When an American boy gets picked last at a game on the playground, he gives up on ever being selected by the other boys, except last. He retreats into self-pity and misanthropy. This is encouraged by the adults, especially his parents, doubly especially when his dad made the same choices about being picked last himself. This boy tries to create a new playing field where he is the top of the selection. Because he knows he cannot compete on the playing field, he tries to compete in intellectual pursuits, or in a fantasy world, or in fandom. He collects comic books, or plays Dungeons & Dragons, or plays video games. Maybe he learns science, or literature, or art, or music. It never occurs to him to strive to improve himself, to make himself an asset to the team that might choose him. It never occurs to him that a drama is unfolding on a level bigger than that of his individual ego.

When adolescence hits, this boy tries to be cool. He creates a new pecking order based around musical taste, or fashion, or obscure knowledge. He tries out for the school play, or joins the debate team, or starts a band, or joins the school's literary magazine, and tries to win approval through his creativity and intelligence. There is nothing inherently wrong with seeking approval through these channels, but the boy still has a chip on his shoulder about rejection. He strives to create not merely a new selection where he is on top, but a new selection where the kids who are successful at the old games are rejected here. He seeks to be even crueler than he thinks those other kids are— to cut them down before they can hurt him again. He doesn't realize that being rejected from the alternative he has just created doesn't hurt at all, really. His ego depends upon being top of some pecking order, even an imaginary one, and he will viciously defend his new status, especially by being cruel to those who are lower down on his new pecking order. He becomes an asshole, but it's everyone else's fault but his.

Ultimately, this is what it means to be cool, to be indie, to be avant-garde, to be hip. As a young punk rocker, I was saved from this insanity because I grew up in a small town where weirdos got their asses beat. In order to be weird, you had to band together and watch each other's backs. We had to trust each other in a fight, or we'd all get stomped. It was ugly, it was nasty, and it was exhausting, but at the end of the day, you really knew who your friends were. A realistic selection sprung up based on whether you were worth saving when everyone got jumped by rednecks. You sized up new potential friends for their value in dragging you out from under a half dozen pairs of steel-toed Doc Martins when the Nazi skinheads broke up your punk rock show. (I like traditional skinheads, but the Nazi skins suck ass). When the bored, redneck small-town cops harassed us for being weird, you needed to know your friends had your back when you split up and ran.

The point is that every boy and every man needs to know his friends chose him. It's hard-wired into our brains. We need to know that we were worth picking, that we're valued for what we contribute to the people around us. We need it in our jobs, in our friendships, and in our relationships. Those boys and men who never get chosen, who never become the people anyone would want on their side, are damaged goods. They're not really cool, they're undeveloped. No tattoo or piercing, no leather jacket or pair of glasses, no boots or records or novels or comic books or mp3s or posters or t-shirts; no commodity of any kind is going to make a pair of balls occur where they wouldn't anyway.

We live in an advertising culture where we are constantly told that the only thing that stands between our current state and wholeness is a particular commodity. It's the central lie of our culture, and the people who hate mainstream culture the most seem to cling to this lie the most intensely. Notice how many "alternative" people define their non-conformity by how readily they conform to an alternate standard? How they buy objects that articulate their rebellion for them? It has become so ingrained in our culture that the current crop of teenagers makes no distinction between consumption and expression. They are frustrated that consumption alienates them from their own feelings and desires, but they express that frustration by consuming more commodities. It's a vicious circle. Let go. Quit being cool.