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So anti-cool it's cool? Discuss, minions.
Disclaimer: Cool and anti-cool are being used in the sense of popularly thought to be cool and unless stated otherwise, don't represent my actual opinion. On with the show.
Bill Gates getting hit in the face with a cream pie.
No joke. Not even someone dressed up as him. It's Gates himself. As an MPEG video. Also a mini-lecture about the evils of growing up in a Microsoft-dominated world that's a little alarmist but does provide you with other options.
And now we've got the visual appeal section done with, on to your interestingly worded reading materialy.
Kulturreich and Hip-o-cracy.
The above two articles deal with the anti-cool movement. You all know someone that's part of it, right? The guy/girl that only likes obscure band and goes around talking about how underappreciated they are, then whines when they become popular because nobody else 'gets' them like s/he/hir does? Hm. That could apply to Naruto as well, though my problem is more with the way it's been dubbed (especially the supposed sex-change of Haku) than with the fact that the incidence of Narutards is going to increase.
Back to the point though. Cool points are awarded for two categories: Cool and anti-cool. Sounds like a contradiction? It is. It's a cool contradiction. See, cool means wearing Donna Karan jeans with Manolo Blahniks footwear and a Dior t-shirt, but it also means wearing combat pans, slogan tees and Doc Martins. Not at the same time though. That's just spastic. In face, take a second to imagine wearing that outfit down a street in broad daylight, and I can guarantee that no satorial disaster you ever go through again will ever seem quite as bad.
After all, if nothing else, you can always claim you were going for the grunge look. What's with the 'looks'? No matter what you do, it has to fit a 'look' because unless your personal clothing style goes under a category, you make no sense. Yes, that's right. You as a person make no sense unless you can be defined by what you wear because in choosing your clothes, you make a conscious choice about how you can be represented. The people who just throw on anything in the mornings really get the short end of the stick there - imagine being labelled a metrosexual just because the t-shirt that your baby brother accidentally turned pink got paired up with your dress pants.
Are metrosexuals cool? Yes. They're cool. But are they so anti-cool that they're cool? Depends on which part of the world you're from. For the sake of argument, let's call them cool. Now, who fits into the anti-cool category? Punks, but only the ones that haven't actually fried all their brains via drugs, or Goths, but only the ones that can function more or less as normal members of society. As in, implants of animal teeth or skull contacts are anti-cool and therefore cool, but killing little animals and eating them raw? Not cool, though I personally think that's just psychotic, not Gothic. Though I'm sure people think that psychos are cool. There are six billion+ people in the world. There are probably people that think that drinking Coke upside down is cool.
In fact, I might find that cool, assuming they didn't choke and die. That would just be sad. And make me emo. Woe.
Is emo cool? No. Emo is not cool. It's not even anti-cool. Emo's got a bad rep, so it's only cool inside itself, meaning only emo people find other emo people cool. And, of course, anyone that likes to see emo boys kissing. Which is probably pretty much everyone on my flist, so does that make slash cool? Sort of. Teh gay is in right now, so in a sense it is. At any right, bisexuality is the in-thing now. Kissing another female in a bar is a great way to get male attention, though if you're male and make out with another guy, you're a lot less likely to have girls try to pick you up for it. The double-standard, it burns.
Then again, the cool/anti-cool binary standard is a double-standard in a way. It seems to say that if you're not cool, that's okay, you can just be anti-cool instead and it has to be easy to be anti-cool because that's just lacking in coolness, right? Wrong-o. Anti-cool requires effort, time and a lot of elitism, just like being cool does. They're two ends of the same spectrum and you know what's inbetween? Not cool. If you're not anti-cool or cool, then you're just Not Cool. And don't compare cool and anti-cool to white and black. White is made up of all the colors, black is the absence of color. You can't smoosh together all the ways of not being cool and get white, nor does lacking all of them get you black, because anti-cool is an artificial concept and its own way of being popular.
Got that?
Great.
Pop quiz time!
[Poll #604125]
Bill Gates getting hit in the face with a cream pie.
No joke. Not even someone dressed up as him. It's Gates himself. As an MPEG video. Also a mini-lecture about the evils of growing up in a Microsoft-dominated world that's a little alarmist but does provide you with other options.
And now we've got the visual appeal section done with, on to your interestingly worded reading materialy.
Kulturreich and Hip-o-cracy.
The above two articles deal with the anti-cool movement. You all know someone that's part of it, right? The guy/girl that only likes obscure band and goes around talking about how underappreciated they are, then whines when they become popular because nobody else 'gets' them like s/he/hir does? Hm. That could apply to Naruto as well, though my problem is more with the way it's been dubbed (especially the supposed sex-change of Haku) than with the fact that the incidence of Narutards is going to increase.
Back to the point though. Cool points are awarded for two categories: Cool and anti-cool. Sounds like a contradiction? It is. It's a cool contradiction. See, cool means wearing Donna Karan jeans with Manolo Blahniks footwear and a Dior t-shirt, but it also means wearing combat pans, slogan tees and Doc Martins. Not at the same time though. That's just spastic. In face, take a second to imagine wearing that outfit down a street in broad daylight, and I can guarantee that no satorial disaster you ever go through again will ever seem quite as bad.
After all, if nothing else, you can always claim you were going for the grunge look. What's with the 'looks'? No matter what you do, it has to fit a 'look' because unless your personal clothing style goes under a category, you make no sense. Yes, that's right. You as a person make no sense unless you can be defined by what you wear because in choosing your clothes, you make a conscious choice about how you can be represented. The people who just throw on anything in the mornings really get the short end of the stick there - imagine being labelled a metrosexual just because the t-shirt that your baby brother accidentally turned pink got paired up with your dress pants.
Are metrosexuals cool? Yes. They're cool. But are they so anti-cool that they're cool? Depends on which part of the world you're from. For the sake of argument, let's call them cool. Now, who fits into the anti-cool category? Punks, but only the ones that haven't actually fried all their brains via drugs, or Goths, but only the ones that can function more or less as normal members of society. As in, implants of animal teeth or skull contacts are anti-cool and therefore cool, but killing little animals and eating them raw? Not cool, though I personally think that's just psychotic, not Gothic. Though I'm sure people think that psychos are cool. There are six billion+ people in the world. There are probably people that think that drinking Coke upside down is cool.
In fact, I might find that cool, assuming they didn't choke and die. That would just be sad. And make me emo. Woe.
Is emo cool? No. Emo is not cool. It's not even anti-cool. Emo's got a bad rep, so it's only cool inside itself, meaning only emo people find other emo people cool. And, of course, anyone that likes to see emo boys kissing. Which is probably pretty much everyone on my flist, so does that make slash cool? Sort of. Teh gay is in right now, so in a sense it is. At any right, bisexuality is the in-thing now. Kissing another female in a bar is a great way to get male attention, though if you're male and make out with another guy, you're a lot less likely to have girls try to pick you up for it. The double-standard, it burns.
Then again, the cool/anti-cool binary standard is a double-standard in a way. It seems to say that if you're not cool, that's okay, you can just be anti-cool instead and it has to be easy to be anti-cool because that's just lacking in coolness, right? Wrong-o. Anti-cool requires effort, time and a lot of elitism, just like being cool does. They're two ends of the same spectrum and you know what's inbetween? Not cool. If you're not anti-cool or cool, then you're just Not Cool. And don't compare cool and anti-cool to white and black. White is made up of all the colors, black is the absence of color. You can't smoosh together all the ways of not being cool and get white, nor does lacking all of them get you black, because anti-cool is an artificial concept and its own way of being popular.
Got that?
Great.
Pop quiz time!
[Poll #604125]
Bedtime, missy xP
Cool in a cool in an anti-cool, but not cool way?
I hadn't known about the Naruto sex-change thing, since I really don't know much about the series...
Or maybe the cool is still lingering in the boys kissing? Or maybe in the pie-in-face. Which, still has my attention, actually. The pictures, that is.
I am amused.
Indeed, amused. Now, I can sleep amused and you can be proud that you amused me to nights in a row while amusing yourself.
The ultimate cool. No sarcasm. ^_^
Btw, my icon is the ultimate anti-cool, because it's in with the boy-love-slash-yaoi-stuff & b/c you like it which makes it cooler than cool, thus anti-cool.
And, your poll now has me being silly too T_T ...... I think that's a good thing ^_^
Re: Bedtime, missy xP
no subject
Is there anything cool? Or, anything cooler than something else? I mean, there are people into hiphop and pop, then there are the emos, then there are the anime, then the anime/emos, anime/emos/rap/gay, the gay/emo, bi/emo/anime, jock/anime/pop, prep/rock/emo, hiphop/pop/prep, hippie/classic rock/druggie, druggie/prep/pop, prep/rock/emo/druggie, pornfan/anime/emo, pornfan/prep/loves-his-truck, hipclothes/pop/r&b, cartoons/WB/bookish, bookish/smart/leader, smart/nerdy/anime, smart/prep/leader, smart/jock/hipclothes etc, etc.... Then, some people make a groups just by being a minority. The Puerto Ricans, the asians, the blacks, and the exchange students that one group or another adopts.
I mean, from what I see, people I know fit different standards of what is cool to certain people. Popluar and cool are just states of mind. If you think you're cool and you can convince people around to agree with you, then you're cool to those people. Other people could care less how cool you are because they are too concerned with what is cool in thier own group.
I dunno, I've only had expreience with cliques, not hierarchies. I've heard of wars for people to be popular be coolest in the city, but really.... Some people think rappers and stuff are cool, and so they are to those people. Then there are people who don't even give a damn and think Green Day or FOB are the coolest thing ever, liek whao.
There is no single epitome of cool. So, there is no anti-cool because there is no cool. You're right. Black and white don't apply.
Also, I have drunk Sprite upsidedown. Am I cool or what?
No, I just pwn. >;D
But, then when all of these cool things cease to matter, what is cool? Are older people not cool because they don't really care what is cool? I mean, where is cool in politics besides what younger people put into it? It seems a kid thing, really--I'm cooler than you, therefore I have great cred and you can only bask in my mountain of coolness. Then, look at me, I am cool because I am not doing what is cool right not (because even in groups, the cool thing changes for people who have the initiative to change it).
I mean, when you're not competing so much over coolness and not coolness, what is awesome or cool or interesting? Well, there are things that are interesting, but they are not all pop culture. People look boring if they are not concerned over cool. Hence the "my parents/grandparents are so not cool" and the "OMFG! MY MOM IS SO COOL (because she listents to pop music and wears good clothes)."
Whatever. I have a short atention span, so there is no such thing as cool. There is only "hey, drinking Sprite upsidedown looks interesting right now...dude, help me got on those monkey bars and here's a buck for the soda!"
^___~
*brain is fried* Lookit! Fai icon! XD
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