It’s a question that has boggled the minds of everyone from philosophers, to musicians, to myself while wondering whether I can pull off a pair of Margiela Tabis: what does it mean to be ‘cool’?
A study published earlier this month by the American Psychological Association attempted to answer just that, surveying 6,000 participants from countries including the USA, Australia and South Africa in search of a definition of what was once thought to be the undefinable nature of ‘coolness’.
While upholding a certain je ne sais quoi (note: speaking French = cool, French people = cool in a terrifying way) has long eluded those of us who just can’t quite get their head around Crocs (are they cool again?), the researchers found that ‘cool’ people do, in fact, possess six specific attributes — none of which are the ability to post on LinkedIn (note: not cool).
Interestingly, all six attributes were agreed upon by the respondents, proving that, regardless of where you’re from, ‘coolness’ is a universal language — like pig latin, only much cooler. For all those racing to see whether they possess the ‘cool’ attributes (it’s me, I’m racing with a Tabi on one foot and a Croc on the other), the study found cool people have the following traits in common.
Cool people are generally perceived to be extroverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open and autonomous — so excuse me for a moment while I rewire my entire personality so I can finally fit in at the next Fitzroy Garage Party (on second thought? Not so cool).
To narrow down those qualities, researchers asked respondents to think of a person in their lives whom they perceive to be both cool or uncool (for me, it’s Charli xcx and JoJo Siwa, respectively), then asked them to rate that person’s personality on two scales known as the Big Five Personality scale and the Portrait Values Questionnaire.
The top qualities gleaned from that data were extrovertism, hedonism, and a sense of adventure, all of which I coincidentally possess whenever I’ve downed my third drink at the pub (note: VLS = cool, but 10 of them on a random Thursday = not cool).
In that same spirit of searching for what coolness means, PEDESTRIAN.TV recently conducted a poll on Instagram (data = totally cool, particularly when delivered with an air of office siren core) to see whether coolness really can be defined.
We asked your thoughts on whether a host of things are cool or uncool, and the results were… pretty cool, to say the least.
Let’s start with the least cool things, which all of you overwhelmingly deemed to be Labubus and posting on LinkedIn. It’s terrible news for whichever intern is in charge of the infamous accessory’s business account, with most of you placing the lil’ gremlins and LinkedIn very close to the bottom end of the poll’s cool/uncool scale.
Word’s still out on whether Labubu’s dupe cousin Lafufu is cool, but I’d venture to say anything Temu-ified is decidedly uncool. Only slightly ahead in coolness was nepo babies, the Met Gala, open relationships and the aforementioned Margiela Tabis, which all landed in the bottom quadrant of the cool scale.
Combined, that means the next nepo baby who wears Tabis on the first Monday of May and also happens to be in an open relationship (niche, but possible) is destined for mostly-uncool status, but there were a few things some of you were in two minds about.
The concept of xcx’s Brat in 2025 and the very real trend of Aussies moving to London — which, if you think about it, kinda go hand-in-hand — landed towards the middle of the cool scale. That suggests we are somewhat undecided on whether ‘Brat summer’ really is transeasonal, or whether the eighth person in your friend group who made the great migration actually made the coolest choice.
While all those things fell in the bottom half of the cool scale (and will therefore be removed from my life, stat), there were a couple of things that cracked the top half of the cool factor scale. Country music — which has oscillated between cool and uncool basically ever since some guy first whipped out a banjo — was one of the cooler entries in the poll.
Granted, the results for country music might’ve been impacted by our choice to include it with a picture of Dolly Parton — who couldn’t be uncool if she tried — but the genre’s place in the top-half is nonetheless a huge win for all you achy breaky hearts.
In your minds, country music was only slightly less cool than nepo babies who admit they are nepo babies (see: Maya Hawke and Muade Apatow, among others), which placed towards the top of the scale and proves we’re cool with Hollywood nepotism as long as its beneficiaries don’t complain about it à la Gwenyth Paltrow or Ben Platt.
Or if they’re Dakota Johnson, who is and always will be the exception to the uncool nepo baby rule.
The second-most cool thing, according to the poll, was being offline — a Larry David-level slice of irony given that the poll was conducted on Instagram. This runner-up choice makes sense given LinkedIn’s much lower spot, so consider it your official push to delete your ‘thrilled to announce’ posts and throw your laptop in the ocean.
That brings us to the crown jewel of cool, the very definition of coolness as decided by you. I’d announce a drum roll, but we don’t yet have the data on whether that’s cool, so I’ll just hit you with it straight. Celebrities marrying normies came out on top, placing almost at the tippiest point of the coolness scale and likely thrilling Lana Del Rey.
Who woulda thunk it that a crocodile tour guide from Louisiana would be the definition of coolness? Wait, croc guide… Crocs… are alligators the coolest thing of all? So go forth, dear reader, with this extremely important data.
And remember, all it takes to be cool is to be a country music nepo baby who admits they are a nepo baby and is married to a celebrity but is also off-grid.
On that note, maybe coolness really is undefinable.
Lead images: Instagram and Getty Images
The post What Does It Mean To Be ‘Cool’? Researchers Have Figured It Out, Based On These 6 Traits appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
