How important is it for you to be cool?
 

This is my followup question.

For me:

At age 14 it was more important than anything else, ever
At age 16 it was very important
At age 19 it was somewhat important
At age 24 it was somewhat important
At age 30 it was not really all that important
At age 35 it was not really all that important
At age 40 it is somewhat important

Pretty much represents the state of my relationship with the opposite sex. Pursuing or not pursuing, etc.

I imagine this is different for everyone. I like both people who are cool and people who are not.

I would like to be cool but find it's not worth all that effort to really pull it off. For some people it just comes naturally.

I think most cool people in their 20s-30s are hit in the face with something that makes them specifically uncool, such as sudden responsibility, difficult parenthood, weight gain, hair loss, difficult/inappropriate lifestyle, disfigurement, trying too hard, or some combination thereof.

For me, for a while, it wasn't so much about being "cool", but being liked.

Now, I don't give a shit, because my time is limited, my patience is thin and I have more important issues to deal with than pleasing other people.

That wasn't at you UT (because I answered right after you), but in general.

And for what it's worth, you're cool....goddamnit. :D

Depends largely on mood, some days I intentionally look like something out of the matrix, other days it's an old jumper and jeans. Depends who I'm seeing as well. The better the friends the less I care. I don't generally set out to impress people, how you dress impact on your mood as well, so I use that combined with music if it's best for me to be in a certain mood for something.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

I think that it's not cool to admit that you care about being cool. The truely cool people don't care (or at least pretend they don't care) about being cool.

But not caring doesn't automatically make you cool. I don't really care, which is a good thing, because I'm not even close to being cool.

I'll second that, Glatt. :thumb:

The coolest thing about UT, is he doesn't know how cool he is.

I was obsessed with being cool in my teen years, and mostly I wasn't.

After about 21, I haven't given a shit.

But since I have such a huge reserve of subtle coolness almost oozing out of me, some times you'll still catch a glimpse.

Of course you only see the dork side of me in cyberspace.

Come to Wisconsin and drink with me! I will surround you with my aura of cool! 'til my wife drags my sorry ass home.

1 / important

My take on it is that everyone here is cool, for different reasons. I'm not talking "cool" in the "dresses fashionably" sense, I'm talking cool by... well, I guess by my own completely inexplicable standards. Cool to me means interesting, I guess, not popular.

I was obsessed with NOT being cool in my teen years, being anti-cool I suppose, the angsty teen thing and whatnot. It wasn't until mid/late high school and then college when I finally met people who were interesting enough that I was able to develop a new definition of cool.

I'm pretty damned sure that I'm cool. If you agree with me, great. If you don't, I don't care.

when i was in junior high, i NEEDED to be cool. I copped attitudes, said " fine, be that way!" a lot, and wore bluejeans, hiking boots, a chain wallet, and heavy metal tshirts. But, i was really a soft, chubby white boy. I cared about what people thought about me through high school, until my senior year when i lost a lot of weight, and actually started to BE cool. When I started following the Dead, I stopped caring all together. That's how I knew I WAS cool.

so, my theory is that your coolness is conversely related to your desire to be cool. the harder you try, the less cool you actually are. This is mitigated by self confidence. Confidence = coolness. Arrogance is a different matter, and works the other way.

so.....to expand that, and apply it to real world examples:

Jag= NOT cool...definately trying too hard to come off as cool
UT=WAY cool....indifferent to his coolness
ME = stupid for saying something like this.

soft, chubby white boy?
 

And you are different now how? ;-)

"How important is it for you to be cool?"

Define "cool".

Re: soft, chubby white boy?
 

uh........I'll get back to you on that.

You see, you were cool because you felt (knew) you were cool, regardless of what anyone else thought. There were, at the time, a whole lot of people that thought Deadheads were uncool and a whole lot worse. But that didn't matter, as long as you think you're cool, you are.
And, no matter how cool you are, if you don't believe it, you'll never be. :)

Too slow!!! I'm answering for you...
 

Now I am a slimmed down, active young-middle age white man with a beautiful wife and 2 wonderful children. My head is still kind of chubby & red, but I got the slacker stuff outta my system after a bitching road trip, and now have a very promising career in the car business.

I also am interested in woodworking, and have several other healthy hobbies...I still smoke the occassional doobage (don't tell because by now you have all figured out where I work), but pretty much got my shit togethor.

I've come quite a ways in fact from the little juvenile pudgo I used to be. Life is good indeed. In addition to my full life I've met a wonderful group of people online that seem to enjoy my company and we share a lot of stuff. I like to talk online, but am secretly worried that my wife is going to pull the plug on me and pull some kind of intervention bullshit if I hit 5000.

But you know, it's all good....this is so NOT the life I imagined for myself, yet as I grow older and wiser I realize that I have it pretty good.

I want this, and yearn for that, but in reality I already have everything I'll ever need.

Sincerely,

LJ

no matter how cool you are, if you don't believe it, you'll never be.

I agree with Bruce on this .

I want this, and yearn for that, but in reality I already have everything I'll ever need.

And Blue on this .

read the tag line below

When I was a kid I wanted to be popular.....since that wasnt available I plumped for wierd instead .....I dont think going to school with blue bread and a bright green dip in my lunchbox was necessarily the coolest thing to do but it did get me noticed....

In my late teens and early 20's I had in my head a picture of what cool was.....It usually involved people being so cool they were no longer even aware of their coolness.....it also ( and I remember this quite clearly) involved people having a good time....having a good time in a really cool way.....The other part of that picture is that it never involved me.

When I look back at the stuff I was doing during those years andthe people I was hanging out with ....I think actually I was pretty cool...by my definitions anyway. No money but a bunch of unusual characterful friends living on the edge and getting involved in more trouble than was strictly good for us...sharing a house with people as madferit ( manchester slang) as I was and hitchhiking to Glastonbury rock festival with my fella ...

Of course atthe time i wasnt cool. Not really. I was as I still am a bit of a geek ....but ( and this really is my point) nobody could tell! not from the outside lookin in......If anybody had been watching from outside the group ( where I usually place myself ) I would have appeared to be having a good time in a really cool way.

Whether or not I care if I'm cool fluctuates. I'm going through a period of wanting to be cool right now. It's mostly because I am feeling the need to have a girlfriend, money in the bank, etc. Since I'm currently lacking in those areas, I want to make up for it by being cool.

Of course, wanting to be cool is the least cool thing you can do, so I'm failing at it.

When I'm flush, I don't care what people think. After all, I have money in the bank, a girlfriend, etc. etc. Therefore I'm less needy and stop trying to bring attention to myself - hence cooler.

Some of us never got out of jr. high. :P I'm a therapist's wet dream.

I am cool. I know that I am cool. I also know that I don't give a good goddamn whether anybody else thinks I meet THEIR definition of cool.

(I have an internal locus of cool control)

Wolf is so freaking cool! ;-)

Aint she though? ......I wish I was as cool as Wolf.....:3eye:

Ah, but you are. BE the cool, Grasshopper.

"What's cooler than being cool?"

"ICE COLD!!!"

I thought hot was cooler than cool.

no, that would be "dope"

Whatever happened to phat? Did that stop being cool recently?

no, that faded about 2 years ago......

you might want to re-assess your definition of just how cool you are.

although it is possible to be cool, but not "in"

that's where i'd put you, wolf.

like elspode and bruce

Oh, I am fully aware that I am not "in." "In" and "Cool" often are mutually exclusive terms.

In fact, I have on more than one occasion admitted to being "Old and Unhip" in my interactions with teenagers when requesting their assistance in translating their own speech.

Whadda ya mean, I'm not "in"?
Why I'm always "in".
"In" trouble.
"In" considerate.
"In" the way.
"In" deep doo-doo.
;)

By whose definition? I'm still phat with a capital PH!

As an undersized shy kid in a big school system I thought about being cool a lot.Luckily for me in the 70's I had a whole bunch of kids in my neighborhood.Enough of us to form some sort of clique.Most were good friends and we helped each other.
What interests me about this topic is this:Is coolness something you're born with?(my opinon-small minority)
Or... is coolness some sort of extreme self confidence? The kind of confidence that says to others that I really don't give a rats ass what you think?
I pose this question to the cellar because I believe that my upbringing (without a father figure and a mother who was too tired to know what was going on with my life) influenced me a lot.I built up all these defenses that have stayed with me all my life.And its kind of sad.I am remote and sarcastic.I swore that no matter what that my sons upbringing would be better.And yet I see history repeating itself almost exactly.I feel so powerless.Please don't shut people out Travis(my son).

I rambled a bit there.Sorry.The 20 year olds I'm hanging with out here in Portland,OR. think that I'm cool.For whatever thats worth.

There are a good many seriously cool comedians and RockGods who've made their mark being remote and sarcastic.

Obviously, being cool isn't a big deal for me or I'd make more of an effort at it. As it is, I think I'm at about a -3.6 on the 1-10 scale of cool on average.

But that's...cool.

Thanks for your comment Dana.For me that makes YOU cool.I don't need anybody to blow me.But when someone just reaches out and offers something nice to say...Hey,thats cool.

i don't care if people think i'm cool.
the people I think are cool think i am cool, and the people i don't think are cool don't seem to have any interest in me...does that make me cool? i think i'm cool and that's all that really matters to me. if someone doesn't think i'm cool, then i think they're shallow and stupid:) guys always think i'm cool.
have i broken the record for # of times "cool" has been used in one sentence?

then i think they're shallow and stupid guys always think i'm cool.

punctuation is cool.

does this statement say " then i think they're shallow and stupid. Guys always think i'm cool. "

OR

"then i think they're shallow, and stupid guys always think i'm cool"

do smart guys think you're un-cool?

Case rested. :p

I see lots of rich white kids wearing FUBU jeans with PHAT on them so it must be cool, right?

where do you see these white kids, jag?

LJ, there would have been a period where the smiley face is. i guess it just didn't look like there was any room for a period there with the colon and parentheses i used for the happy face, you know?

Okay Captain Semicolon.


:D

perth, to clarify....i was commenting that a simple change in punctuation makes a run on mean two entirely different things. i think by now, you are all desensitzed to my semicolon abuse.

; = ' unless ";" makes sense in context.

Stacy:

so....guys always think you're cool?

guys you meet in person, I assume?

that's an interesting dynamic. I can meet a guy and know right away that I hate him. Women, however....especially attractive ones like you......usually take me much longer to suss. They have to be pretty obnoxious for me to dislkie them right away.

Is this true for women? does it take you longer to figure out whether or not you like men than women?

Semicolon? Is that half-assed?;)

I'm only kidding LJ. But I cannot tell you how pleased and honoured I am that you chose "Captain Semicolon" as your new user title. :)

Speaking of which, I need to come up with a new one.

yes, well, it seemed appropriate.

your new user title, huh>>....????


lesseee.......

how about:

sensitive male

or

melts in your mouth, not in your hands ( may not fit)

or

freudian slut. i mean slip

or

pull my finger!

or

male lesbian

or

recently uncased....sorry

or

shut up, jim

With aologies to Case. LJ, that was just too good to pass up.

wrong thread, but this means an apology sent via email.

[homo] aren;t we cute? we have given each other our titles....[/homo]:joylove:

Yeah, I should get a new one too.

Damn. Leaving the mistake in for all to see.

How about "Shut up, Lumberjim"? :)

if it wasnt me we were talking about, i would secretly suggest through mass pm that EVERYONEchange their title to that.

how about:

still likes Lumberjim

To quote Muffy Crosswire, one of the characters on the Arthur TV series that my kids love,
And I don't think "Shut up, Lumberjim" would cut it.

"Shut the fuck up, Lumberjim" might be worth considering though.

just remember that your name ryhmes with phallus......:)

So?

so?

you're calling my bluff? ok....it;s all i could think of, smarty pants.

i have zero dirt on you. what else can i do but make idle threats?