What is Cool Anyway

There are certain things in my life that I wish I would have figured out a lot earlier.

Like, for example, that no one thinks it's as cool as you do when you can rap every word to Gold Digger Ft. Jamie Foxx.

Or that liquid eyeliner isn't supposed to go on that little ledge by your eye.

Or that people with "please don't pet" signs on their dog are like- really adamant that you don't pet their dog.

Then there are the things that I wish I would have known when I moved to New York — That only people from Wisconsin think it's appropriate to hug restaurant moguls and C-list celebrities when first meeting, that the subway doors when closing are really (really) unforgiving, that most men here just want you to ask them repeatedly about themselves as criteria for having "had a really good time", that cab drivers actually almost never know what you're saying- even when they frantically assure you that "Yes! Yes!" they do!, and that sunglasses are the anti-social person's solution to sanity.

Most interestingly, though, is the process of figuring out this city's idea of what is (and what isn't) cool.

In this little microcosm of our global society, there are more people doing "cool" things than anywhere else in the world.

Which means that everyone is simultaneously equally cool and uncool.

And yet, though everyone's striving to set this baseline level of cool on a 24/7 basis, (via tried and true techniques like name-dropping, acting apathetic about things they actually think are impressive, not reacting to others' own assertions of cooldom, etc, etc), I truly think that there's a secret trick to being the coolest of them all:

And that is

being uncool.

Because, really, who can compete with a complete unwillingness to ... well, compete?

So, in a completely confusing mind-game manipulation strategy, let's turn our natural uncoolness into a sort of ... fake cool ... based on a ballsy willingness to maintain zero degree of affected coolness in the face of a lot of overzealous pretentiousness.