Creativity Quote by Max Cannon

Max Cannon’s line reads like an offhand confession, but it’s really a quiet indictment of how fast we turn strangers into stories. The phrasing does the work: “the second we see somebody” collapses the timeline to an instant, making judgment feel less like a choice than a reflex. That’s the uncomfortable point. He doesn’t locate bias in villains or extremists; he locates it in the baseline operating system of everyday social life.

Notice how quickly the quote shifts from “snap judgments” to seating arrangements: “why we wouldn’t necessarily sit with them.” It’s a small, mundane image with big moral weight. Cannon is talking about segregation in its most contemporary form, not enforced by law but by micro-decisions and social scripts. Who gets proximity, attention, safety, conversation. Who doesn’t. The street becomes a sorting machine.

Then he smuggles in the real accelerant: “what’s cool or not cool.” Cool is the most slippery, powerful cultural category we have because it pretends to be aesthetic while acting like a gatekeeping tool. Saying someone isn’t “cool” can disguise class anxiety, racialized fear, ableism, queerness, age, fashion codes, even simple unfamiliarity. It’s prejudice with a better publicist.

As an artist, Cannon’s context likely includes looking at people as surfaces and signals - clothes, posture, vibe - and admitting how easily “seeing” becomes labeling. The intent isn’t to shame the listener into silence; it’s to make the invisible moment of categorization visible, so it can be resisted rather than merely performed.