Based on the short stories that we wrote, we see that being cool is to resist the higher authority for a good cause. In Henry's story, the cool person refused explain her thought process and tells the teacher that explaining her cognition is impossible; she is resisting someone in the higher power. In Kate's story and Jia Min's story, the main characters resisted the fake cool by embarrassing the bully and standing up for another. All these characters jumped "to the top of the hierarchy" (Amanda) by going fighting the one on the top and thus made them cool.
Being cool is all about sticking yourself into one of the teenage archetypes. Whether it is being the hero, the funny guy, or the jock, people know that becoming one of them will attract attention to them. "People pay attention to mythical roles" (Snyder) so by becoming one of the 'mythical roles' one gets the attention one has been wanting. Roles are defined before we are even brought into the world; our parents have this image of who they want us to be and carefully influence us to become the image. Even those who are accidentally brought into the world have their roles chosen. By neglecting them, they are most likely going to fall into the role of loner, loser, bully, or bad ass bad boy.
Roles are inevitable and therefore, our quest to become cool is also inevitable. If one acknowledges that one is playing the hero role and refuses to play any role, then that person is going to be playing the "refusing to play a role" role. Another person might notice that role, think of one as a cool person and then give attention to one while trying to fit into that role. Even the person refusing to play roles want attention. Everyone wants attention by playing roles and some get the attention (like the revolutionary) and some fail to obtain it (like the loner).
Drugs are another method people use to feel cool and good about themselves. Some take heroin to calm themselves down and to people within the same mindset would consider that cool. But taking drugs only gives a temporary feeling of cool. Therefore, another way to go about being cool and feeling important is to get someone else to value you. These people may include friends and family but getting others to value you cause you to become prone to peer pressure. Lastly, there is the "do good feel good" phenomenon; you do something good for someone and you feel good about yourself.
Our need to feel cool is caused by this hole inside us that we constantly try to fill up by talking down on others, applying makeup, using nicknames, etc. But after talking down on one person or getting the ears pierced, the emptiness comes back and others things need to be done to fill it up again. Other things may include talking down on more than one person or getting piercing in other places. This cycle prevents the hole to be filled up, because the hole cannot be filled up. Regardless, people cannot accept this emptiness as it is and are unable to give up the journey to become cool.
We are always performing for our audience and it is the audience who determine whether or not we are cool. Goffman said that we try to be “ourselves” when we interact with others but because we are so caught up in being “ourselves,” we become the person who the group wants us to be thus, contradicting what was intended in the first place. There is no “self;” we are always shaped by the environment in which we live in and influenced by the people around us. We are constantly playing a role determined by society along with other people who want to play that role. Foucault’s panoptican model the theater that we act in and our audiences watch our performance in. We are in boxes, in which the sides of the boxes allow only the audience to look through and not the actor. Because we cannot see our audience, we do not know what they are thinking of us but yet we continue to act in the way we think is cool.
Since roles are inevitable, people pick roles that they think they can perform well in so that they can look cool. Those who attempt to play a role in which they fail to perform well in become the ones who are not cool. Some even refuse to interact with others, in case people find out about their inability to play a specific role. Therefore, from a distance, they may seem cool but once they get too close to others, they expose their not-cool self. Cool is also about not trying to have someone blow your cool-covers. The typical cool leader is able to lead a group of people without letting the not-cool side of the person slip out. Being cool is about knowing how to play a role well enough so that no one can see what is under the coolness.
Cool is the quest to seek attention and to fulfill what is missing inside us. We fight the people who have more power than us so we can be the one on top, with the power. In doing so, we push ourselves into inevitable roles and these roles help us get the attention we want. We also try fill the emptiness inside us by seeking approval through drugs, acting unnatural, or dressing ourselves up. Unsatisfied with anything that we do to reach our goal, because cool changes as time progresses, we can never be the cool we want to be.
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