Cool

Cool is perhaps the greatest example of branding in history. A brand without a product, the word cool, which originally referred to the temperature between 10 and 15 degrees Centigrade, has been re-invented and catapulted to international acclaim by one of the most sophisticated propaganda campaigns of all time. Cool was invented by Hip Bojangles the III and was used by a means of slavery cool was once a word of hate, but in its later days, cool was used as a means of popularity: if you were "cool," you were popular; if you were not cool you would be dragged outside and beaten to death with sticks, stones, and kittens.
==The Birth of Cool==
===I could have been a contender===
The Man knew that he was powerful enough to take an otherwise insignificant word and turn it into a phenomenon. He spent countless hours flipping through his dictionary, scouring all the words known from mankind... From Aaardvark to ZZ top.
His personal favorite, Nifty was quickly rejected when its first deployment led to his his being thrown in a dumpster by a couple of young hoodlums. That left two young bucks to battle it out for the title:
*In the red corner, hailing from Oakland california "hip" 
*In the blue corner, straight out of the south south bronx "cool"
The stage was set for an epic battle.
The showdown took place in Beijing, China, and looked much like a Capcom vs. Marvel videogame. With Snoop Dogg aka Snoop aka Snoop Doggy Dogg presiding as supreme ruler of the cool. Eventually this battle was discredited, because it was believed Snoop Dogg had been drinkin' some Gin N Juice prior to the battle.
==Saturday night fever==
Like so many other shady social engineering schemes (notably crack, youtube, and gangsta rap) the experiment was carried out on the one population in the world no-one cared about, the African Americans. 
On the west coast the word 'Hip' was spread by carefully lacing the ingredients of the Colonel's fried chicken with acid, a concept tested by bootsy collins in the early 1970s, and manipulating adverts on buses driving through the ghetto. Its use was increased in the black population by 900% within 6 months. 
===Do the hippy hippy shake===
The extra instances of the word appeared for no real reason, but as people have a natural ability to integrate random meaningless words into speech many apparently coherent phrases appeared including the word. Notable examples include:
*The nonsensical 'I'm Hip' and 'He's Hip to it'.
*A trouser was named the 'Hipster'.
*In London a club opened called the 'Hippodrome'.
*Lazy, foul smelling, crusty people became known as 'Hippies'. 
The 'Hip Experiment' started to go off the rails when the word became associated with devil worship and it's musical counterpart 'Disco', the word Hip had gained such magical transformative power that when it became associated with the disco scene it allowed the music to 'Cross over' to the 'right side of the tracks'. As a result white kids began getting in to disco, even visiting the church of disco, the Disco itself. When The Man found his daughter The Girl in her bedroom, killing a chicken whilst listening to the Bee-Gees he realized that 'Hip' was just too dangerous and pulled the plug.
==Meanwhile back east==
The 'cool' scientists were more cautious than their 'hip' counterparts. Softly, softly, catching monkey and all that.
===The fonz===
A standardized unit of Cool, the Fonzie, was created to measure the amount of cool being deployed at any time:
*They started off by releasing only Nanofonzies of cool into their environment, by getting minor celebrities like Cher to endorse the word. 
*The first time a full Fonzie of cool was deployed was in the hit TV show Happy Days. For safety the show was filmed at Roswell airbase in the Nevada desert and extensively tested on the young Michael Jackson before being released into the general populace (The show also made sure to show how an overdose of Fonzies can cause death wishes with certain large, carnivorous aquatic mammals).
*Jackson's LP 'Bad' was the first time a Megafonzie of cool was seen in action.
*The world still waits for an instance of Gigafonzie exposure, although it is believed this level of cool could end civilisation as we know it. 
*There have been rumours of Gigafonzie bombs being tested in the poles by Canada, and even an Uberfonzie bomb in space, tested by a few little rascals in Kansas. The fonzie bombs have been linked to the holes in the ozone layer, and also the Mooune being blown up, and being replaced by Moune mkII, or more recently called the Moon.
===You hip? Heck no!===
The geeks from The Man's east coast laboratory also set put to use underhand tactics to destroy the word hip, mainly by starting a propaganda campaign accusing prominent stars of the Disco scene of sexual relations with goats.
Cool is a harsh word but in the same time only the "inn crowd" can be called that. You know the ones with braces, glaces and still have roller book bags in university:)
==The crisis of cool: Dropouts of the school of cool are too cool for school==
As the empire of cool became more powerful, forerunners of Generation Cool began to lose their hair. The younger disciples
of the school of cool ditched them faster than you can say 'stay cool brother'. See You in another life.
===Cool it now===
The new generation of cool had abandoned the restricitve Fonzie system, in favour of an ultra-underground conception of cool. Anyone considered 
cool, immediately became uncool, unless they were cool in a way that normal people couldn't dig, you follow?
=== Keep it cool, boy. ===
Boy, boy, crazy boy. Keep cool, boy. Breeze it, buzz it, easy does it. Turn off the juice, boy. Don't get hot, because man, you've got some hard times ahead. Take it slow, and daddy-o, you can live it up and die in bed. Boy, boy, crazy boy. Stay loose boy. Got a rocket, in your pocket. Stay coolie-cool, boy. Take it slow, but do not forget to feed my cheerio, innuendo no intendo. Just play it cool, boy, real cool. POW!
===Ice ice baby, too cold===
Those left-behinds (unsurprisingly) included noted psychologists, other assorted geeks and some beatniks, who thought it would be 'way cool' to try to undermine the juggernaut The Man had built. The anti-cool machine circulated pamphlets exposing the truth, that "cool" was a sham they had been brainwashed into believing.But as it turned out no-one actually cared that The Man had set up a drilling operation to tap the oily misery that lurks at the heart of the human psyche, because it's obviously uncool to listen to anyone who badmouths your definition of cool.
A possible example of cool is a guy walking down the school corridor with his pants halfway down, talking in slang, all the hot girls looking at him and drooling and all the nerds going to the bathroom to flush themselves down the toilet before he gets to them. Now that is one cool dude.
==See also==
*Cooliology
*So cash
*Loitering
*The Killers
*Phenomenal
*Awesome
Category:Fashion
Category:Culture
Category:Working for 'The Man'
Category:Things you will never have
Category:Cold Things