Cool? Fool?

12:30 Monday, 23 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 26.98°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 89% Wind: 17.56mph
Words: 502

Just read Cory Doctorow's post for today.

From time to time, I read something that makes me happy to be (getting) old.

For young people, "the only things that have the level of scarcity and danger required to be seen as cool" are "whatever is unacceptable on those platforms." In other words, anything (and maybe only things) that're blocked or banned are a candidate to be cool. Cool people walk away from the places where you'd expect to find them and hang out in places that are culturally viewed as less important.

Not being culturally "literate," I don't think I ever had to seriously think about what "cool" meant. I didn't have to exhibit "ironic distance." Or, I don't think I did. I mean, I was a white, lower-middle class kid who went on to a career in the military. Doesn't really register on the "cool" meter. Unless you're a SEAL or an F-18 pilot, maybe.

But things were "cool." Computers, cameras, stereos, my Fiat X1/9. And that was often a function of design, more than "danger."

But I guess Doctorow believes that "cool" emerges only from the "counter-culture."

(A lot of hard-"c" alliteration forthcoming.)

Capitalistic consumerism captured counter-culture to commodify it for consumption.

It was inevitable.

And it's never going to change unless and until we "deplatform" capitalism. It's all about the money.

That problem is likely to take care of itself in the next decade or so. At least temporarily.

I don't see things as "cool" anymore. Some experiences, maybe. But consumer products have gradually lost their appeal for me. We have to look backward for "cool" design these days. Strip-mining the past to gild everything in "retro" design.

I'm watching a lot of new home construction videos, and I wonder who these content creators think their audience is? Well, I guess they may instinctively "know." It's the folks on the upper stroke of the k-shaped economy.

I'd say there's an audience for people like us, who have a modest budget, to learn about clever design features. New products that are useful and reliable. Instead we get guided tours of people with $50K of networking equipment and devices wired into their home so that when you close the door to the baby's room, the lights dim, the sound machine (probably a track played from a remote device over wireless speakers) begins the soothing white noise, while the automatic window shades slowly lower.

How did anyone ever put their kid down for a nap before?!

It's genuinely awful. Especially the way the presenter giddily describes it, and says he needs it for his own room.

To take naps.

So there's a couple of advantages to getting old. One is "cool" being something genuinely irrelevant to my life, Cory's post likewise. And there's also the cheery thought that I won't be around too much longer to have to watch and read about this ongoing reality shit-show.

So I got that goin' for me.

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