The Conquest of Cool
by Thomas Frank, Mónica Sumoy Gete-Alonso, Juan Carlos Castillón, Jordi Costa Vila · first published 1997
33% recommend67% neutral
While the youth counterculture remains the most evocative and best-remembered symbol of the cultural ferment of the 1960s, the revolution that shook American business during those boom years has gone largely unremarked. In this fascinating and revealing new study, Thomas Frank shows how the youthful revolutionaries were joined - and even anticipated by - such unlikely allies as the advertising industry and the men's clothing business. In both areas, each having also been an important pillar of fifties conservatism, the utopian, complacent surface of postwar consumerism was smashed by a new br
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The extent to which these kinds of lifestyles are astroturfed is always interesting. Not claiming it is necessarily the case, just that it does happen from time to time. Thomas Frank’s “The Conquest of Cool” is a good reference here.
on “Do We Live in a Society Without a Counterculture?” ↗…hackerdom as the self-titled programming rock stars, ninjas, wizards, etc. etc. did to those professional groups. ---- 0. Incidentally, does anyone else get reminded of things like The Rebel Sell or The Conquest of Cool by pieces like this? All of this handwringing serves to subtly indicate that the author is the sort of person who happens on these scenes before they were cool. 1. Even if you can't get rid of the more…
on “How yuppies hacked the hacker ethos” ↗…"bad men" in childrens' TV https://books.google.ie/books?id=29jhBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT76&lpg=PT... you'll never look at Scooby-Doo or the 1960s in the same way again. In that respect I think Thomas Frank's The Conquest of Cool https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo36... may be something of a successor to Hidden Persuaders, but I haven't been able to read it myself yet.
on “Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?” ↗