Social psychologists have long studied the ways in which people maintain self esteem: by comparing themselves socially against their peers, ranking their peers and situating themselves within that ranking, they maintain an equilibrium by discounting the fact that some are better off than themselves against the fact that others are worse off. However, our ever more intrusive mass media and the cult of celebrity they promote threaten to disrupt this delicate mechanism. We are face every day with images of the richest, most beautiful and most fulfilled people on the planet and compared to them, everyone feels like a loser.
Cool is then one mechanism that people use to short-circuit maladaptive comparisons and relative deprivation. Sociological theories such as "strain" theory support the idea that school students who feel that they are failing in the classroom, or who do not 'fit in' socially, adopt a strategy of disengagement from school activities, and develop anti-academic cliques, or subcultures, that provide an alternative route to self-esteem.
By acting Cool you declare yourself to be a non-participant in the bigger race, for if you don't share 'straight' society's values then you can stop comparing yourself to them. Cool cannot abolish social comparisons entirely, but it can restrict their scope to your immediate peer group. Mods, rockers, skinheads, punks, hippies, crusties, goths: for several successive generations of marginalized and disaffected young people these subcultures, with their own rules, rituals and obligations, have provided a magical alternative to being written off as a hopeless loser in the rat race. In the language of youth subcultures, 'I'm cool' equates to 'I'm in control.'
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