Sunglasses create an asymmetry in the ability to discern emotions between the wearer and nonwearer. This implicitly makes the wearer less predictable, more mysterious, more dangerous and therefore higher in a dominance hierarchy.
I think with sunglasses there’s a veneer of plausible deniability. They in fact have a utilitarian purpose outside of just creating information asymmetry. If you’re wearing a mask though, there’s no deniability. You just don’t want people to know where you’re looking.
Oh I thought they meant like ski masks or something. For illness masks, the reason they’re not cool is very clearly that they imply you’re diseased.
(To a lesser extent too that your existing social status is so low you can’t expect to get away with accidentally infecting any friends or acquaintances, but my first point is more obvious & defensible)
oh i meant medical/covid ones. could also consider furry masks and the cat masks that femboys often wear (e.g. to obscure masculine facial structure), which feel cute rather than ‘cool’, though they are more like the natural human face in that they display an expression (“the face is a mask we wear over our skulls”)
Yeah, I meant medical/covid masks imply the wearer is diseased. I would have also believed the cat mask is a medical/covid mask if you hadn’t give a different reason for wearing it, so it has that going against it in terms of coolness. It also has a lack of plausible deniability going against it too. If you’re wearing sunglasses there’s actually a utilitarian reason behind wearing them outside of just creating information asymmetry. If you’re just trying to obscure half your face, there’s no such plausible deniability. You’re just trying to obscure your face, so it becomes far less cool.
Sunglasses can be too cool for most people to be able to wear in the absence of a good reason. Tom Cruise can go around wearing sun glasses any time he wants, and it’ll look cool on him, because he’s Tom Cruise. If we tried that, we would look like dorks because we’re not cool enough to pull it off and it would backfire on us. (Maybe our mothers would think we looked cool.) This could be said of many things: Tom Cruise or Kanye West or fashionable celebrities like them can go around wearing a fedora and trench coat and it’ll look cool and he’ll pull it off; but if anyone else tries it...
More reasons: people wear sunglasses when they’re doing fun things outdoors like going to the beach or vacationing so it’s associated with that, and also sometimes just hiding part of a picture can cause your brain to fill it in with a more attractive completion than is likely.
Shower thought—why are sunglasses cool ?
Sunglasses create an asymmetry in the ability to discern emotions between the wearer and nonwearer. This implicitly makes the wearer less predictable, more mysterious, more dangerous and therefore higher in a dominance hierarchy.
also see ashiok from mtg: whole upper face/head is replaced with shadow
also, masks ‘create an asymmetry in the ability to discern emotions’ but do not seem to lead to the rest
That’s a good counterexample ! Masks are dangerous and mysterious, but not cool in the way sunglasses are in agree
I think with sunglasses there’s a veneer of plausible deniability. They in fact have a utilitarian purpose outside of just creating information asymmetry. If you’re wearing a mask though, there’s no deniability. You just don’t want people to know where you’re looking.
there is an obvious utilitarian reason of not getting sick
Oh I thought they meant like ski masks or something. For illness masks, the reason they’re not cool is very clearly that they imply you’re diseased.
(To a lesser extent too that your existing social status is so low you can’t expect to get away with accidentally infecting any friends or acquaintances, but my first point is more obvious & defensible)
oh i meant medical/covid ones. could also consider furry masks and the cat masks that femboys often wear (e.g. to obscure masculine facial structure), which feel cute rather than ‘cool’, though they are more like the natural human face in that they display an expression (“the face is a mask we wear over our skulls”)
Yeah pretty clearly these aren’t cool because they imply the wearer is diseased.
how? edit: maybe you meant just the first kind
Yeah, I meant medical/covid masks imply the wearer is diseased. I would have also believed the cat mask is a medical/covid mask if you hadn’t give a different reason for wearing it, so it has that going against it in terms of coolness. It also has a lack of plausible deniability going against it too. If you’re wearing sunglasses there’s actually a utilitarian reason behind wearing them outside of just creating information asymmetry. If you’re just trying to obscure half your face, there’s no such plausible deniability. You’re just trying to obscure your face, so it becomes far less cool.
Isn’t this already the commonly-accepted reason why sunglasses are cool?
Anyway, Claude agrees with you (see 1 and 3)
yes very lukewarm take
also nice product placement nina
Sunglasses aren’t cool. They just tint the allure the wearer already has.
Follow-up question: If sunglasses are so cool, why do relatively few people wear them? Perhaps they aren’t that cool after all?
Sunglasses can be too cool for most people to be able to wear in the absence of a good reason. Tom Cruise can go around wearing sun glasses any time he wants, and it’ll look cool on him, because he’s Tom Cruise. If we tried that, we would look like dorks because we’re not cool enough to pull it off and it would backfire on us. (Maybe our mothers would think we looked cool.) This could be said of many things: Tom Cruise or Kanye West or fashionable celebrities like them can go around wearing a fedora and trench coat and it’ll look cool and he’ll pull it off; but if anyone else tries it...
Yeah. I think the technical term for that would be cringe.
More reasons: people wear sunglasses when they’re doing fun things outdoors like going to the beach or vacationing so it’s associated with that, and also sometimes just hiding part of a picture can cause your brain to fill it in with a more attractive completion than is likely.