Viruses, Fads, and Cool

Today we read an article by Albert Barabas as well as a chapter in Writing About Cool. I thought both were rather interesting. The article started out by discussing a “cool” young man and went on to tell of his rampant homosexual exploits. He averaged around 250 partners a year. The point of interest here is that he was at the center of the AIDS epidemic in America in the early 80s. The article then went on to tell of a teen that made a cartoon about the ballots in the 2000 presidential election. He sent it out to a few of his friends and when he returned home he had thousands of hits on his website, and hundreds of emails. The article is entitled Viruses and Fads and focuses on how both can spread rapidly through our culture. This seems to be a bad almost cruel comparison. A virus is obviously a horrible thing that no one looks forward to. A fad on the other hand, only propagates because people like or enjoy the object of the fad. It turns out that the two do have some things in common; mainly the fact that they can spread very rapidly before anyone really even realizes it. I liked this article because it told a bunch of different little stories and shifted focus fairly often. It was a nice change of pace, and it was easy to stay focused on the reading. I liked the story about the hybrid farm. I found it almost unbelievable that between 1933 and 1939 the number of acres of farmland with hybrid corn rose from 40,000 to 24,000,000. This is a dramatic increase, and it yet another example of how quickly a fad can spread.

The article from Writing About Cool was also interesting. It talked about advertising and mainly focused on how advertisers use the idea of rebellion to make a product “cool”. If a product is seen as different and rebellious, people will want to buy it. This is an idea furthered in part by people like Elvis and James Dean. This whole idea of cool rebellion seems to go in a circle. Something is new and different. People buy it because it is seen as a form of rebellion. As more and more people buy it however, it becomes more popular and is almost an antithesis to the original rebellion it started as. An example I thought of was the RAZR. At first, these phones were the bee’s knees. Soon, it seemed like everyone had a RAZR. When you see someone with one today, it’s not a huge deal. Instead, newer, more rebellious phones take its place in the position of cool. I find it very interesting to think of the concept of cool. I like watching the group mentality of people and how all are affected by the actions of one. What does cool really mean, and why do most of us strive for it?