That's so cool.

In Writing About Cool by Jeff Rice, I was perplexed as to how businesses were incorporating the word “cool” as a way to entice teenagers into their websites. Maybe it’s because I would never think of searching for cool sites on the web. I mean, don’t these people have something better to do with their time than to sit around on the computer looking for “cool” stuff. It just goes to show how the original intent of the internet has been lost to one of time-wasting and over-consuming. Along these lines, I was wondering how these teenagers are able to purchase things over the internet. Rice mentioned how several of the search engine sites have links to “cool” sites wherein unsuspecting web surfers encounter attempts at soliciting clothing, music, etc. Is there some new magic form of money that these kids can use to buy the things that Yahoo! and others so cleverly sneaks into these “cool” sites?

Furthermore, all of this talk about the importance of incorporation of cool hypertext into websites makes me wonder why it would be so important for us. If we are designing websites for ourselves, friends, family, whatever, why do we need to worry about incorporating cool into them (maybe we don’t?). I’m not looking to have some strange teenager stumble upon my website solely because it came up in a search engine because I’m such a “cool” guy. Clearly, that was a joke. I look forward to reading through the rest of Rice’s book to fully understand how this idea of writing cool applies to me. There must be an underlying message that I haven’t been able to decipher in the first several pages of the text.