Klosterman - The lady or the tiger?

In this article the author Chuck Klosterman explains his theory on how mainstream cereal commercials on television influences the youth in a negative way. Each cereal commercial directed towards the youth influences thier persepctive on what being cool means, and they mostly ostricize the character portrayed in the commercial. Injecting the idea of exclusion into the children at an early age will in return cause them to adopt the idea themselves in everyday life, therefore children use exclusion as a tool to measure coolness.

'Exclusionary coolness' is basically what it sounds like; exclusion of certain people makes them not cool. Given this message early in life the kids have it imprinted in thier minds without any real idea about what it actually means, yet it still affects thier lives. Seeing a leprechaun, or a rabbit being shunned from a cereal by another normal cool and happy kid like them makes kids think that exclusion is cool, so when they're all on the playground exclusion becomes evident sifting out 'cool' kids from non cool kids.

Exclusion sparks a lack of confidence and causes two groups; the cool and uncool. Companies use this as a sales scheme making the uncool kids feel the need to become cool by buying a cool product. If someone is excluded from a group they'll naturally feel thier confidence drop and feel that they have the need to be accepted by the group that excluded them, so they'll be drawn towards the 'cool' products that all the 'cool' kids have. Companies feed off of this idea for sales, and creating new fashion trends.

Generally at Churchill the subcultures are divided by fashion at a first glance. For the most part you won't see a group of 'gangsters' and 'bookworms' hanging out in the same group. If someone doesn't have the fashion or the 'look' of the group they're trying to be a part of they'll be excluded. Rather than expressing and embracing individuality at school, it's more along the lines of being the same. What I mean by this is that for the most part you can't expect many different types of people to get along because of the exclusionary factor of not looking the same as one another. A lot of people these days would rather know that they fit in with a group of people like them, and rather than having different views and styles of thought in thier group, people still prefer to be in a pack. Like sheep.