Some parts of this world are
imbued with an aspect which makes them
unique and
desirable. This makes them
cool.
Coolness is like a natural resource, there's only so much of it in the world at any one time. The unfortunate thing is, people will do the same thing to a
metaphysical resource that they do to a
physical one. They will
strip mine the
fuck out of it. By exploiting the natural cool of something and using it for
monetary gain, those who would seek to benefit from the
coolnessisitudes are ultimately destorying them.
Let's have, then, some
examples,
neh? Well the best one I can think of is
MTV. At its inception, MTV was exploiting a yet underdeveloped
niche in the entertainment industry, a dedicated music channel in the tradition of classic radio stations, that is, providng a new way for
artists to reach their
audience. At its
peak, MTV gave a
voice to a generation which was still defining itself. Now, however, MTV is a twenty four hour
tit and ass show, the only innovation which it provides is being able to somehow play minute for minute atleast twice as many commercials as
music or
original programming and somehow stay
on the air. Secondly, MTV plays, for the most part, that which is
popular dominantly. Thus,
everything on MTV is some weird
fusion of
beach culture and
hip hop; we all know the real
pimps wear
Abercrombie and Fitch floral patterns and hang out with
wet shirtless white guys on the
beach. If popular music was dominated by
J-Pop, you know that
Carson Daily would have
eight foot high anime hair in order to enable better
accessability to the
target audience.
Another
equally good example is
Wired magazine. Founded during the
happy go lucky zine scene of the
early nineties, Wired represented the new role that
technology would play in the world in the years to come by putting a focus on the
individuals who were making it happen.
Issue number
two featured an interview with the
cypherpunks as the cover issue. A few other features of the magazine also took form there, the
Fetish section, featuring new shiney gadgets and the
Street Cred section, detailing that which was hot at the moment in the world of technology.
Flash forward a decade and Wired is a radically different
rag. The size of the latest issue is approximately
three times the thickness of issue number two and the space went to one thing:
advertising. In this day and age, Wired is more like porn for rich
dot com investors. Each issue is basically a list of products which one should buy if one wishes to remain in the
technological elite for another half hour. Basically, Wired's only purpose, now, is for rich guys to read while
masturbating and thinking about their vast sums of
money. The magazine still does feature good
articles but their credibility has seriously been derided by aspects of the rest of the magazine such as
special advertiser sections, 10-20 pages of nothing but one ad for some new
can opener, or something. A shame, really.