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What does ‘cool’ mean?

The discussion of what it is to be cool is one that has doubtless been had over and over again. However, through some freak of circumstance I, despite my self-avowed predilection for wasting time by reading about pop culture, have never encountered any of these discussions. So I decided there might be some value in a completely fresh approach to the topic.

When we were young, the cool kids were the ones who were good at sport, and the ones who messed around in class. Some might take the second example to indicate that being cool is disobeying authority. This would be consistent with many other examples of what seems to be stereotypically cool: smoking and drinking aged fifteen, taking drugs and putting up posters on the walls of your rented house using blu-tak even though you know it stains them. However, it is more helpful to take the two examples in conjunction and say that being cool is being different, standing out. After all, murder isn’t cool, no matter how much you like GTA (and I really like GTA) and nor is most crime that has an easily perceivable victim.

But being different isn’t always cool, either. What if you stand out from everyone else by being the only person you know who doesn’t flush the toilet? That’s not cool, man. Being cool has to be standing out for the right reasons. But how can we define the right reasons? It can’t be the reasons which are socially acceptable, because being cool isn’t really supposed to be socially acceptable. Nor, obviously, can it be the reasons which aren’t socially acceptable.

All this confusion could easily give rise to a defeatist attitude which would claim that ‘cool’ is completely subjective and therefore beyond definition. But we could say that the word ‘good’ is subjective depending on our attitude and yet still have an idea of what the word actually means. What makes someone cool is a matter of subjectivity, but the act of being cool is still basically constant. Being cool is always, in every situation, standing out for the right reasons, but we want a more distinct definition.

Perhaps the most pertinent point that I realized about halfway through thinking about this column was that it definitely isn’t cool to write a column wondering what ‘cool’ means. By extension, it isn’t cool to try to be cool. Obviously. Some might take this even further, and say that it isn’t cool to try period. This is really just a clumsy Hollywood stereotype, though. Think of Dave Grohl on stage. He’s trying pretty fucking hard. And he’s pretty fucking cool. Sorry, Dave Grohl and the F word sort of come hand in hand. So maybe, I thought, being cool is being good at things. But still there are exceptions. Being really good at analyzing themes in Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis, as I would like to be, is not cool.

So if ‘cool’ is something we want to be, but to which we are forbidden from aspiring, perhaps definition is impossible. Not only is ‘cool’ a subjective adjective but it also a subjective concept; it has become too intrinsic a part of our culture for us to even understand what it means any more.

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