'How do I rebel if the corporate world owns everything I think is cool?'

How do I rebel if the corporate world owns everything I think is cool? The corporate world owns everything, ranging from products such as clothing, computers, music, movies, TV stations, and radio stations too. There’s these large companies who are basically ‘merchants of cool’ that own and sell products that teens all over buy because it’s cool. Companies like Disney, Newscorp, Vivendi Universal, Time Warner, and Viacom are out there selling us cool stuff. Although what if we don’t like what’s cool and what’s popular? Or what if we hate the fact that they own it all? Some of us would want to rebel but that’s probably one of the most difficult things to do. We could possibly rebel by liking stuff that’s not owned by the corporate world to start with. There’s also the option of supporting small time companies and underground firms who aren’t as big. I personally go with some of the latest trends but at other times the latest just isn’t cool, some if it’s grotesque.

How would you rebel? One option for rebelling would be to start liking products, ideas, music artists and such that are not owned or influenced by the corporate world, although this is difficult seeing as how the corporate world has their hands on almost everything. It seems near impossible to like something that isn’t owned by them already. It’s rather tough to beat that; I would personally go along with the system and accept that fact that I am part of the corporate system. If I like the corporate world’s system and what they think is cool then I’ll stick with it. For an example on somebody hating on what’s ‘cool’; if a person were to be obsessed with the fact that Windows computers are better than Apple’s Macbooks, they would be going against what is mainstream. Although this may be true, there’s the thought fact he doesn’t like mainstream, he still likes Windows and those are mainstream too. Everything is mainstream. That man would be a hypocrite if he stated that he hates mainstream computers.

Through liking underground products you would be ignoring the large companies and their ‘cool’ factor. Small companies might support underground products and such, which is another way to rebel, ‘supporting the little man’. If miraculously everybody decided to forego there need to buy what’s cool and buy things from all the popular name brands and instead buy from smaller companies then things would fall apart for the corporate world. However the corporate world would most likely adapt to what the smaller companies are producing. Once this happens then again people would change what they like and buy, it’s like a giant loop. This rebellious process would only work for a short-term period of time.

‘The paradox of ‘cool hunting’ is that it kills what it finds.’ – Finding new ideas, new music, new art forms, etc. Multimedia companies such as Viacom, controlling MTV, send out there experts of the sorts to go ‘cool hunting’. Going out and meeting with the common day teenager and finding out what they think is cool; what they wear, what they listen to, and what they do for fun. Indeed I find myself against certain things that are mainstream these days. Such as music, even though in my personal opinion that I have no taste for some of the mainstream music, a lot of it I don’t like just because everybody else likes it. Some of it’s bad; some of it’s just too popular.

Rebelling against the corporate world is possible but it’s difficult, some people rebel just because they want to be difficult and seem different. Teenagers are all different but they’re the same too. If one teen likes something they think is completely there’s alone, then there’s most likely going to be others who like it too. You can’t keep things underground and secret, so eventually the corporate world will find out about it and then, all other teenagers find it too. Thus making it uncool. In my opinion there’s no point in rebelling because there will always be cool things and there will always be the time where those things become too drawn out and tired out because the corporate world just abuses it’s coolness too much.