I'm about as asocial and celebratory of diversity as they come, and I love this essay, especially the conversational style. But I'd be careful not to take this argument too far into sophistry.
In school people clan and desperately look for some identity to copy. This leads to all the terrible social behavior you see in most secondary and high school in the U.S. Somebody calling you "weird" can really be a badge of honor.
But there's nothing to be gained in being different in itself. While you should be who you are, if you only define yourself in how weird you are compared to others you're doing the same thing, only in reverse. Instead of saying "I will look at my peers and copy them" you're saying "I will look at my peers and do the opposite" Both of these are just the same kind of herd thinking. Being weird? Awesome. Being deliberately different? Not so much. You need to do a gut check on this one. Schools are full of a bunch of people who all are very proud of being different, just like everybody else.
I also note that the gym conversation consisted of people comparing social preferences: sports teams, hollywood stars, and so on. These kinds of conversations form a type of social bonding -- a joining of group opinion (even if outliers are allowed). It's this very banter that creates the group identity that then shuns other people for being "weird".
"Being weird? Awesome. Being deliberately different? Not so much."
I realize I'm straying further afield of the original article in saying this, but we should keep in mind that being "weird" (or even being "different") isn't always a choice, or at least not a conscious one. I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to suggest that most "different" people have no agency in the matter. But a lot of them don't. Being different is a relative status typically assigned to you by the dominant social paradigm and context in which you exist. There certainly can be a choice, i.e., in whether to embrace this difference, or to attempt to amend it. And degree of self-awareness plays a huge role in the outcome. But often, even deliberate attempts to rein in the differences can fail.
Long before many (most?) of us even realized we had a conscious say in being weird, our peers made that call for us. What we're actually choosing is how to contextualize and reckon with that weirdness.
This is, as you've suggested, far different from a person's deliberately cultivating a surface-level eccentricity in an attempt to stand out (which is really just a case of fitting in by having an interesting quirk).
Finally, I'd suggest that those of us who consider ourselves "weird" or "different" -- regardless of whether that label has been intrinsically or extrinsically imposed -- should take a very nuanced and almost surgical view of it. By self-analyzing the weirdness, you can break it down into its components and decide which elements are useful, which are harmful, which are productive, which are counterproductive. "Weird" or "different" can be reduced to more elementary traits, rather than seen as broad, blanket terms. The broad terms may be value-neutral, but the smaller components often have values (good or bad).
Before I say anything else, I'd like to say that Whit Stillman's new movie Damsels in Distress is a wonderful movie with an affectionate but nuanced take on weirdness. Check it out.
By self-analyzing the weirdness, you can break it down into its components and decide which elements are useful, which are harmful, which are productive, which are counterproductive. "Weird" or "different" can be reduced to more elementary traits, rather than seen as broad, blanket terms.
This is wonderfully expressed. I wish somebody with that perspective had been around to help me when I was a kid. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether the things I liked about myself and the things I hated about myself were two sides of the same coin. Everyone else assumed they were -- some people (like my parents) assuming my social difficulties were good and nothing to worry about, because a kid as smart and well-read as me couldn't help having social difficulties with normal kids my age, and some people assuming (and saying out loud, behind my back) that I was only smart because there was something wrong with me. All the adults (and other kids) who liked me or cared about me at all were of the opinion that I had no real problems, that I was just fine. So... then I could basically just drop my difficulties start enjoying an awesome and unconstrained life anytime I wanted to? I only tried that a thousand times; maybe the thousand and first would have been the charm. The only people who acknowledged I had problems were people who disliked me and wanted to drag me down. That was the worst part; the only people who saw the problems I was struggling with were the people who wanted to use them against me. I appreciate your advocacy of a nuanced analysis and hope that attitude becomes more widely accepted.
we should keep in mind that being "weird" (or even being "different") isn't always a choice, or at least not a conscious one
Not having a choice about it is a big deal. I liked being weird sometimes and certainly embraced it, sometimes perversely, but I always wished I could turn it on and off so I could take part in some of the normal social relations that other people enjoyed. (I was never an introvert. Just alone.) But you can't turn it on and off. Being weird means no practice at socializing, no confidence, and becoming accustomed to people reacting negatively to you -- an expectation that eventually handicaps your relationships with everyone you meet, even people you should be able to get along with. You can't act normal with someone even by your own standards until you get over the hump of anxiety and negative expectations that have become your default mode for relating to people.
Even if you meet someone who might be a good friend or girlfriend, you have no idea how to relate to somebody who doesn't think you're weird. By the time you've figured it out, the moment has passed. That happens a bunch of times before you've kind of figured out, through imagination and through study of other people's behavior, how to act with someone when you expect the encounter to be mutually pleasant. And later you realize it isn't a bad idea to act that way with most of the people you meet.
It becomes easier and easier, but now that I'm in my thirties and still have to make a little bit of an effort at the best of times, and I can regress ten years under the influence of stress, fatigue, or unfamiliar scenarios, I tend to forget there was ever a time when I enjoyed being weird and enjoyed being able to follow my own path on everything. Now I just take it for granted, and I catch myself assuming that everyone was always as free as I was. But I did benefit from embracing my weirdness.
Why does every post on here need someone coming in explaining how it's wrong in some way.
It's not only disingenuous, but outright wrong to assume the author was saying "be weird for the sake of being weird." He's saying he is weird, and that's OK, just he won't see a lot of good in it in high school.
You're acting like he's advocating becoming a hipster, a straw man you invented.
Did you come in looking for a fight? Daniel clearly stated that he thought the argument was a good one, but it's too easy to take the extreme from the headline (or miss the point of the essay entirely), and say that being "weird" is good in and of itself. It's not, clearly. What he's saying is, find your passion and damn the social torpedoes, because it'll all work out in the end.
Daniel's point was that being "weird" for the sake of it is not really the point of the essay. He was not creating any type of straw man. You read it too fast or not at all if you think he was.
"But I'd be careful not to take this argument too far into sophistry."
"But there's nothing to be gained in being different in itself."
The essay needed no cautionary caveat, and that's what Daniel purported it was missing. I posit it was missing nothing at all, and that only the most hopelessly pedantic interpretation of it would call for an explanation of exception.
So, no, not looking for for a fight, just a little tired the "making a point for the sake of making a point."
A difficulty i have is that it sounds like you're nit-picking OP, claiming that he's nit-picking.
The reason why I bring this up is that i don't think Daniel's point is a small one. And perhaps he hasn't couched it in the most benign of ways (although it is pretty benign), there is a difference between saying "Be true to yourself" and "Being different is okay". It may well be the case that these two things coincide occasionally, but i agree with Daniel that conflating the two misstates what sucks about high school, and how life may change in the future.
Why does every post on here need someone coming in explaining how it's wrong in some way.
Because that's how conversations are built. You either find something to agree with, or you find something to disagree with. Both are useful; even better is doing both at the same time.
But if you notice, you basically did the same exact thing you're complaining against.
Completely agree. Inspiring post. The author never said anything besides, don't conform, stay true to yourself. A disclaimer wasn't needed, and I rolled my eyes the minute I started reading the parent comment.
If you want deep science fiction that's still accessible, I would suggest 'the cold equations'. It's not a high budget film, but it captures the essence of classic science fiction instead of the Disneyland crap that makes up most of those lists.
I completely agree. I don't really think there is any net gain to having people dislike you. I guess the optimal situation would be to do what you like but still have lots of friends from a wide variety of groups like you. It never hurts to have more friends, but it can definitely be a setback to not have any and worse, fall into a repetitive cycle where you constantly vilify people because they associate with a group until you convince yourself that only you are worthy of your company. I know, because I have done that too and found it to be self-fulfilling and self-destructive.
People who do things differently or have a value system that is significantly different to those around them will often find themselves as outcasts as a natural biproduct of how they spend their time and the people with whom they feel comfortable. But this doesn't have to be the case. If you find that you are on your own a lot, that should be a natural occurrence and not something to strive for. I think advising an impressionable youth to look down on others who do conform is a mistake because it could start him down the course of assuming the reason he has no friends is because nobody understands him and that will continue to reinforce itself until he is a all-out recluse.
When I look back at those times in my life that I was a recluse I recognize that people were genuinely dicks sometimes, but most of the time I was just not that easy to make friends with. Socializing is a matter of give and take.
I like to imagine the Dalai Lama and George W. Bush getting stuck in a hotel room together. They'd probably have a wonderful time. We tend to assume that social relations are built on sameness, but people who can't build relationships without sharing every experience and attitude down to the last concrete detail are only one step more socially advanced than people who fail to build relationships at all. People who like to conform and be tribal have no need for the ability to find commonality across a superficial divide, but for weirdos, it's an essential skill. (Which I lack completely, of course, but here's to trying.)
There is a saying, perhaps somebody know the exact wording, but something like "all bond together over the same goal (or enemy)"
In the case of Bush and the Dalai Lama they are "stuck". The "sameness" is the bond you form trying to get out of the room. If they have a wonderful time it's because of the experience bonding toward that goal.
In school people clan and desperately look for some
identity to copy.
This struck me. The most intelligent and self-aware of my friends seem to have consciously chosen some person or character to copy in high school or middle school. Perhaps this is a clever way to satisfy the urge while still being self-defined. I emulated the classic mad scientist archetype, for example, and it'd led me to reasonable success. I also suspect that practices such as spirit animals, guardian angels, and the whole positive-affirmations thing are related to this; to a first approximation, these advise that a person create an external target and attempt to emulate that target, and could have evolved as another way to sneak some self-definition through the copying.
Ha interesting! I was in the business of copying the mannerisms and styles of some of my college professors. It was fun, it was sort of a game I played.
Some cultures engage in this copying behavior. I noticed Japanese do it quite often. They will emulate behavior and outward appearance of other cultures (American, European) without seemingly understanding the meaning of such behaviors. It hard to describe, if you see it, you'll know it.
Yes, except that teenagers don't know who they are yet. They have to experiment, trying out various identities and behaviors until they figure out what fits them and what doesn't. So defining themselves in terms of others, whether by similarity or by difference, is to some degree inevitable.
They do need to be encouraged to grow out of it, though, so your point is very valid.
Looking back on my highschool years and previous, my parents tried to encourage me to grow out of all sorts of phases.
They'd barrage me with empty platitudes like "just be yourself" when my primary frustration in life was that I didn't know who I was, or that being myself so far clearly led to nothing but social dejection. "Just be yourself" became an epithet that mocked me all day from the walls of halls and classrooms, often found block-lettered across posters of celebrities and eagles soaring over canyons.
It did nothing but make me feel like my parents were disconnected from my struggles, unhelpful in the same way "just go up and ask her out" fails to encapsulate dating. Convincing me that it really was that easy, sound advice for everyone in the world but me.
You grow out of phases by coming to terms with them yourself. It's how you evolve.
Well, and I would say it may not even be a bad thing for a certain period. Most of childhood development is imitation. We learn communication, behavior, etc, from our parents when very young. The same imitation exists up until some point. However at some point, it becomes unhealthy.
I don't personally see a problem with adopting certain clothing styles, mannerisms, or interests to fit in with a certain group. I think most people spend far to much time and energy on fitting in to a specific group, but the primary benefit of clothing is signalling. If wearing one type of jacket over another lets me meet more people I want to spend time with, and I don't care all that much about jacket choices, then I don't see any sort of problem with wearing that type of jacket. Being perceived as weird relative to the norms of a desired group tends to be a disadvantage, and I certainly don't praise it. Think what you will, act as you know is right, but when dealing with others be willing to go along with otherwise undesirable behaviors. Why do you disagree?
I never understand why this is interesting at all.
If someone chooses to like something or do something because others dislike it or choose not to do it, the fact of their choosing is compatible with them liking it for additional reasons. And that's uninteresting too.
I just don't get why the "pro-skub-anti-skub" dynamic exists at all.
"I like to ride bicycles because others do not, and because they're convenient" is simple, and moreover, it need no social anxiety to attach itself to the shorthand, "cyclist". It seems as of late every social category that crops up exists solely to spark this type of "definition sharing" talk exchange.
I missed the part where that guy was advocating "I will look at my peers and do the opposite". It's more like, "don't look at your peers for any hint about your identity, because you aren't going to find it there".
In school people clan and desperately look for some identity to copy. This leads to all the terrible social behavior you see in most secondary and high school in the U.S. Somebody calling you "weird" can really be a badge of honor.
But there's nothing to be gained in being different in itself. While you should be who you are, if you only define yourself in how weird you are compared to others you're doing the same thing, only in reverse. Instead of saying "I will look at my peers and copy them" you're saying "I will look at my peers and do the opposite" Both of these are just the same kind of herd thinking. Being weird? Awesome. Being deliberately different? Not so much. You need to do a gut check on this one. Schools are full of a bunch of people who all are very proud of being different, just like everybody else.
I also note that the gym conversation consisted of people comparing social preferences: sports teams, hollywood stars, and so on. These kinds of conversations form a type of social bonding -- a joining of group opinion (even if outliers are allowed). It's this very banter that creates the group identity that then shuns other people for being "weird".
People are some funny animals.