Some parts of this world are imbued with an aspect which makes them unique and desirable. This makes them cool. Coolness is like a natural resource, there's only so much of it in the world at any one time. The unfortunate thing is, people will do the same thing to a metaphysical resource that they do to a physical one. They will strip mine the fuck out of it. By exploiting the natural cool of something and using it for monetary gain, those who would seek to benefit from the coolnessisitudes are ultimately destorying them.

Let's have, then, some examples, neh? Well the best one I can think of is MTV. At its inception, MTV was exploiting a yet underdeveloped niche in the entertainment industry, a dedicated music channel in the tradition of classic radio stations, that is, providng a new way for artists to reach their audience. At its peak, MTV gave a voice to a generation which was still defining itself. Now, however, MTV is a twenty four hour tit and ass show, the only innovation which it provides is being able to somehow play minute for minute atleast twice as many commercials as music or original programming and somehow stay on the air. Secondly, MTV plays, for the most part, that which is popular dominantly. Thus, everything on MTV is some weird fusion of beach culture and hip hop; we all know the real pimps wear Abercrombie and Fitch floral patterns and hang out with wet shirtless white guys on the beach. If popular music was dominated by J-Pop, you know that Carson Daily would have eight foot high anime hair in order to enable better accessability to the target audience.

Another equally good example is Wired magazine. Founded during the happy go lucky zine scene of the early nineties, Wired represented the new role that technology would play in the world in the years to come by putting a focus on the individuals who were making it happen. Issue number two featured an interview with the cypherpunks as the cover issue. A few other features of the magazine also took form there, the Fetish section, featuring new shiney gadgets and the Street Cred section, detailing that which was hot at the moment in the world of technology. Flash forward a decade and Wired is a radically different rag. The size of the latest issue is approximately three times the thickness of issue number two and the space went to one thing: advertising. In this day and age, Wired is more like porn for rich dot com investors. Each issue is basically a list of products which one should buy if one wishes to remain in the technological elite for another half hour. Basically, Wired's only purpose, now, is for rich guys to read while masturbating and thinking about their vast sums of money. The magazine still does feature good articles but their credibility has seriously been derided by aspects of the rest of the magazine such as special advertiser sections, 10-20 pages of nothing but one ad for some new can opener, or something. A shame, really.

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