27 Informal Research and Interviews

Street Interviews:
Esther and I leave the building but we don't know which way to go, John Li and Andy find us and we start to walk together in the direction of the hardware store. Andy and John walk ahead and a guy smoking outside a hair salon asks us, "you asking about 'cool'?, go ask her (he points to an asian lady inside the salon), she's cool" So we walk inside and ask the lady what she thinks is cool. she says someone who is easy to get along with who is openminded, and easygoing whether they are rich or not. Esther then asks her if she thinks she is cool. The asian lady says "I try my best to be cool" someone cool knows who they are they have to know how to "act it". She then got into how sometimes good people are not cool because they are not recognized but that doesn't mean that they are not good people.

She then calls over her co-worker, a lady with white spikey hair and asks her what she thinkgs is cool she paused to think and said "chill" calm and relaxed, not easily upset. She then says "we look cool, we're cool" gesturing to herself and the asian lady. She also says that there are lots of different opinions of what "cool."

Then she calls over another co-worker, a male hispanic looking guy, and asks he what he thinks is cool, he says "GQ is cool!" me and Esther didn't realize but they explained that GQ is his name, he thinks he is cool. He then said "Someone you can get along" and someone with a cool haircut (referring to the hair salon we were in). All three came down to the same answer that someone cool is someone you can get along with. I can agree with that but now that I think of it, it is a very vague answer. What makes them easy to get along with and how do you determine that?

After we left the hair place, we didnt really know where to go next. Esther said I had to pick since she started asking the asian lady. I decided we'd walk into duane reade and talk to one of the workers because they can't walk away from us. We were lucky because the lady at the cashier was't doing anything so I asked her, What do you think is cool. She thought for a minute and simply said "me" she seemed pretty confident but confused so she said "I dont really know, I don't use that term very much" so I asked, what do you think makes you cool? and she said that a lot of people like her, she had lots of friends and she had a funny personality. I asked her If she tried to be, she said "I don't try, I'm just me." Then Esther asked her how if she acted differently around her friends and her family, she responded, "No I act the same," I decided I didn't want to bother her anymore so the interview ended there. It seemed like the general idea of cool is someone easy to get along with, someone funny and well liked by a lot of people, and someone who knows who they are.

Family Interview:
I asked the first "cool" relative how she lives her life. She said that if she wants things she goes for it. Does what she can while shes young so she can learn from her mistakes now rather than later. From this I got that "cool" is doing your own thing and living your life in the moment.

I then asked a second "cool" relative what he thought was cool. He said "The Fonz, he's so cool he's like 'aye', he wears a leather jacket, and he doesn't really care." Going back to the indifferent and badass rebel coolness. Then he says "Beans are cool" referring to the phrase 'cool beans' trying to be cool while referring to that cool phrase. So I asked him if he thought he was cool, he said "Yes I model myself after the Fonz and I eat beans," then I responded, "But then you're not original" he said that was true and, "That's what makes beans and the Fonz so cool, they do their own thing." So this idea of unauthenticity is still not cool but its only not cool until they realize they are unoriginal. As long as they can go on believing they are cool and original, they are confident they are cool.

It seems as though unoriginality for cool people is almost taboo because people don't want to throw off their coolness. You probably won't hear someone question a celebrity's coolness because they idolized someone else. People seem so intimidated by cool people they don't want to question the 'authority' they think they have. For example, when Fall Out Boy the cool edgy alternative rock band did a cover of Beat it by Michael Jackson the classic king of pop. That cover was still cool, I'm pretty sure it made the top 10 on itunes for a while. Because Fall Out Boy already had status, they were still cool for doing that song even though they were clearly copying off of Michael Jackson and they got even more status for doing that song. If someone with low status in a typical high school copied off of someone else's style, they would be considered a poser or a fake and that would give them stigma.