Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You by Greg Gutfeld Read Free Book Online

prestige of high school to your entire life. And to bang girls who, when you’re fifty, are pretty much still in high school (a shout-out to Woody Allen).
    But for the rest of us, cool has a shelf life. If you’re a quarterback in high school, you’re cool. But ten years later, working as a sullen bouncer at the only nightclub in town, your “cool” is on life support. Which is why so many young girls who never said no end up with losers in pants hanging below their asses and noknown income to speak of. These cads were charming in high school; now they’re as useless as shoulder pads on a snake.
    In the end, the winner is the female who says, “I can do better.” The winner has an ego so strong that when the cool try to storm the gates, they drown in a moat of stoicism. While watching some murder trial unfold on Headline News, I asked my wife a simple question. “Would you leave me if you found out that I had killed someone?” I expected her to say, “I would stand by you.” But without pause, she said, “I’d leave you.” Of course, she often says this. But nonetheless, that’s the kind of chick you want. She has no time for mystery, danger, or the trappings of a bad boy. To her, it’s just baggage. And it should be, for all girls. And for all women.
    This is not an epiphany. Any old lady born in the 1940s could tell you this. But cool redefined the positive attributes of your average male. A nonproductive commitment-phobic creep now becomes hip and mysteriously remote. The cities are full of women falling for the cool loser: the man trafficking in “edgy” so women cut him slack in his more loathsome behaviors. Christ, I know so many, it’s sad. Please accept my flaws (and pay my rent) because I can play guitar! Badly.
    Date an artistic male with issues, and chances are you begin convincing yourself that “this is what I get for becoming involved with a creative mind. This is the trade-off.” But for the guy, being edgy and cool is just another way to have their cake and eat it too. Cheating, drinking, drugging—it’s stuff accountants can’t get away with but rock stars can. I am a writer, TV shouter, and author, but I married a woman who sees none of that. She only sees my behavior. (Which is my tough luck.) And when my behavior is lackluster, I am treated no differently from a man who sells Kenmore washers and dryers. If I get cocky, I get the couch.Which is why I monitor my behavior. I don’t have an ego. I have a built-in parole officer.
    As my friend’s seventeen-year-old daughter demonstrates, learning this lesson requires no age-ripened wisdom. It just takes a moral spine. It’s the ability to get up and walk out, slamming the door permanently, when the cool desperately attempts to override your common sense.
    Imagine if all girls called a moratorium on cool. How amazing would it be for women to stop demeaning themselves with morose jerks and actually demand decent guys. Maybe the best tip is this: Treat every day as though you’re preparing for the prom. If it doesn’t meet your expectations, make other plans. I’m free most weekends.

THE DEEP CREEP
    Besides buying this book, what makes a person truly cool? A few decades ago, it might have been a leather jacket, a cigarette, some military service, a motorbike, and a bicep with an anchor tattoo. Perhaps a nickname like “Snake.” But that’s all changed. The dark and dangerous has been replaced by the earnest and annoying.
    Probably in an effort to be cool and meet chicks in bars, two researchers decided to undertake a study to figure out what makes someone cool—now. Ilan Dar-Nimrod (I swear, that’s his name), a postdoctoral social psychology researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, and Ian Hansen (I swear, that’s his name), an assistant professor of psychology at York College, decided to survey over 350 college students, asking them to name terms that described their perceptions of cool. They were