Chuck Klosterman looks at Cereal Commercials to view how the exclusion of Cereal Mascots from participating in the activities of the main stream (i. e. the kids in the commercial) subtely influence our society's definition of cool from a young age. For Klodterman, to be cool in this society something must be exclusionary.

"Exclusionary cool" means when people are split into two groups. One group is "The Originals" and the other is "The Semioriginals". His example is, it would be legitimately inventive to casually walk around with the petrified skull of a orangutan under your arm for no reason, but this would only seem cool to a select class of performance artist.

When a new shirt comes out, everybody wants to get it because it is the new coolest trend, but you decide to get the other one that only a few people have, those are the two groups. He states that a better choice would be a T-shirt featuring the cast of After M*A*S*H. A cool image also needs to be a semielitist, but it can't be wholly elitist.

I don't mean to put anyone or group out on the spot but the Asian table in the cafeteria that we sit behind. I say this because I know a few people that are in that group and when I go over there to make conversation, the whole table looks at me with a nasty look, they do it to other people that I know to, but it's cool. I think that there only used to having other asian people talk to them but I'll keep on bothering them because it's funny.