ESPN Freeskiing

Remember the cool kids in your high school? Yobeat.com remembers, of course, being part of the cool group, since they've been, as their slogan states, "Making fun of snowboarding since 1997." Since 1997. Now that's impressive. Obviously, snowboarding in 2009 has gotten so mainstream that making fun of it is now the cool, edgy thing to do (especially if you also still snowboard, to cover your bases with those mainstreamers). Yobeat has been making fun of snowboarding—a practice that has only been cool since, um, probably 2004, or something—since 1997(!!!). At seven years ahead of the times, there could be no more reliable authority on being cool.

Yobeat recently fulfilled its duty as a media outlet roughly seven years ahead of the times on cool with a treatise on cool, you know, for all us, well, followers(?). To sum it up, the article introduced the (played-out?) idea that skiing is not quite as cool as snowboarding. Not quite seven years ahead, but not quite (less than?) seven years behind, either. In the process, they revealed that they really have been cool since high school, and probably earlier. Here's the original diagram:

Photographer Robbie Sell's original diagram of a basic hierarchy of coolness. It looks perfectly correct to me. Yobeat.com fixed it later.

And here's the verbal interpretation:

[...]We must explain Robbie's example. Skiers have begun imitating snowboarders with their twin tipped skis, "stylish" attire, and park riding. Snowboarders have always wanted to be skateboarders. Skateboarders wish they could be Rockers, and with dumb-asses like Bono running around, it is obvious many Rockers would like to be God. But who wants to be a skier?

And suddenly, I'm reminded of the cool kids in high school. While all the suckers are wasting their time in class, the cool kids are doing cool things like huffing paint, or sitting down for ten minutes, choking themselves, and then standing up really fast. You know, for the head rush.

That tingle on the crown of your head feels great when you're doing it. But sooner or later, you hit this point in your life when being smart is cool. And in an attempt to (keep) fit(ting) in, you pull out things like basic mathematical notation to make fun of others (a cool practice that usually transcends age group). But then the years of coolly not caring about math class (like, um, when am I really going to need this anyway?) have left you wondering, "does the greater-than sign open towards the greater number? Or does it point at it?" So you guess, because looking it up would clash with those cool-kid sensibilities that you haven't quite shed yet.

Then, two days later, your lamewad editor looks over your article and gives you the comment, "You know, your first diagram actually indicates that skiing is greater than snowboarding." And your editor is right. But your editor is probably a rollerblader, or something. Lame-o.

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