Is being cool originally a counterculture asthetic, and how did it become mainstream?

[WilliamPamer446]

[Anonymous]

There’s being cool and there’s being COOL… cooler than cool.

Cool is like doing the expected, popular thing and everyone that doesn’t really explore or open themselves up to the broader world and high culture, they just kind of fall into what everyone else is doing.

COOL is like, actually legitimately cool lol. You’re your own person, you’ve built up your passions beyond and even outside the commonality of the mainstream, and best of all, you don’t care or aren’t swayed by what anyone else thinks. You’re cooler than cool and you’ve opened up your mind to the outside world.

You are you… not what the world wants you to be, and that’s counter-culture asffff!

[WilliamPamer446]

often the "Cool" people at my high school just went with whatever self desstructive trend and acted naive arrogant bipolar hypocritical judging the other kid and whinig about how here parent hate them and how there generation sucks like they were just a cartoon character the adult world saw them as a buffoon but they didn't acknoledg that and were just like Look At ME im so Cool.

Meanwhile when I was in high school and now i try to do my own thing my own style my own wave at my own pace and there a consequences and reward to living a different life but its all worth it in the End

[Leonharted]

Corporations always coopt any grassroots movement once it picks up steam.

[WilliamPamer446]

But then its no longer cool, its just corporate jaded nonsense

[Leonharted]

Which is why what was considered "cool" in the 50's wasn't considered cool in the 70s. What was cool in the 70s wasn't cool in the 80s. And so on.

[WilliamPamer446]

Well hold on a minute. "Cool" was a surging underground asthetic in the 20s,30s, and 40s. It was about social nonconformity, wildness, intensity, and rebel masculinity. It was about coping with swirling dynamic social forces. It was about maintaining a state of equilibrium with the forces of modernity. This is a very noble concept and everyone should be cool in this regard. Then in the 50s and 60s it slowly changed after James Dean/Elvis rebellious types and the hippie, counterculture activity that was rejected by the mainstream society. Later on it became what is cool or popular within the youth culture which was usually rebellious stuff the older people didn't like or just any popular accepted general style or a new asthetic in the youth culture or a noble or destructive social change idea and extended to the adult population but the adult population was less concerned with being cool than the youth. So my basic question is, in American culture, was it originally a counterculture asthetic and how did it become mainstream.

[WilliamPamer446]

I meant to say equipose, not equlibrium

[Aerissa_Jade]

I prefer to be cool, it sure beats being too hot, although being hot is kind of sexy sometimes. (:

See word play is kind of fun and might be considered cool or anti-cool right?

[FunkyMonkee]

All it means is that you're mellow and laid back. What's so counter culture about that?

[Anonymous]

No, being cool was originally having power. It became mainstream when the first ape pinned another ape to the ground in front of the tribe.

[exitseven]

People found that it was cool to be cool.

[emperor90]

Depends on views