Weird People | Hacker News Reader

Weird People

maraoz.com

22 pointsfpgentil15 comments

I can certainly relate but sometimes I wonder if the people we consider "normal" don't also see themselves as outside the norm.

They see themselves as outside the norm, and often it scares them to death. They crave belonging to the 'normie' tribe, and so strive to rub down their sharp edges.

I've known people like this and they make me sad.

> I've known people like this and they make me sad.

In middle school, it's normal for basically everyone to strive to be normal. (and to pick on the outliers)

I had the same thought. Doesn’t everyone have some part of them that is weird? Isn’t that the glory of the human condition? Claiming the weird label is probably beneficial to everyone.

It lacks many things and of course it would be silly to say this with certainty, but it just looks like... Being autistic? I, too, have a lot of weird friends - guess what, many of them are autistic, adhd, sometimes both, - and they're not limited to IT but they range from burlesque performers to design students

Autism is a hell of a drug, heh. I got diagnosed with autism this year, I'm almost 40. I found out because of toe walking. Over the years I got a lot of:

"John is so weird" "John is s0000oooOOo00o on the spectrum" "wow, John is so weird" "wait till you meet John, he's so weird!"

But I always thought, everyone is so weird for thinking I'm weird... I'm super normal? Maybe they're just being cute or it's a poking fun joke?

I'm weird. Oh.

I'm torn. Is this not doing the same thing they claim to be against "wokeism", for it's partitioning of the populace? I'm definitely team divergent - I mean "Weird" if forced to pick, but this only further makes us vs them. Which then lead me to my original issue with this, issue. Words, or language. "Normal" which has this social connotation of proper, correct, you are a flawless human, good job - unlike those perfectly imperfect weird ones over there. Which one do you want to be? It seems as messed up as any other, other-ing. It is suggested at here.

>> I’m using the word ‘weird’ intentionally here. More positive alternatives are: authentic, unconventional, contrarian, eccentric, original, etc.

What if we started calling "Normal" people "Conformers" and "Weird" ones "Original". At least in US culture, I'm betting a lot of people that self-select into Team Normal would quickly jump to Team Original, because being an original has "better" social connotations (in the US) then being a conformer (aka follower).

This thought came about as it reminded me of a friend in high school who graduated with honors and probably could have been top of her class if she didn't try so hard to fit in by creating an image of herself as THE stereotype cheerleader (this is not a disparagement of cheerleaders/dance my niece is one). Anyway, heard from a friend years later she was working at NASA, so guess it worked out for her in the end. But it was tough to watch someone so brilliant try to dumb herself down to be normal/fit in.

That’s everyone on HN.

> I think wokeism as a social-historical trend subdued our collective inner rebellious spirit. Maybe not the inner spirit, but it has definitely changed social dynamics. Hopefully, with the current pullback to basedness, we’ll see a return to subversivenes.

This confused political aside hurts my soul, and gives the rest of the piece a super villain origin vibe.

We're seriously letting our young men down by letting this kind of thing fester.

Apart from it admittedly seeming out of place, what is the problem with this comment? Any ideology has the potential to become too oppressive and thought-ending and there are definitely examples of the prevailing culture going this way, especially in universities and corporate culture. I'm no Marxist, but 'wokeism' clearly distracts people from class, instead focusing on gender, race and safety, and that's why it has been embraced by HR departments everywhere; it just doesn't threaten the c-suite and shareholders like 'traditional' class divide rhetoric did.

And with that last line are you implying you want his thoughts policed? ... to subdue his rebellious spirit? This will surely backfire.

“wokeism” isn’t a defined thing, that’s why it’s off putting, it’s just a boogeyman pushed by conservative politicians and media. Even when you ask what they mean by it it ends up being applied to basically anything they don’t like.

To most it's a blunt shorthand for radical progressivism to the point of an obsessive panic about who's the biggest victim and the biggest victimizer. It typically points to somebody who holds an ensemble of ideas surrounding race, gender, diversity, feminism, safety, sometimes mental health, disability, obesity etc with particular emphasis on performative acts of policing the language people use to refer to groups of people.

The terms 'whiteness', 'white privilege', 'diversity', 'social justice', 'equity', 'equality' are poorly defined too, and mean different things depending on who you ask. Our language is full of these poorly defined umbrella terms. But I know what to expect when I hear somebody described as 'woke'. In fact you use 'conservative' this way in your comment, but conservatism encompasses a very broad range of thought too.

Most people don’t even say woke at all because most people don’t talk with political shibboleths specifically and consciously pushed as a scare tactic for critical race theory. I expect the more neutral term would be “political correctness” and using it doesn’t make you sound like you watch too much fox news.

> This confused political aside hurts my soul, and gives the rest of the piece a super villain origin vibe.

Maybe instead of looking down on him through your nose, try considering why so many people are feeling this way.

Have the incentives of the system changed? Are these people visible and valued in society? If not, why not.

Can you live without their labor supporting society?

Are you sure you're speaking the same language?

Recently two friends of mine were speaking and one of them said "it's too woke now" in reference to something in media. While his words were not explicit, I understood that he was speaking about the tendency of certain media to insert dialogue or scenes that reference the current liberal social zeitgeist in a meaningless way. He was ultimately saying something like "it's annoying, but in a specifically liberal way."

The other friend said "Dude come on. Don't say that. Therein lies the path of darkness."

I suspect you and my second friend look at the pejorative use of woke as a conservative dog whistle. This conservative whistle warns us of anything related to non-white social issues and non-male gender issues, and it marks these topics as bad.

I tend to agree with my first friend and use the word as he did. I use it to describe situations in which liberal ideals on social issues are being raised, but there's no actual meaningful action or thought involved. It's just a tool to bludgeon people with. "You can't say that. You're bad." "You can't think that. You're bad."

What does it mean to you exactly? What do you feel is festering?

If we're letting young men down, I think it's by assuming that they are too stupid to form an opinion and too terrible to not be intrinsically wicked. You see a super villain origin. I see an opportunity to ask the author "what do you mean by woke?" Given the tone of the article, I suspect he has yet another definition. Probably something related to the suppression of the edginess and dark humor associated with "weird people."

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