It’s been a little less than 2 months since I’ve bought my domain, found a web host, downloaded WordPress, started a blog. Every day, I read blog feeds on Bloglines, including Boingboing whose 68,000 posts a day I browse religiously. I copywrited my blog with Creative Commons, opened an account with Flickr, and I am thinking of attending BlogHer. I even tried to use upcoming.org. So, I am doing what all the really cool kids do. And, while I zelig my way through the world of bloggers, I realize how hopelessly uncool I am.
Not sure what it is about me that makes me so utterly uncool. I managed to be moderately successful in my life without having never been cool, but I still wonder every day: What makes people uncool? What makes me uncool?
Ten reasons why I am uncool
- I try too hard. [Well, this is not really true, I just have a natural attitude to blend with the tapestry and learn from what other people are doing. But the fact remains: it looks like I am trying too hard.]
- I’m too lazy. This routine of cool activities to do everyday is hard to keep up with, and I always fall behind, which is uncool. I’m just not committed enough to coolness.
- All these cool things are kind of boring. I do love a few cool things (for example, reading Jory Des Jardins posts on Pause or waiting for the next update of PostSecret), but other things I do out of duty rather than passion (“Wow, 106 new posts at Wired News! Can’t wait to read them all”).
- I am too old. This really does not explain why I wasn’t cool when I was a teenager, but it sounds like a good excuse for my current uncoolness. [My husband took a couple of extremely unflattering pictures of me a couple of days ago. Besides looking like my father when he was 60, I noticed that my neck in certain positions shows bizarre folds in the skin I’ve never seen before. Very, very, very uncool]
- I hang out mostly with uncool people [Sorry, I didn’t mean you. You are actually one of the few cool people I like to hang out with]. As a matter of fact, I have a strong magnetic attraction for uncool people. Cool people make me feel uncomfortable and I rather prefer to admire them from a distance.
- I don’t feel cool, I don’t behave cool, and–most importantly– I don’t believe I am cool. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Although I am not without talent, I’ve always been talented in the wrong things when it comes to cool. For example, when I was in high school in Italy, I was good in math and science, and the cool kids were good in philosophy and literature. They did enjoy copying the answers of the math tests from me, but that was pretty much all the attention I’ve ever gotten from them.
- I don’t live in San Francisco.
- Nobody links to me [OK, maybe two people link to me]. Note to self: investigate whether I am not cool because people don’t link to me or people don’t link to me because I am not cool.
- I am always unfashionably late. When I arrive to a new site or discover a new tool, everybody else is ready to leave for the next fashionable new thing.
June 15, 2005
Oh, yes, I think coming to BlogHer will definitely fix that whole cool problem 😉
You have tried a lot more of the current online gadgets and gizmos than I have that’s for sure. And most of them seem more trouble than they’re worth, and many “cool” things do seem kind of boring.
Perhaps it is your definition of “cool” that need review.
June 15, 2005
I’ve been zealous about being uncool for most of my life. And I’ve always felt like the last one at the party (or the one missing the party altogether.) But more and more I’ve learned that everybody feels that way.
One of the deceptive things about reading others’ blogs is that it gives you the illusion that their lives are interesting, because it compresses all the interesting bits into a single public expression. They don’t write so much about spending half an hour figuring out what kind of detergent to buy at ACME.
For example, here you are talking about being uncool and dropping this bit about studying Math as a teenager in Italy — that’s downright exotic!
June 15, 2005
I have always believed you to be deeply, transcendentally cool. However, as I was thinking of some of the ways in which you are cool (fearlessness, wicked sense of humor, naturally artistic, an easy elegance ….), I realized that perhaps only the uncool would make a list of the ways in which they are uncool. 😉 In any event, thank you for the site and the blog. It gives me things to think about and links to sites I would never find on my own. Besides, you could live in San Francisco. Emma would be very pleased!
June 15, 2005
Katy,
Now that you mention it, I could increase my cool factor of at least 2 points by moving to the Bay area. Hanging out with you and Emma would increase in cool factor by 3 points; at least.
This is certainly a proposal to consider!
June 15, 2005
Exotic, uh?
Andrew, you are right, one can read in a blog something like growing up in Italy and be snobbed by a group of philosophy nuts and think “how interesting and exotic!” while my experience of it at the time was anything but. Perhaps cool people can sense what other would perceive as interesting and exotic. I didn’t even think about it.
Hearing… I mean reading “exotic” makes me laugh, though.
When I hear people defining my experiences or myself as “exotic,” I translate it in “Not sure what to make of you; I guess you are interesting in a odd kind of way.” Which in turn reminds me of my parents’ friends describing how beautiful my younger blond sister with blue eyes was (she was, indeed, stunningly beautiful as a child). And then looking at me and say: “Well, you do have beautiful eyes.”
Now you know why I always felt so uncool.
June 17, 2005
Deinitely living in San Francisco would help. The minute I moved across the Bay, to Oakland, I could feel my coolness start to warm up a bit. You know what I think is cool these days? Sharing your thoughts about not being cool. But don’t let it get to your head or anything, otherwise you’ll be too cool to be cool.
You really thinking of coming to BlogHer?
August 20, 2005
I’M HAVING SO MUCH FUN READING YOUR BLOG!
I THINK YOU ARE PRETTY COOL. BUT I GUESS IF ANOTHER ADMITTEDLY UN-COOL PERSON THINKS YOU ARE COOL – YOU PROBABY ARE NOT. HOWEVER, BEING COOL IS OVERATED. WE WOULDN’T HAVE TIME TO GO TO ALL THOSE PARTIES ANYWAY.
March 13, 2006
[…] An important aspect of being uncool is being systematic in missing the coolest events, and SXSW is no doubt one of those. I wish somebody had launched a Web 2.0 slick app for cool-events-impaired people to alert us that it was time time to register for SXSW Interactive. I don't remember anybody writing months ago, when one could still find a hotel room in downtown Austin, that registration for the most fashionable new media conference of the year was open.[Note to self: Next year, remember to write a post alerting all the clueless people out there that is time to register for SXSW Interactive and to reserve the hotel room.] […]