Creativity Quote by Tre Cool

Tre Cool’s line works because it takes the grossest possible image and uses it to smuggle in a clean moral: technique is overrated; consequences aren’t. The joke is the misdirection. You brace for a comment about manners or hygiene, but he swerves into something closer to an ethic of impact. “How you pick” is the private ritual, the method, the style points. “Where you put” is the public outcome, the social world that has to deal with what you’ve produced. It’s a childish metaphor with an adult structure.

As a musician whose whole brand leans on punk’s gleeful disrespect, the quote also reads like a miniature manifesto: stop fetishizing process and start owning what your actions leave behind. Punk culture loves to mock “serious” people, especially the kind who debate purity, authenticity, or craft while ignoring the collateral damage. The booger becomes a perfect symbol for the thing you’d rather pretend doesn’t exist: the messy byproduct of being human. Everyone produces it; the only question is whether you pretend it disappears or you decide what you’re going to do with it.

There’s also a sly social critique in the phrasing. “It’s not how…” echoes the language of self-help and meritocratic advice, but the payoff is deliberately lowbrow, puncturing the sanctimony. Cool’s intent isn’t to elevate etiquette; it’s to puncture performative competence. In a culture obsessed with hacks, routines, and optimizing the “how,” he reminds us that the “where” is the part other people have to live with.