The concept of the “coolhunter” is as old. William Gibson may have been the first to coin the term with his character, Cayce Pollard, of Pattern Recognition, but I’m going to postulate that when cavemen were sittin’ around the fire, or hanging out in the godforsaken landscape dodging lions and shit, the ALPHA, was the one to watch for what to do. He had all the ladies, I’m sure, and probably had the best techniques in various tasks, ie. making fire, bringing home the kill, running away from dangerous predators, inventing the wheel, etc. This alpha was the one bringing home all the caveman steeze possible.
Of course, we can only hope that we’ve progressed since then.
Today, we get our sources of cool/uncool (surprisingly very fine line between the two) via social interaction, magazines, books, television, and the seemingly all encompassing internet. Little pockets of culture have grown and thrived on perhaps a single viral video alone.This blog is really about that. It’s about how these ephemeral cultural phenomenon’s happen, how they exist, how they’re going to affect the future, and my personal encounters with them. I don’t actually give a fuck about what most people think are cool or uncool because, let’s face it, in this neo-post-post modern (add as many neo/geo/post’s as you want) world, something one person thinks is cool is probably pretty damn lame to someone else.
This is just an investigation into the whole culture phenomenon. I’m curious and the only way I figure I could keep a consistent journal of my experiences is to believe that there are people reading this piece of shit that hopefully will become interesting at some point.
cheers,
Michelle
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5 comments:
how do I subscribe to your blog? subscribe to mine short cake.
i personally identify the most with neogeo post modernism.
Stimulating argument mich. The idea that nothing is original is of most interest to me. You stated that, "nothing, at this point, is original and that we, as a collective population, are the products of re-appropriation, a world built up on the idea of a simulacrum." This makes be think of U.S. capitalism. While U.S. capitalism takes the assumptive role of assigning false origin (with legal concepts of intellectual property i.e copyrights, invention patents, etcetera) we the people act with unquestioned obedience, mindlessly complying with these folly of these manifested processes. This argument you presented with assigning the false origin by institutions can be analogously compared to the essay by Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author. You should give it a read. Look at how this "Authorial" institution gives that sense of deconstruction... that feeling that nothing is original...
kevin- interesting that you brought up the idea of false origins and intellectual property. it seems very timely in an age where the use of torrents has sort of subverted that and also the indictment of many kids using other means of file sharing has sort of steered us away from the big bully of large record labels... something jason and i have been discussing... its also interesting that you isolated the idea of simulacrum to capitalism when i was talking about it in a non-pejorative, broader sense. interesting viewpoint though. i'll definitely check out death of the author. i'm sure was bound to stumble upon it at some point... canonical authors such as barthes are hard to avoid especially in the art world...
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