Inspired on the many recent nerd threads and always facinated by human social behavior, I’ve put together my Grand Unifying Theory on Coolness & Dorkism. I began my studies at an early age, and finally as a young adult, I am ready to make my theories public.
Here it is:
“All coolness is derived from ones potential to have sex with the opposite sex”.
That’s it.
Desire to propagate the species is one of the strongest instincts we have.
You could be a friendless prick, but if you get more ass than a toilet seat, you won’t care and men will want to be like you.
People seek out friends at the same “coolness” level so that a) cooler friends wont cock block them and b) dorkier guys won’t scare the girls away.
99% of “cool” people’s attention to their appearance and personality is due to a desire to appear more attractice to the opposite sex.
A lack of sex or attention from the opposite sex will cause you to focus your attentions into inane tasks - Star Trek trivia, videogames, what have you.
Thoughts
It seems like you’re talking about guys only. Several times in your OP you make reference to things the way some guys think, and you even come out and say, “a) cooler friends wont cock block them and b) dorkier guys won’t scare the girls away.”
Well this girl at least prefers the nice guys who are into Star Trek and videogames.
Ignoring the fact that different people define ‘cool’ differently…
I think ‘coolness’ can affect one’s attractiveness, but it’s not a 100% correlation.
E.g., I can’t imagine anyone considering Donald Trump to be cooler than Miles Davis, even though Trump probably has more (and more attractive) women chasing after him than Miles did.
Ok…to be honest, I don’t know much about “homo cool”. But I think the theory is still sound. One of my (admittedly few) gay friends is a pretty cool guy - girls definitely seem to like him in that way even if he’s not into them.
Well, I am a guy so that may skew my research some. Would you prefer a nice guy who’s into videogames who looks like Collin Farell (or whoever) or one who looks like Bill Gates
And you can be nice and be cool at the same time. Cool people tend to be dicks sometimes because they can get away with it more, but being a dickhead doesn’t make you cool.
The “a) cooler friends wont cock block them and b) dorkier guys won’t scare the girls away.” part essentially talks about how “cool” people and “nerds” tend to enhance each others coolness and nerdliness because we have a tendency to run with our own crowd. I may like hanging out with a super stud because he attracts the ladies over but maybe he thinks I cramp his game. And I think the same behavior applies to women as well.
Not at all. In fact, homos have a higher base level of cool since it’s well known that the average gay guy would have an easier time seducing a girl than the average straight guy. They just choose not to.
[hijack]The best part about this thread is the ad for “animal behavior control” at the bottom.[/hijack]
OK, but really–I agree with the Miles Davis/Donald Trump comparison. I know a whole lot of people who are cool but do not get much ass. Perhaps more telling, I’ve known a whole lot of of absolutely non-cool people who get tons.
When I think back to high school, the people having the most sex were at the very top and the very bottom of the “cool” scale. Now the people I place at the bottom aren’t the nerdy kids (like me), but the really skanky, redneck-y kids. They seemed to get each other knocked up all the time. And it did not make them cool or vice versa.
OK then, make it a comparison between Miles Davis and Ricky Martin.
And I’m not sure where the boundary is between a person and the person’s trappings – without his talent, Miles wouldn’t have gotten much attention. And a lot of his groupies were chasing his fame, like all groupies do.
Prefer him for what? For a roll in the hay, Colin Farrell of course! But for something more serious, I always go for the guy with glasses who knows how to fix my computer.
I disagree. The “swordsmen” I know are not as cool as the coolest guys. Most of the really cool guys were in longstanding relationships. They were sure of themselves and able to roll with whatever life threw at them. They were willing to laugh at themselves.
The cocksmen were always trolling, and didn’t much care what they reeled in. They were willing to date women they didn’t like just to get laid. They cared more about pussy than about women. Some of them were shallow guys.
See, now you’ve touched on a popular misconception. That mere “numbers” make you cool. I think it’s much cooler to be the guy with the super hot wife who is really into you (and who all the other ladies are jealous of) than to have an endless string of nasty bar-pigs who would hook up with anything at 3am.
Coolness is determined by how many/how much people (esp., but not limited to, those of the same sex) want to be you.
Any flaws in my theory, or examples that would disprove it? Any corollaries? Discuss amongst yahselves. ::waves manicured hands, takes a sip of cwahfee::
I don’t really disagree with the OP, but I think that both the perception of one’s coolness and one’s potential to get laid are both effects.
My theory is that people are cool to the degree that they are themselves and not worrying about whether they are accepted.
Let me introduce you to the words of the brilliant Michael Ventura, from his book Shadow Dancing in the USA*, in which he quotes Robert Farris Thompson:
This is taken from Ventura’s astonishing essay, Hear That Long Snake Moan (anthologised in Shadow Dancing), in which he discusses the roots and history of Rock music and Jazz music and how they came out of the meeting of African rhythm, European instruments, and both continents’ spirituality.
With that in mind, I think we can defince what makes a person cool by looking at social things we know are uncool:
Appeasement.
The desire to be liked so much that one says what one thinks the other person wants to hear, rather than what is true. One says nice words to get out of a jam, or to get into a desired place, even though that piles up trouble for later.
I can think of so many cases where this has happened, in my own life and elsewhere. This also seems to the the kernel of the womens’ complaint in the Nice Guy threads here.
Taking on someone else’s image.
Trying to be someone else, ignoring or suppressing one’s own desires or traits.
Of course everyone looks at different things–clothes, cars, home furnishings, whatever–and desires them, trying them on to sense the fit. It’s the people who seem at the mercy of external judgement, picking up and dropping images based on fashion magazines, rumour, or hearsay, that I’m thinking of.
Advertising how you want to be perceived.
Trying to tell people who and what you are, instead of just letting them see it.
This is the tactic of people who wear the word ‘sexy’ on their shirt or ‘nice ass’ on their butt. It’s the tactic of people who give their all to keep up with the Jonses, of bombastic executives in fake toupées, and of insecure dictators who insist on fine regalia and impressive titles when rebel armies are advancing on their capitals from two directions. Seriously, folks… if you have to tell people you are something, you aren’t. And people know it.
Now, there is a time when people are growing and developing, that this experimentation with image is not a bad thing. But ultimately, unless somehow one does find who they really are, experimentation with image becomes a trap. People will see the fakeness.
All of these behaviours seem to have, at the core, that the person concerned does not have a good sense of who they really are, or believes that who they really are is worthless and they need to find something, anything, else that they can be, so that they will be accepted. Or they believe that the only way they will be accepted is to force acceptance.
If you are happy with who you are, you will relax and just take things as they come, without trying to force things into some other shape. And you will be cooler.
The terrible thing about all this is, what if who you really are isn’t all that attractive? For someone like me, who spent endless years struggling with this before learning to relax about it, this was the fear. I think now that, even if you aren’t conventionally attractive, or whatever, if you relax and be yourself, you will have greater chances with the people you do attract.
[sub]*1985 edition of Shadow Dancing in the USA, page 107; Los Angeles: Jeremy P Tarcher Inc; ISBN 0-87747-402-0[/sub]