For youths nowadays, it's all about having the "cool factor". But what exactly is this "cool" that very much determines where a person stands in the social hierarchy, well a high school social hierarchy at least.
In principle, being cool is appearing calm and not to care. Someone for example, is marked "cool" if he or she has complete disinterest in you or what you think of them, and never ever shows excitement or fear. Here are some pictures of people who I think qualifies the aforementioned definition of "cool".
"Yea I play the guitar, whatever."
"Do I look like I give a damn what you think?!"
"Mother monster was born cool."
"Ooo look at the time, I'm late for lunch."
"We're performing at MTV World Stage 2011, Live in Malaysia, in front of 5000 screaming fans. Nothin special."
I do hope you're not frozen solid by the "cool"ness after seeing these pictures............ Anyway, for those of you who are still here with me, this is NOT the sort of "cool" I want to talk about today. It is instead
THIS!
THIS!
THIS!
AND THIS!
which are awkwardly and dangerously thought as "cool" by some youngsters that has brought me into bringing up our topic today.
Many guys smoke, binge drink and take drugs because they want to proof that they can and are not scared to do anything. What's worst is after that, they pick on other guys who don't do it and brand them wimps, faggots, nerds, uncool etc so they feel good about themselves and what they are doing. It's more or less the same with girls who go on extreme diet and surgeries to look slim and then make fun of other girl's looks and sizes.
Consequently, the ones who are bullied and made fun of start feeling inferior and eventually turn to those unhealthy activities for the sake of being accepted. This chain reaction soon grows into a trend where people must carry out these activities in order to be "cool".
What these people should know, is that they ARE only living in their paradoxes of "cool". They set this trend and force people to follow it because they are unsure of themselves and need some sort of an "approval" from others. In reality, they are living a lie. A quote from Paramore, "You built up a world of magic, because your real life is tragic." clearly concedes with what i am saying.
I personally think that people who don't bother with the pretenses of "cool"ness at all are the real "cool" people."Cool" people are the ones who have the audacity to develop something distinctive that connotes with their passion without considering the "cool"ness of it at all.
But then again, you would probably say that I said those things because I couldn't keep up with the supposedly "cool" trends. And you are probably right. "Cool" is multivalent. Nobody can really say what's cool and more importantly what's not. At the end of the day, "cool" still exists in the realm of subjectivity.
