The collapse of cool - by Amy Francombe - amy_coded

Cool is one of those slippery concepts you’re not supposed to interrogate too closely. Everyone wants it, but it’s not cool to admit that you do. It’s a status you can’t claim for yourself without losing it. “Cool” defies definition by design - if you have to ask what it is, that’s proof you don’t have it. That vagueness also made it easy to co-opt. Because we never agreed on exactly what “cool” is - or examined why we even want it - we left it undefended, a commons plundered first by Madison Avenue and now by the algorithm. Born as an unspoken language, it’s been unpacked and weaponised into a coercive tool, crafted to make us covet things we don’t need and aspire to ideals with no real bearing on the quality of our lives. We want it so badly we make decisions that defy our own logic: chasing products and lifestyles not for their utility but for their proximity to the idea of cool. And in that pursuit, we’ve drained the cool of the very cultural richness that once made it worth having

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• Megan Luong