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There’s so much anxiety-release and serenity in outsourcing the work of identity-creation to someone else. If I let someone else decide what’s cool, what’s worthwhile, what’s correct, then I don’t have to do it myself, and I don’t have to be responsible for learning or failing
I mean of course this is basically the cornerstone of celebrity culture: I’ll wear what she’s wearing, I’ll drink what he’s drinking, I’ll listen to the music they’re listening to
But this is tremendously fragile, as a system. The reason we trust the gaze of coolness is because the gaze of coolness knows better than we do. It picks the right pants, the right car, the right friends, the right meals, the right jokes, the right moods
When it goes south — let’s say, for example the car the cool girl said to buy turns out to be shitty —something gives. The cool girl can say “all I care about is how the car looks” and that diminishes the power of the gaze. “I was paid to sell it” diminishes the power of the gaze
The worst thing of all though is to say “I fucked up, I shouldn’t have gone with this car.” That doesn’t diminish the power of the gaze, it obliterates it entirely. Coolness can’t be fallible. Commodified coolness even more so. It is as brittle and ephemeral as frost.
The gaze-conferring-existence thing is the history of “it girls” “discovering” things: “I discovered this little diner in the east village,” “I discovered this designer in morocco” “I discovered matcha” “I discovered veganism” “I discovered Pilates” — a commercialized solipsism
Of course like all celebrity it’s inextricably linked to whiteness, power, wealth — even if only proximity thereto or approximations thereof. It’s a coolness that claims to create culture, though all it does is consume, digest, and excrete it.
I don’t think it’s possible to have culture without this. In many ways it’s essential to the ecosystem. Highly scrutinized public consumption could arguably be considered a form of cultural criticism.
Not, like, a great one. But still.
And on the consumer side it has value! Attaching yourself to other ppl’s taste is training wheels for figuring out your own, and a useful time-saver in those arenas you don’t or can’t invest the time in mastering. Its ok to let someone who really cares abt music have the aux cord
But the important thing is the brittleness. When you don’t build in fallibility from the beginning, when you believe that YOU are the brand, when you aren’t able to consider your own gaze and what it does or doesn’t take in — you become unable to change, apologize, or admit error
If what you sell is your unerring ability to be right, it all falls apart the minute you say you were wrong
I gotta go take a roast chicken 
it of the oven now so I guess that’s the end of this thread, bye!
it of the oven now so I guess that’s the end of this thread, bye!
Ok fine dudes obviously this thread is inspired by Alison but it’s not just about her and it’s not a subtweet. The cool girl thing is a universal phenomenon and an endless cultural cycle and Alison isn’t the first and she sure as hell won’t be the last.
