There’s different types of weird. There’s uncle bad touch weird, and there’s I like to collect insects and stage little lectures for my dogs on my day off weird. Different weirds.
Life became so much easier when I fully embraced how weird I am, and stopped caring if people thought I was weird.
I just had a little cry because I hate how weird I am. I hope to one day transcend and join you.
The vast majority of people don’t care, the little that cares already know how weird you are.
Embrace your weirdness, worry a bit less and have more fun.
It won’t happen overnight, but everytime you catch feeling bad because your think you are weird, just own it. It already happened at that moment, nothing you can do about it right now.
You will feel a lot less insecure as time goes on, you might not even care at one point.
little girl tugs on her mother’s sleeve
“Mom…why is that person wearing, um…that??”
Mom, confused, looks around
“Honey, you know you shouldn’t ta~” she stops as her eyes find the source of her daughter’s confusion.
“Mommy?” the girl asks, uncertainty in her tone.
“D-d-don’t make eye contact, honey. I’m uh sure he has his…” she stops, mouth agape for a moment before recovering, “…and now he’s screaming at that garbage bin. We’re gonna go! Come on, honey!”
in the distance
“I FEEL SO FREE FROM THE SHACKLES AND CONFINES OF THIS ONCE JAIL OF CULTURAL IGNORANCE! THIS BIN! THIS GARBAGE BIN REPRESENTS THE OLD WAYS. THE TRASH WAYS. I HAVE ACCEPTED MY WEIRDNESS. MY ECCENTRICITIES ARE OPEN TO ALL!”
Phegan was never heard from again after this moment.
I completely disagree. I don’t think the nerd being bullied for liking anime is “bad weird”, nor do I think the creep who doesn’t care when people call him out for staring at women is “good weird”
The people who see “weirdness” as being bad are the “bad weird.”
The anime kid hates being bullied, but he doesn’t see non-conformity as a negative. It’s not the label of weird, but the negative sentiment behind it that hurts.
The white supremacist who sees diversity as an evil doesn’t mind people saying he hates black people. What he hates (aside from minorities) is being identified as an “other” through the weird label.
Meta. I appreciate that last sentence.
It’s a cultural node, social norm, expectation blah blah. What it comes down to is perception. We all belong to different groups. Many of these groups overlap. Sometimes we have niche interests that don’t quite align with the others. As you draw circles intersecting circles and push people into these groups, the further a circle is from another, the more likely there will be a form of conflict.
This perception is linked to expectation through a lack of understanding. In some cases all of this is caused by fear, which is hidden behind anger. Ignorance creates this diversity of opinion and as those circles, or nodes in sociology, grow, the reinforcement of an idea grows with it. Adjacent nodes receive some of this growth until eventually something happens and a new node is formed creating a niche platform.
Some comparisons below:
A mechanic may not like computers. A computer person may like cars. A car person may not be a mechanic. A person who drives a car may not be either a car person, computer person, or mechanic. Yet a person who likes to play video games on a PC may not be a computer person and still likes playing games about cars. While a car person might still enjoy anime despite that being perceived more as on the computer side of culture.
See how all of these find a way to interlap? The “weirdness” shows up when groups are formed that fall outside of these interactions, and yes, entire connected groups can then become niche and isolated. A certain National Socialist German Workers’ Party is a fantastic and horrible example of how perceptions can shift and niche opinions grow, pulling adjacent groups with them, and eventually splitting, often done by linking distant, loosely linked threads and yanking them to form a strangled web of bullshit.
Not sure I exactly agree. It’s more like if you or your friends are able to call yourselves weird, you’re probably alright. If “weird” is what you hurl as an insult constantly at anyone you don’t understand, you probably suck.
One day I called a co-worker weird. Simply cus the dude was acting odd.
A whole thing broke out where he was extremely insulted at the remark and wanted to never talk to me again until I went farther than I should have to apologize.
Thinking about it till this day… Dude that’s just fucking weird.
Yeah, it’s a …weird… word. Can be playful, a term of endearment, a reality check, or a horrible insult. And it depends completely on the context. And some people maybe just have trauma from being bullied and called weird all the time as kids. I’m guessing maybe that dude had experienced something like that.
Also: are you neurodivergent and have you had that word constantly applied to you in abusive ways
For many people, including me, part of recovering from that abuse is accepting that you’re significantly different compared to the average person. If you’re ND and can’t accept that, you might be masking and that can be really harmful.
That being said, there’s still a difference between being called “different” or “weird”, and if the latter is being hurled at you with malice by friends, they might not really be your friends…
Oh i know i’m weird, and i’m fine with it.
I’m also Queer (and born in the 70’s) so i treat the two words with the same nuance. Certain people are allowed to call me those words. Others can keep a fucking civil tongue in their heads
Yeah. I never have been diagnosed as neurodivergent but I’ve suspected I could be. But either way, I’ve heard the word used derisively all my life :/
“Weird” is just a synonym for out of the ordinary (though one often meant as an insult) and being out of the ordinary isn’t quite the insult that “normies” (in the sense of “close to the norm”) think it is: being a great genius is weird, being a top Olympic athlete is weird, being amongst the most exceptional people in a profession is weird.
Absolutely, the other end of the scale is also deemed weird and one can hardly claim that being, say, way below average intelligence is a good characteristic to have.
The point being that merely being out of the norm isn’t by itself a bad thing.
Life gets easier when you realize literally every single person is weird in their own way.
