Oh my god yall. I’m so fucking BORED.
Bored of opening up Instagram and being immediately assaulted by an army of identical creators using variations of the same tired script.
“This is what the cool girls are wearing in London.” “How the cool girls are doing their lip liner this winter.” “The secret boutique where the cool girls actually shop.”
Being told that this oversized leather jacket, this slicked-back bun, particular shade of neutral lip gloss, and a coffee from a very specific independent café I will, for once, be cool.
I would rather, for lack of a better expression, shit in my hands and clap.
Be so for real: when an “aesthetic” template is packaged, optimised, and pushed out to millions of people via a recommendation algorithm, it ceases to be “cool.” It becomes a basic bitch uniform.
Because the premise of these “cool girl” tutorials relies on an ironic delusion. The baseline definition of being cool has always been rooted in effortless autonomy. It is about being unapologetically yourself, embracing your unique contradictions, and moving through the world with little regard for external validation. You can’t achieve individuality by copying every single aspect of your style from a 15-second digital loop. That 5 million other people are simultaneously copying.
Lord, save us.
The Subversive Reality of the Truly Uncool
The mistake modern influencer culture makes, is treating “cool” as a commodity that can be easily mass-produced. They assume it is a mathematical formula of the right brands, the right fits, and the right filters.
But if you look at cultural history, true style innovation has always operated in the exact opposite direction. In the fringes. The things that eventually become culturally iconic almost always start out looking completely bizarre, polarising, or downright “uncool” to the vast majority of the public.
Think about the origin points of every major subcultural shift, whether it was the shredded aesthetics of early 1970s punk, the oversized, thrifty layers of 1990s grunge, or even the recent resurgence of “ugly” footwear like Vibram FiveFingers and Maison Margiela Tabis (RIP Tabis, we lost you to the basic bitch army). These styles didn’t emerge from a fkn curated lifestyle tutorial. They emerged because individuals rejected the norm entirely, and chose to wear something that made the average passerby uncomfortable.
Cool requires real-world friction. Because it’s a willingness to look a bit odd to the uninitiated.
When digital creators flatten these organic subcultures into easily digestible “get the look” captions, they strip away the very essence of what made them interesting in the first place. They turn a lived identity into a superficial costume. The consumer who buys the exact lip liner and the exact jacket recommended by the algorithm are merely participating in a short-lived retail trend cycle engineered to pump up affiliate link metrics, all to be tossed away when the next shiny new item pops up.
The Strategy: Marketing the Blank Canvas
This data-driven uniformity represents a massive, wide-open market opportunity. The internet has become an automated factory where everyone is being trained to look, speak, and think exactly alike. And it’s boring. We’re bored babe.
The actual “cool” brands, never adhered to the “copy-paste lifestyle” playbook and the practice of telling their audience exactly how to use, style, or interpret their products.
Instead, they position their offerings as a blank canvas for personal expression.
Look at how legacy utilitarian brands like Dickies or Carhartt have historically maintained their cross-generational relevance. They don’t launch super stylised campaigns telling you how to fit into a specific social clique. They build rugged, high-quality, and structurally simple garments, put them out into the world, and allow the consumer the complete autonomy to interpret them. A garment can be worn by a skateboarder in Los Angeles, a mechanic in Ohio, or your next situationship. And each individual moulds the item to fit their unique life story.
The YAP Takeaway
When every creator on the internet is trying to teach your audience how to fit into a standardised template of “cool,” the most disruptive thing your brand can do is champion raw personality. Stop designing products and messaging that try to hold your customer’s hand through a curated lifestyle simulation. Leave the “cool girls” alone. And give them the raw materials, step out of the frame, and let them create their own style on their own terms.
