Education Quote by Jim Coleman

There’s a particular junior-high sting in this line: the way adolescence turns “cool” into a moral category and rebellion into a consumer choice. Jim Coleman isn’t confessing theology; he’s confessing a phase. The joke lands because “Satan” is treated less like an embodiment of evil and more like a brand whose PR problem has finally been solved by a shock-rock spokesman. Coleman’s “I don’t think I really know” frames ignorance as innocence, then flips it into complicity: now he knows, and the knowing is funny because it’s absurdly mediated.

The cultural context is late-90s Marilyn Manson panic, when anxious adults read eyeliner and industrial guitars as a pipeline to perdition. Coleman punctures that moral hysteria by exaggerating it. “Thanks to Marilyn Manson” doesn’t actually credit Manson with revealing occult truth; it mocks the way media narratives turned him into a turnkey explanation for teenage alienation. The subtext is: if you want to understand why kids flirt with darkness, don’t pretend there’s a secret cabal. It’s right there in the mall, in the CD rack, in the posture and the pose.

It also slyly indicts our appetite for neat villains. By framing Satan as “cool,” Coleman exposes how scandal is marketed and how fear is monetized. The punchline isn’t Satan. It’s us, still mistaking theatrical provocation for a conspiracy.