Cool isn't Dead. It's heavily sedated.
Just Released
Cool is still out there. It's hiding behind sunglasses, status updates, and overpriced lattes.
Most of us are performing some version of "cool" every day, whether we mean to or not.
At work. Online. Whenever and wherever we're supposed to know exactly what we're doing. But the truth is, we're not really trying to be "cool" like Muhammed Ali, The Fonz, David Ortiz, Bette Middler or George Clooney; we're actually just trying to project the illusion that we're not falling apart.
Cool on the Outside, Screaming on the Inside is a field guide to that performance.
Through Brand Mavrick—creative director at the fictional Panopticon Agency—this book tracks the pressure to appear composed, capable, and slightly above it all ... even when you're not.
By reading this book, you will not be fixed. But you may start to see what's actually going on: The pointless meetings. The careful expressions. The effort it takes to look unbothered while something underneath is fraying.
This is not self-help. It's satire—sometimes uncomfortably close to nonfiction. But if you have ever looked at yourself—in the tiny onscreen window during a Zoom meeting, in a poorly-lit bathroom mirror, in the reflection of your office window in the middle of a workday—and wondered: “Am I actually composed … or am I just tired in a more presentable way?” you are already in the right place.
Brand Mavrick is the alter ego of Charlie O’Neill, who is writing from his long exposure to corporate life and the strange rewards it quietly hands out: endless meetings, hollow language, authority hoarded like damp cardboard, and obedience dressed up as initiative.
Recently featured on WBZ Nightside with Dan Rea (iHeartRadio)-- a conversation on satire, authenticity, and the performance of “cool.” (Segment starts at 25:40)
