Let me begin this post by stating the following fact. If you exist, you are a conformist. Period.
It makes me angry that people try their very best to deny this fact. Everyone knows the type of people I am talking about so don’t lie. They try their best to live their lives different (and thus entirely more difficult) than normal folk who embrace the fact that everything in society (for the most part) is a part of one huge corporate, amalgamated, pile of poop. Examples of these ‘non-conformist’ types can be found very easily. It isn’t like they are the love children of Carmen San Diego and Waldo. So I’ll give you a few places to spot them or what they will be doing when you spot said ‘non-conformist’:
- Whole Foods/Good food co-op/any corporate chain of grocery stores that take ordinary products, lessen the salt, add soy to the ingredients, change the bag, increase the price forty percent and claim that these products are organic.
- The local farmers market.
- Goodwill
- That old beat down theatre in your town that shows nothing but indie films and foreign flicks about some homosexual French boy whose father is some ultra religious guy who happens to get skunk-drunk come home and beat his only son for liking penis, prompting the child to run away from home to live in a colony of circus folks and gypsies while learning about real love in the process.
- Sitting in front of Starbucks with effed up haircuts and nut hugging jeans who sit around complaining about life even though they have a trust fund and the new IPhone.
- Talking about how they have natural hair because they don’t want to conform to the European standards of beauty so they chop it all off and start over (a super pet peeve of mine that will be addressed in a later blog)…which takes billions of years by the way (several months)
If more than one person does it, then it becomes a group dynamic and then it is no longer non conformist. It is just an idea that some douchebag that hated his/her parents though up and got their douche friends to try it too. Then it caught on, spread across the nation, and now we have a whole generation of 10 year old little Johnny Douchebags who drink Starbucks, smoke cigarettes and criticize George Bush because they piss the bed. I’ve dealt with these non-conformist type people my entire life. In my AP classes there would be these gothic white kids whose parents made six figures and they would think they were different and non-conformist because they drank coffee and didn’t believe in G-D. What they didn’t realize was that everyone is a conformist in one way or another. How do I know this? Because from the aforementioned description, I bet that anyone who reads this post either used to be like that or knows someone who used to be like that. Some of my best friends in high school (most of whom are White) only listened to underground hip-hop because it was deeper than normal and wasn’t commercialized and corporate. When I told them that I thought people like Del (the funky something or another) sucked, they looked at me like I just said Adolf Hitler was my hero.
Even today I have to listen to people talk about how they won’t do something they used to like to do because too many people do it now. They hate the fact that people start doing something that they used to do because it isn’t original and non-conformist anymore. That crap makes me angry. It is like people have no clue about the social rules of society. Especially one like ours where information travels so quickly that everything catches on and nothing can truly be non-conformist. The reason I’m rambling about it today is just because there was douchebaggery afoot at lunch today. I went to go eat with a few people who are friends/ work acquaintances of mine for lunch today. Two of my work acquaintances have IPhones, the third acquaintance does not. Not because she can’t afford one (like me), or because she is with another cell phone company (like me), or that she really doesn’t want one (like me). Every time the two IPhones are unsheathed (interesting fact for all of you 30 year olds who live in the basement of family members…IPhones have a light saber application) she gets this depressed look on her face. Yet she refuses to buy one because “everyone else has one”. That is stupid. If you want or need something then go get it. If I said, ‘I don’t think I’ll breathe oxygen because everyone else is doing it and I don’t want to be a conformist. I think I’ll breathe methane instead.” you would doubt my existence as a sentient being (I know I would). I’m not saying do what others do because that is stupid. However I am saying; don’t let what others do influence your decision about something (especially if it’s as stupid and irrelevant as a cell phone). If you want something, go for it!
I had intended to make this motivational…wow, the next Tony Robbins right here folks.
NOTE: FOR PEOPLE WHO READ THIS AND THINK I’M ONE OF THOSE NON CONFORMIST DOUCHEBAGS BECAUSE OF CERTAIN THINGS I DISLIKE (LIKE JUNO FOR EXAMPLE) OR DON’T DO (LIKE EAT PORK). HERE ARE SOME FACTS. JUNO IS A TERRIBLE FILM. I WOULD RATHER SACRIFICE A GOAT THAN WATCH THAT HORRENDOUS MOVIE AGAIN. PORK WAS INVENTED BY THE DEVIL TO KILL OFF THE BLACK MAN AND THE JEWS.
