On being weird

Humans are social beings. We crave acceptance. And yet, many of us qualify that acceptance, rejecting dominant culture and embracing subcultures. Without doing literally any research, my guess is that the contemporary US is at a world historic high of people who reject dominant culture in some way.^[1]

What is it that drives some people to want to be weird? To be opposed to the normal order of things?

There are a few obvious answers that explain some of the phenomenon, but not all of it:

1. Everyone is unique: I don't want to spend much time on this because it misses the point. Everyone is unique, but not equally so. Some people are weirder than others. One could argue that normies are actually much weirder at heart, but are too repressed to show it. There's certainly some truth to this, but leaning on this explanation encourages an anthropological view of normies that erroneously aggrandizes anyone who's been online too much. Lots of you weirdos are far more repressed than the woman with the Stanley tumbler who sits next to you at work.

   

   In this view, it's those who abide by convention that need to be explained. Like 19th-century European anthropologists, though, this ignores the fact that we're the exceptions. Every culture has internal diversity, of course, but ours is probably one of the only featuring the extensive and concerted construction of subcultures opposed to dominant culture.

   Rather than suppose a world in which everyone is equally weird and the majority of people are just repressing it, it's easier to imagine that people fall on a weirdness/normality bell curve. Most people are mostly normal, with some weird qualities, while there are a few people who are hyper-weird or hyper-normal.^[2] If this is the case, though, we are no closer to understanding why people fall where they do on the curve, or what makes them stay there or not.

2. Dominant society marginalizes people, who then reject its norms: Conventional society is also usually rich, white, straight, and patriarchal society. If one is not the beneficiary of these systems, conforming to their norms often involves being subjected to violence.

   But this doesn't explain the full picture, because every oppressed class also has their own norms they abide by, against which some of their members also rebel. These norms can be categorized into two groups: those that accord with the broader normative culture, and those that go against it.(E.g., Southern black American Christianity accords with dominant White American culture, while the black American tradition of dreadlocks is opposed to it (or white America is opposed to dreadlocks).) Consequently, the marginalized reject their own norms either out of opposition to dominant society––rejecting those norms that align with dominant society––or assimilation to that society––rejecting those norms opposed to it.

   Again, we're leaving meat on the bone. There's a third category of marginalized cultural practices that is neither opposed nor aligned with dominant culture. One might argue that there is no such thing as neutrality in these cases, but the world is too big and varied for such a simplistic binary. Take body piercings––hardly conventional in rich, white, America, but likewise not the standard in poor, black America (if, perhaps, those conventions are less stringently enforced here). Does a black person get piercings because they want to reject both dominant and oppressed American norms? One can picture unc at Thanksgiving saying that the snakebite piercing you got is white. But it's obviously stupid to assume that every black eyebrow pierced is the result of internalized anti-blackness.

   The investigation into this explanation has yielded one conclusion, at least: All of one's practices locate them in a cultural context (coconut tree). One's vocabulary, dress, mannerisms, accent, diet, hobbies, friends, enemies, opinions, etc.

   To say that every decision we make is a binary choice between accepting or rejecting the culture around us ignores the diversity choice. There are many ways of accepting and rejecting. A gay white man can fit every convention of normative society, or he can reject them all (Neil Patrick Harris contra David Wojnarowicz). And he can do each in many different ways.^[3]

3. Trauma: The mention of Wojnarowicz is a good segue. This line, usually seeping with arrogant and judgemental pity, goes: Getting fucked up as a kid makes you into a fucked up adult. Subtracting the moralism, this is often true, especially the further you go away from the center of conventional society. But closer to the core, it's harder to say. Is there some maladjusted trauma behind every artist and punk and nerd? Some, absolutely, but I've met very well-adjusted weirdos, people who can absolutely kick it with any normie, but who simply prefer styling themselves differently and accompanying a different crowd. Inversely, many people who are normies have suffered just as significant trauma and are just as psychologically maladjusted.

4. Subcultures provide better community: You make friends with the weirdos, and they make you weird. This becomes an infinite recursion, and we ask who committed original sin, who was the first weirdo and why? Or is it that by genetic drift a group of friends simply reinforce each other's idiosyncrasies, and soon the group has wandered away from convention and created their own culture? Both explanations suppose that normies have worse friendships than weirdos, which seems both anecdotally wrong, and falls prey to the same exceptionalist view of normies.

Perhaps the only feasible explanation is that interests and dispositions are randomly distributed (or even distributed on a bell-curve), people become friends with those whom they share similar interests with. If you happen to have weird interests and find other people with weird interests, you'll grow more weird. If you happen to have normal interests and find other people with normal interests, you'll grow more normal. There are more normies because people without strong friendships also end up being pushed in line with dominant culture.

In thinking through this, it has become obvious to me the pitfalls of most explanations lie in their partisanship. People in either camp tend to simplify and reduce the experience of the other in order to justify their own decisions. A common dynamic, to be sure, but easy to miss if you're not conscious of the opposition of forces at play.

Weirdness for weirdness's sake

But there is something else going on here.

An example: As you grow up, you listen to a wide variety of music, but, almost inexplicably, through no choice of your own, you find you're most into pop punk. You like the aesthetic and adopt it yourself. You're a scene kid. Soon, you find scene friends, a scene lover, maybe even a few. You attend scene shows and parties, you buy all the albums, you even get a job at a Hot Topic. This continues for years.

On your 26th birthday, you ask yourself "Why do I continue to dye my hair?" You've done it for so long you don't even think about it most of the time, it no longer carries any personal weight. Everyone in your community knows you––who are you doing it for? Why do we feel obligated to externalize our interests, to identify ourselves with a certain in-group to people who are outside of it?

This is really the heart of the question I wanted to ask. It's always been a funny joke I tell to myself to wear my most absurd fits to the grocery store. I don't really notice if people are looking at me or not. Am I doing it for them? The obvious answer is that I am doing it for myself, that I am simply wearing the clothes I like best. But I can also look good in my normal clothes––why not wear those?

As honestly as I can tell, I just find some irreducible pleasure in being different. Perhaps the desire for individual distinction is universal, and people simply seek it in different arenas. The feeling of individuality I might get from looking silly or a scene kid might get from dying their hair, the patagonia vest finds in getting a promotion or the cheugy gets from getting her pomeranian a new collar.

Weirdness is a young man's game. As we age, we mellow out. Getting married, buying a house, figuring out a career, and having kids all make us feel unique, and we forget about showing our individuality off to other people. I'm scared that I'll be boring when I'm old, but the real fear is that the ways I'm not boring now don't actually matter.

The timeless

Beware passing fads, trust in that which is timeless. Take an objective eye to the world and let it rest on that which is beautiful, regardless of weather it's weird or not. True, dominant culture is usually ugly, but a well-tailored suit is still one of the most attractive things a man can wear.

^[4]