Loved this episode, but the “youth defines cool” framing felt off to me. Maybe I missed the plot, but I think we have to separate trendiness from coolness. While I agree that youth culture drives contemporary aesthetics, slang, fashion, and what feels current, I don’t think young people unilaterally decide what counts as cool across every context and community.
Instead, I think every culture develops its own standards for taste, status, and admiration. Outsiders usually are not in a position to define what is or isn’t cool inside groups they do not meaningfully participate in. Cool is a form of social power; thus, it is contextual and peer defined. Basically, you can’t hate from outside the club.
For example, I work in law, which mainstream culture considers pretty uncool compared to fields like sports, arts, fashion, etc. But within law firm culture, there are absolutely people who are cooler than others. There’s an attorney at my firm who somehow makes wearing a women’s business suit (objectively the least inherently cool category of clothing imaginable) look effortlessly cool because she has exceptional style and presence. A 20 year old might not see her that way, but among lawyers in our world (i.e. the target audience), she’s undeniably cool and stylish!
Same with other niche communities. I went to a Star Trek convention with my sister a few years ago, and there were definitely people there who my sister perceived as cool within that world, though I personally never would have picked them out. Andrew Tate is cool to 13 year old boys because he is the distilled fantasy of masculinity for under-parented boys. But to most people his own age, he comes across as deeply cringey and performative. It’s the college freshman who may be a huge dork on campus but is the coolest person imaginable to their younger sibling’s friends. Coolness changes depending on who is bestowing the title and what that group values.
In defense of my people, I don’t think middle aged women have a coolness deficit, but instead are invisible to the metrics media uses to measure cultural relevance. Fwiw, as an early 40 something, I think Ellie and David are extremely cool!! Hosting an interesting podcast where you get to flex your expertise and have thoughtful conversations is literally peak cool for us overthinky millennials! 🪦
Thanks for your comment! I think you have a great point; coolness is often relational within a specific group of people and involves this kind of dynamic you described where it is contextual and peer-defined.
However, I think there can still be a notion of what is generally “cool” in the culture (that is, internet/pop culture) even if individual notions of coolness are particular. Ellie and David discuss what young people consider to be cool, based on what their Gen Z assistants told them (timestamp: 4:30). As a young person, I think Charli xcx, for example, is cool because her work speaks to my context/perspective as a young person, so I deem her as cool in a way particular to me. I would venture to say she is also generally cool because her work aligns with a huge number of other people’s perspectives and particular standards of coolness. So, maybe general coolness is defined by the things that the majority of people define as cool, as particular to their own perspective.
Furthermore, I would argue that coolness is distinct from trendiness (although maybe they sometimes overlap). For example, there are many trendy things that are widely deemed uncool. Take, for example, viral AI slop, Labubus, consumer fads, industry-plant musicians, etc.
I think you make a really important point, though. Even if we can intuitively say, in broad strokes, what is generally cool or uncool, at the end of the day, specific notions of coolness will always come down to the standards of individual groups/clubs/perspectives/identities.
Loved this episode, but the “youth defines cool” framing felt off to me. Maybe I missed the plot, but I think we have to separate trendiness from coolness. While I agree that youth culture drives contemporary aesthetics, slang, fashion, and what feels current, I don’t think young people unilaterally decide what counts as cool across every context and community.
Instead, I think every culture develops its own standards for taste, status, and admiration. Outsiders usually are not in a position to define what is or isn’t cool inside groups they do not meaningfully participate in. Cool is a form of social power; thus, it is contextual and peer defined. Basically, you can’t hate from outside the club.
For example, I work in law, which mainstream culture considers pretty uncool compared to fields like sports, arts, fashion, etc. But within law firm culture, there are absolutely people who are cooler than others. There’s an attorney at my firm who somehow makes wearing a women’s business suit (objectively the least inherently cool category of clothing imaginable) look effortlessly cool because she has exceptional style and presence. A 20 year old might not see her that way, but among lawyers in our world (i.e. the target audience), she’s undeniably cool and stylish!
Same with other niche communities. I went to a Star Trek convention with my sister a few years ago, and there were definitely people there who my sister perceived as cool within that world, though I personally never would have picked them out. Andrew Tate is cool to 13 year old boys because he is the distilled fantasy of masculinity for under-parented boys. But to most people his own age, he comes across as deeply cringey and performative. It’s the college freshman who may be a huge dork on campus but is the coolest person imaginable to their younger sibling’s friends. Coolness changes depending on who is bestowing the title and what that group values.
In defense of my people, I don’t think middle aged women have a coolness deficit, but instead are invisible to the metrics media uses to measure cultural relevance. Fwiw, as an early 40 something, I think Ellie and David are extremely cool!! Hosting an interesting podcast where you get to flex your expertise and have thoughtful conversations is literally peak cool for us overthinky millennials! 🪦
Thanks for your comment! I think you have a great point; coolness is often relational within a specific group of people and involves this kind of dynamic you described where it is contextual and peer-defined.
However, I think there can still be a notion of what is generally “cool” in the culture (that is, internet/pop culture) even if individual notions of coolness are particular. Ellie and David discuss what young people consider to be cool, based on what their Gen Z assistants told them (timestamp: 4:30). As a young person, I think Charli xcx, for example, is cool because her work speaks to my context/perspective as a young person, so I deem her as cool in a way particular to me. I would venture to say she is also generally cool because her work aligns with a huge number of other people’s perspectives and particular standards of coolness. So, maybe general coolness is defined by the things that the majority of people define as cool, as particular to their own perspective.
Furthermore, I would argue that coolness is distinct from trendiness (although maybe they sometimes overlap). For example, there are many trendy things that are widely deemed uncool. Take, for example, viral AI slop, Labubus, consumer fads, industry-plant musicians, etc.
I think you make a really important point, though. Even if we can intuitively say, in broad strokes, what is generally cool or uncool, at the end of the day, specific notions of coolness will always come down to the standards of individual groups/clubs/perspectives/identities.
Thanks for listening to this episode!
- Xavier (: