Culture Of Cool: How to tell when someone is being genuine.

So today in class we discussed how it is sometimes hard to decipher the difference between genuine personality and following the "calling of cool". I think that more often than not we allow ourselves to be pulled and urged to change our likes and interests to keep up with whats new in popular culture. I don't think that this is necessarily a quest to be cool but instead growth of a person. This is not to say that there are not extremist, people who gulp down the latest and greatest like a value meal from McDonald's but, generally speaking most people build identity with age and lose interest in being "cool". Having the latest iPhone seems more important at 20 than it does at 40 being a mother of 3. I don't think cool is so much of a destination but a path to who you are. There are plenty of fads that pass by and I don't entertain because they don't appeal to me. If I try something new, be it "cool" at the time, even if its 15 minutes of fame pass I will still continue to enjoy it because its still of interest to me and not because of social pressures to maintain status.
This is how I think that you are able to determine people for who they really are. The example I gave in class was of my friend Gracie who has always marched to the beat of her own drum. She has never tried to give off this image of herself and never changes her personality make up to fit in with another group of people. She was raised to love the Beatles and be vegetarian and to appreciate people. She is the only person I know who in 2013 is still wearing denim skirts. She will never change, just age. People that are unfaltering no matter what the media masses attempt to push on them are genuine people. Obviously people get most of their social influences from the mass media so it's impossible to avoid everything that gets deemed cool but, if you go from Marshall Mathers to Marcus Mumford in less than a months time, you are clearly a cool craver.