On Skype, P and S were discussing about the hipster overload that dominates some quarters of our youth culture. I agree that 'coolness' has become the fashionable totem of our times. The dominant culture of today's youth is borrowed; the reference points are rarely local, and when they are, it is a hijacking of subaltern cultures for elite past-times. Fundamentally, it seems from the tenuous nature of our interaction with modernity itself. Somewhere there is a fundamental disconnect with the Indian reality and the hyper-reality of the imported consumerist cultures of the West. A creeping social tension that is played out in friendships, relationships, work-time, play-time. It affects our outward social self and inner being, in ways we do not fully comprehend. It's not psychobabble but in the dynamics of our banal social reality. Fundamentally, we are losing touch with our authentic selves, creating an identity that needs constant approbation in order to be socially relevant. To be judged or to judge lurks in our everyday interactions, creating inherent insecurity in our minds. Coolness is the symptom, uncoolness the crime.