The new trend is being "weird", as in unique, different from the norm, ha ha, strangers look shake their heads in disapproval, lol, so fun to be different! 😂

Well, then there's weird. Friends back away, ghosting you, abandoning you. People you know--coworkers and fellow students-- are polite but keep their distance. No one invites you anywhere, even the people you really like. You try so hard, but you're ostracized and alone and it isn't funny or ha ha or lol. You are weird.

@Fritillaria2
Sounds a bit like 1950's hipsters, whole movement of people just wanting to be different

@webmind And thank heaven for it, too, but recently I've seen "weirdness" being romanticized, and it's making me uncomfortable. It's like Weirdness Lite, and the world would be boring without it, but it ignores the consequences of what's truly weird: isolation, even from the people radically different. It's hitting too close to home, I guess.

@Fritillaria2
I think I know what you mean, but also think it's very like the hip vs square thing.

Or the contemporary hipster: "Above all, they wanted to be recognised for being different—to diverge from the mainstream and carve a cultural niche all for themselves."

There is isolation in that, but also group forming. Uniting over being different or perhaps eventually just something new.

@Fritillaria2 @webmind
But some of us struggle to form close groups even among those willing to be different, even among those who celebrate diversity and weirdness.

@artsyhonker

@Fritillaria2

I support that, why 'But' though, your statement doesn't seem to oppose anything here?

@Fritillaria2 @webmind apologies; I probably misunderstood.

@artsyhonker

@Fritillaria2

To be clear, I fully support the desire to one self apart and to form new bonds over that. I wish myself there is a global norm in supporting difference and recognizing it for it's value.

To me that doesn't mean all difference is good and there is a pattern of using it to isolate oneself which I find worry some.

It's also not free of risk, depending on your local culture it can be quite a task not to be underestimated.

@Fritillaria2 @webmind
For clarity:

I am not choosing weirdness as a means to isolate myself.

I am weird even at my most compliant and when I'm trying hardest to conform. I am basically incapable of fitting into certain social contexts. For that, others deem me "too weird" and isolation results. Attempts to compensate can exacerbate the situation.

I think something similar is what @Fritillaria2 was referring to.

@artsyhonker @webmind That’s exactly what I meant, aka Kathryn.

My only indictment was the trend of seeing weirdness only in terms of an identification against the norm, and not understanding that there is a darker, more isolating “weirdness” that becomes, not a choice but a sentence, served by an individual who can’t even fit themselves into a group that celebrates “weirdness”.

@artsyhonker @webmind It’s become personal, having been the person ostracized for being too weird, or the “wrong” weird. I’ve lost friends because of it; others keep their distance.

It makes me bitter, when others celebrate weirdness as a choice and an expression or a marker of a larger group identity, and I’m given no choice but to be isolated and imprisoned behind the label.

The statement “I’d rather be weird than...” is made in ignorance of that.