have a nice meal, watch a movie or hang at a bar patio" cool! when people sounds generic it's distressing to me. or is it just depressing? i don't even care, i think.

Cool just means ppl think yr smart and funny, maybe nice and goodlooking too, the end

thanks for clearing that up

my obnoxious college roommate who quoted the simpsons constantly was apparently very ilx

I guess "cool" in this context is just a shorthand for a mix of "social status" with a side order of "cultural capital".

NPR is trv kvlt

To be fair, NPR is National, not International Public Radio. I have never knowingly heard it apart from maybe when I went to the States when I was an 8 year old and they were playing 'I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That'.

We could all just start talking about Radio 4 all day and then mock them for not know what I'm Sorry I Haven't Got A Clue or The Archers is or whatever.

(I don't even listen to the Archers, but it's one of those things that is so omnipresent in my social circles as to be unavoidable when everyone is all SHAKE AMBRIDGE TO TEH CORE!!!!1)

Yeah nobody on ILX ever talks about exclusively UK oriented stuff, perish the thought, what a world what a world

lol

I was gonna say

any time someone mentions anything about radio <number> or bbc something or NME I'm going to start making newsie wewsies comments

UK people tend to talk about UK oriented stuff on UK oriented threads, with "UK" in the title, and the understanding is, that we are talking about the UK and that people not from the UK will not know what Ambridge is or why it was shaken.

Americans tend to talk about US oriented stuff on threads called general things like ROLLING 2012 ELECTION THREAD without any reference to the fact that it is the US under discussion and then mock anyone from the rest of the world for not having heard of their weird local US centric television or radio or shitty indie bands.

I bet even the people who are actively anti-cool on this board don't listen to gypsy-ska, electro-swing, chap-hop or anything like that.

Do you care about this thread?

I've just realised, actually, the answer is "no" and hits the little red X in the corner of the window.

idk dog latin I bet people think gogol bordello is cool but they're probably not on ilx

"weird local US centric television" like The Simpsons which has been on television for 25 years in something like 70 countries and more than a dozen languages.

So has Doctor Who, but I would never try to pretend that Doctor Who was not British or somehow international and transcending cultural borders or whatever. Like Americans do with their bad television.

xpost, yeah I encounter loads of people in day-to-day RL who LOVE stuff like Gogol Bordello, Cat Empire, Mr. B, but I never hear anyone on ILX talk about these because I get the impression they're desperately uncool in the eyes of the board demographic (whatever that may be).

it sounds more like an ideal, but tbh i think it's true for me, that i'd rather be cool in my own eyes than in the eyes of those around me

I like Gogol Bordello but I still think this discussion is profoundly uncool

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/8633003/Doctor-Who-drives-BBC-Worldwide-profits.html

So has Doctor Who, but I would never try to pretend that Doctor Who was not British or somehow international and transcending cultural borders or whatever.

lololol yeah nobody in America likes Doctor Who except literally every single sci-fi and fantasy fan in the country, there are only like ten trillion US Doctor Who Tumblr posts a day.

This tendentiousness suits you, though, it's very cool.

Probably more Doctor Who fans in the US than there are people in England, at this point, right?

i think being cool is a good thing. having control over yourself is good, so is being canny, so is being observant.

goole is coole

whole other thing

I care about getting laid more than I do about being cool, but they're kinda related.

there's the vaguely "rootless cosmopolitan" type charge against cool that it's about following trends and having no core allegiance to anything, but that's crap too -- there's a certain amount of bravery in trying things out in public, being out in something as it develops in real time

I feel like the perception of cool has to have some element that can't be readily adopted en masse. Something stylistic or demonstrative that couldn't be adopted by the mainstream without effectively changing it.

which ILX0R most nearly approximates your personal conception of cool?

I think it's interesting to get a UK point of view, even on topics that are totally foreign to their culture like this one.

Im getting blamed for this amnt i

Yes, it's true. Being British and being "Cool" are completely antithetical. Just look at our teeth.

I had the impression that the Simpsons was beloved in UK and interwoven into its fabric like tea and Indian food

Don't forget R&B music

Is, like, sarcasm cool?

(don't all rush at once!)

xxp indeed, it was Sky 1 that went to the trouble to make a live-action version of the show's opening to advertise it airing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvSnNpawWiI

Haha omg

the simpsons is a thing yes

the analogue here is not the archers it's more like idk the BBC or Simon cowell

did you know that britain had curry before it had fish and chips? I was dramatically misinformed on this until recently.

you can have Simon Cowell back, though

xp

if that's correct, curry and fish and chips entered the UK thru different class strands, fish and chips was certainly ubiquitous much earlier than curry

trying to figure out if BB's comment was a sarcastic riposte to sarcasm or a sarcastic riposte to the criticisms of faux-naifism on ilm

I may have been misled by wikipedia

From the mid-19th century, curry has been increasingly popular in Great Britain. During the 19th century, curry was also carried to the Caribbean by Indian indentured workers in the British sugar industry. Since the mid-20th century, curries of many national styles have become popular far from their origins, and increasingly become part of international fusion cuisine.

sorry, citation here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry#Curry_in_Great_Britain

in a cookbook in 1747!

yeah i can imagine the upper middle classes with involvement in the Raj eating curry at a v. early date but i suspect it wasn't something most people wd be eating before the post-Empire immigration phase

except for the indentured servants, I guess

re: being cool, I'm content in my own personality, but likely due to the bullying I faced in my teens I still have adverse reactions to being seen as 'lame'. ie if I get laughed at for any reason it causes me undue anxiety, particularly if the reason for the laughing = "oh wow, look at that doofus!". ie, whenever I toke and cough spastically (I don't smoke a lot and ergo my system sometimes has to readjust), or if I say I have to leave early cos of work the next day, or refuse a drink because I'm 'cutting back'.

not that it actually causes me to do something I don't want to do on these occasions, but I still have lingering triggers from young adulthood.

nv i was going to raise those same objections

i suspect this means i am not cool

The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United Kingdom and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (August 2013)

did you know that britain had curry before it had fish and chips?

oh no way, really? i thought fish and chips dated back to the arrival of sephardim and conversos to the low countries and and london in the early modern era.

xps

Neanderthal, you were probably bullied for being a nonconformist and for making other feel like they're drunks and addicts, so you're cool. They have the problem.

yeah goole wikipedia kinda backs that up

Deep-fried fish was first introduced into Britain during the 16th century by Jewish refugees from Portugal and Spain,[3][4] and is derived from pescado frito.[5]

but no chips!

fish and chips became a staple of a lot of working class diets long before curry became widespread altho thinking of stuff like "Coronation chicken" makes me wonder about "Indian" cuisine's subtler influences in British eating

it should have been a lot less subtle, imo

in the end most of what we call Indian food in the UK is Euro-Indian food in origin

same dish that portuguese jesuits brought to japan as 'tempura' incidentally

xps

potato arriving in iberia and peeps leaving iberia for the north atlantic are around the same time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_potato

History_of_the_potato

wait i'm lost are we saying that fish and chips are cool

do i do the dad joke here and answer the poll question at the same time?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLe9mV8RzZA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY84P0BGxKc

i thought fish and chips had a 'moment' a few years back but possibly my people on the ground misinformed me

The dish known as fish chips and curry sauce predates both fish & chips and curry iirc

* mind blown *

There would appear to be a bit of a disconnect between the desire to be cool and the desire to be seen by others as cool. The latter gets more play than the former. Finally, there is the ultimate refinement: the desire not to be seen as desiring to be seen as cool.

never trust anyone under 30 or over 50

Or anyone aged 30 to 50.

i think you can horatio alger your own coolness, c.f. LL Cool J, Coolio.

Trust anyone.

i'm gonna have some soup B. chose no

I suspect that the formalised idea of 'being cool' is one of the illusions that advertisers use to try and make us dissatisfied with our lives and therefore more likely to buy stuff.

― an office job is as secure as a Weetabix padlock (snoball), Tuesday, March 25, 2014 6:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ding ding ding!

Feel like cigarettes occupy a large part of the 'Cool' framework.

garcia vega cigars for memorandum of my addiction

Yr ideas of the magic of marketing and the coolness of cigarettes strike me as a bit 80's scare infomercial tbh

ll

I don't care what you think. That's why I am cooler than you.

I read No Logo in the late 90s too

You know that reading is not cool.

I know a dude who makes it a point anyone talks about reading to mention he's not into books. Just like, who cares.

thread is missing concrete examples. are any public figures considered universally cool anymore?

david coverdale

Snoopy

James Franco

dave cool

Dave Coulier

Coolio

zizek

Marcel Marceau (RIP)

zizek possibly a legit answer! (though not sure i personally find him that cool)

Mr Freeze

Mr Freeze is cold, not cool. Villains can't be cool. Like Margaret Thatcher.

david coverdale sure looks weird now

http://www.contactmusic.com/pics/lf/vrma_270812/david-coverdale-vegas-rocks-magazine-awards-2012_4048045.jpg

did he swallow Tanya Kitaen?

So what's cooler than being cool?

oh fuck i thought you was joking about that being Coverdale

obv he has been slidin' the botox in

and other things

I don't care about "being cool", was a time when someone might beat you up or even arrest you for it - try the conservative '50's.

I have always felt this was a question about religion in code. I can't imagine being proud of living in an ugly and boring neighborhood. Cool is essential in some cultures, others don't have it. Presbyterians and Methodists aren't "cool" - Baptists are.

I have had people in my family who were impossibly cool. That means I don't care whether I am cool - it is my job to determine whether YOU are. /kidding

Michael B sure is upset abt going bald. Fwiw ppl didn't start telling me how cool etc they thought I ws till I'd lost a LOT of hair, man

Also the guy I know who'd be most consistently thought of by everyone in the idie/etc/whatever scene is both bald and fat, so

matt pinfield?

First part's right

thad, from a sitcom, fresh prince

cool is ineffable

cracky chan and bobby fischer

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

9 months pass...

freezer burn

Is, like, sarcasm cool?

(don't all rush at once!)

― Mark G, Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Sarcasm seems about as cool as rolling your eyes at people to show them how wrong they are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSCzDykng4g

oh i'm going to press play on that for sure

^I don't detect a whiff of sarcasm in your post, and I hope you enjoy your introduction to the musical stylings of Echosmith http://s61.photobucket.com/user/Ti42/media/Smilies/smiley-face-cool-2.gif.html

that song/video is a classic example of the "I am so much better all those shallow popular ppl but I'm also so much better than all those insecure unpopular ppl who want to be popular" mentality. "I don't care what anyone thinks of me — I'm content with who I am and I don't trouble myself with notions of cool/uncool" usually just translates to "I inhabit the perfect middle-ground between cool and uncool, and I feel equally superior to people above and below me on the social ladder" which is a common mindset for people who style themselves as artists/outsiders/weirdos.

I, of course, am above it all. cool to me is not caring about not caring what other people of you (add a few more iterations as needed)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

huh... ?!

gtfo

Holy crap

demand recount

otm

???

sounds about right to me

i.e. 2/3 honest

I honestly don't see why anyone would want to be seen as "cool", or cares about it in any way. This "saying you don't care about being "cool" but secretly you do and omg the results show for it!" is an absurd notion to me.

I am probably on the wrong board tbh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmpYEJnGKLQ

chalking the result up to all those lurkers who are too cool to post to ilx

Was gonna vote no, but changed my mind when I thought about how I play stuff like "Blank Space" in my classes, and couldn't decide if I was doing it in order to appeal to my students or to seem like a cool teacher. Outside of the classroom there's a lot of things I learn about that I don't particularly care about, and I find it hard to disentangle being informed and trying to be cool.

lol @ marge again

I kinda liked that "Cool Kids" song. Is that uncool?

Iirc this has been discussed on ilx before (prob 100+ times) so I may have said this already but I think there are people who think that "coolness" comes from being an outsider, from othered-ness/transgressiveness/going against the flow, and there are ppl for whom coolness means being an "insider" and being popular, knowing what's hot rn, etc.

Does that reveal any kind of basic difference in worldview? Who the fuck knows.

I dont think that can be removed from context tho (ive said that a lot itt). some things its cool to be outside of, some its cool to be involved.

like tbrr always being the outsider as a cool aesthetic decision is p much the worst look, its a bit desperate like

eliminate the ninnies and the twits.

i care about not caring about being cool

Iirc this has been discussed on ilx before (prob 100+ times) so I may have said this already but I think there are people who think that "coolness" comes from being an outsider, from othered-ness/transgressiveness/going against the flow, and there are ppl for whom coolness means being an "insider" and being popular, knowing what's hot rn, etc.

Does that reveal any kind of basic difference in worldview? Who the fuck knows.

i think u are forgetting option #3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nqcL0mjMjw

I think the idea of "cool", at the time when it first achieved wider exposure through Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool album, was associated with staying emotionally low key and not letting all the bullshit that you had to deal with each day agitate you (i.e make you lose your cool). It was about rising above more than about transgression or popularity or whatever it means now.

'Rising above' can manifest itself as laughter when there is something to laugh about, or as preserving your dignity when others try to undermine it, or showing courage when there is something to fear, or self-possession when there's something to be angry about. 'Cool' has a much harder time with grief or elation.

do you care?

nah

Decreasingly, and yet it just keeps happening.

http://www.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/thumbsAmmo03.jpg