Merchants of Cool

(1)In the movie there is a theme called "cool hunting." This, as Malcom Gladwell explains is, "The search for a certain kind of personality, and a certain kind of player in a given social network," or finding the influence held by those who have the respect and admiration of their friends. "Cool hunters" look for the kid who have the most influence on their peers. One woman describes it as searching for the 20% of teenagers who influence the other 80%. They consider themselves "culture spies" who penetrate the region of the teen landscape where corporate operations aren't welcome. "Searching for trendssetters or leaderswithin their own group." However by discovering cool, major companies then ruin cool.(2)One professor in the documentry puts his perspective on the relationshipbetween big companies and teens in a very interesting way. He compares the teen nation to an actual armada, with weaponary ranging from clothes to music to films. All of this to make money in the market war. (3)MTV excutives consider the bond with teenagers to be completely run by the teens. The videos on TRL are completely requested by the group and is played for everyone. Human research is the same but the goal is completely different, focusing on the human, as, well, a human. Minus the profit from the market.(4)When talking to a teenager to determine what they are in to simply for research, they don't consider the teenager as a person at all, but rather a customer. A market researcher's goal is to project what this teen says is cool and to make money off of it.(5)I believe that the best description of teen culture is given by "The Merchants of Cool," because they already know where teens are going. The critics and rebels are along for the ride. The excutive producer of Dawson's Creek said it best during the documentry by saying "Why put another finger in the dam, when it's going to bust anyway?" You cannot stop what what will and will not be popular or cool, no matter what the critics say, they are critisizing the "merchants of cool," who already know where the profit is at.