By Dan Verrier
[This article first appeared in The Agenda #16, July/August 2006]
Hipness was around even before Lord Kelvin said “Now this is as cool as it gets,” and even just in the present day, there are any number of different definitions for it, depending on the clique being discussed. Analysis, however, leads us to some basic mechanics common to all forms of cool, regardless of period.
The reasoning behind a given thing’s popularity seems ultimately based in some quest for dominance—everybody clamoring to be the Alpha Dog—but what’s In or Out for any one group is apparently arbitrary. A given definition spreads as all memes do: from person to person, reliant upon people with varied interests to travel to other cliques, who then put their spin on it. Evolve and replicate—pure Richard Dawkins. Which isn’t to say that it’s worth liking (trucker hats and Ann Coulter are both popular in some circles, despite sucking ass). When a meme takes hold, it becomes the new Big Thing, complete with dedicated adherents…until something else comes along.
“None of this applies to me, ” you say, “I blaze my own trail through this landscape of garish facades. ” Well, my melodramatic friend, you might not be “mainstream, ” and you might be quite varied in your interests, but keep in mind that you picked each of them up somewhere, and you probably share them with someone you know. Just because you’re different doesn’t mean you’re immune. So, hip kids, I propose this social experiment: We will inject a redefinition of cool (manufactured from arbitrary parts) into our own behavior, and test the hypothesis that anything, if enough people are talking it up, can become the new Big Thing. Who decides what the new hip is all about? I do. Here’s your handbook.
First Rule: Keep dressing as you are. We don’t want to arouse suspicion, and I for one don’t feel like having to get a whole new wardrobe. We’re not abandoning everything we know and love, just adding to it. Besides, if people think everything is business as usual, it will be easier for our subversion to take hold. That same old shirt they know and love will be your ticket into their brain, which we are about to hijack, and reprogram.
Second Rule: Here begins the redefinition—Flugelhorns are now the greatest thing ever invented. Their trumpet-lined-with-marshmallow sound is the seductress who sits in our collective lap, softly moaning for us to take it off. Chuck Mangione is now cooler than Jimmy Page, and we don’t care who knows it. Jimmy hasn’t looked the same since he did that thing with Puff Daddy for the Godzilla remake, anyway (I’m pretending not to know the name of it, but it was “Come With Me”). Get listening. Keep your car’s sound system ablaze with the soft, dull fire of the flugelhorn, so even passersby can’t help but hear.
Third Rule: Going to shows is now to be supplemented with trips to bar&grilles to watch middle-aged men play classic rock covers. Don’t like it? Hard cheese, fella—make a sacrifice for science. Besides, there’s no cover, so broke people can drink more. Pay special attention to covers of Eagles songs. Yes, I’m aware that the Eagles didn’t have a flugelhorn, and that middle-aged men playing bar & grilles hardly ever play them, either. That’s not the point. There is no point; it’s arbitrary, remember? Sing along, clap really loud—especially after “Hotel California.” Watch as your unwitting friends get really into it. If someone works up a flugelhorn version of the song, we know our experiment is a roaring success (or roaring-lined-with-marshmallow, as the case may be).
Fourth Rule: The fourth rule of the experiment is just like the first rule of Fight Club: you don’t talk about how we’re performing a massive social experiment for shits and giggles. Something like that. Anyway, no one must let on that we’re doing this; between those who join us in conducting the experiment and people who just stop listening to us, we’d run out of subjects. Plus, we’d never again be sure whether or not the rest of humanity was somehow jerking our chain in retaliation. There’d be panic in the streets.
Well, those are the instructions, now get to it. There is no need to find a control group—an isolated group to monitor so we know these things didn’t just become wildly popular on their own. For this deal, that degree of precision is unnecessary, and the odds against it happening without our interference are astronomical. At the experiment’s end, we can go back to whatever it was we were doing before it started (assuming our memories of it haven’t been replaced with Eagles lyrics). Now go, my lab technicians, go! Prove me right! Or right-lined-with-marshmallow, as the case may be.
