Being cool is not about what you do, it is about what you do not do. There is not a single action in this world that is cool. Not every action is uncool, but there are no cool actions. Only dorks and drama queens try to be cool by doing the cool things that cool people do. Skiing in the Alps? That’s cool, if you like that sort of thing, and you happen to be in the Alps, and you have free time, and there’s nothing more productive to do, yeah, skiing in the Alps can be cool, but no amount of Alpine snow-sports will ever make you cool. There is not a sport in this world that can make you cool. It can make you famous, which is cool, it can make you rich, which is cool, it can damage your spine and crack your kneecaps, that’s cool… if you get the fame and fortune for it. But being a sports hero is not cool, it is just a job, a rather specialised and somewhat unproductive job the world could do just fine without, but it is a cool job, if you can get it; advertising clothes and gear, testing the latest performance enhancing drugs for efficacy and detectability by anti-doping agencies, playing Guinea pig for surgeons glad for living cadavers to practice battlefield surgery upon in peacetime, cool.
Coolth is never vested in a thing, an action or a word. You get cool by NOT making fun of the cripple kid. You earn coolth by NOT bullying, NOT stealing, NOT being an ass. Coolth is exclusively about things you do not do. Any attempt to be cool, is uncool. Trying to look cool, dress cool, talk cool, all of that is pretence, which is totally uncool.
The latest high-tech toy is the coolest thing ever, and we know it, because we saw pictures of cool people telling us about this cool new cool thing. How did they become cool? They applied for a job where people spend their time making them look cool, now they have this cool job where they have to do nothing but stand in front of cameras, looking cool, wearing cool tech, and cool fashion, at cool camera angles, and they hang out with cool people. How do they know who the cool people are? Their studio people tell them what to say when they get to where the studio is taking them at the moment, usually somewhere expensive to make it look cool. Do you know how much it cost to have Justin Bieber “spontaneously party with friends” at a specific club? They are paid to appear in places where we can see all the people we were told is cool, hang out together, being cool. At some point, they all applied for that job, in an industry that depends on you believing things are cool when they say it is.
Acting on the word of people whose job it is to imitate coolth, everybody around you now want to prove how cool they are by owning the coolest stuff, promoted by the coolest people, using the coolest new cool words while hanging out in the latest in cool places…
If you’re cool with that, what more can I say?
