Thread: Conformity

The following is an article that I wrote as a sort of therapy. I read that writing about you current emotional status in the past tense is a better way to get a perspective on things. Conformity is something that everyone struggles with, and I am just posting this on here for people to comment on and share their own experiences, and because of the anonymity of the internet, embarrassment should not be an issue. So here is is. 575 words on Conformity:

When I was fifteen years old, I was struggling through an identity crisis, like most kids do. I was in highschool for two years by that point, and most people had found a certain clique, and a dependable label for themselves. In my highschool these groups consisted mainly of sporty Jock type, Academic type, “Emo”, skater and Bad Ass just to name a few. I hated myself for judging people and categorizing them in such a critical manor, but, as I saw it, these people conformed to a life style and all of them lived life with nearly identical opinions, tastes and mannerisms.

I belonged to a group of five fellows, who like myself could not be labeled. We were stoners (at this time if you smoked pot, you were a stoner in the eyes of most), we were nerds (most of us with averages in the 80’s and 90’s), and we were artistic. A mix of all of these labels to create some, indescribable label, thus destroying the label of ourselves.

My inability to humanize people who I did not connect with was another problem that fueled my anger. There was a great deal of disregard for people not in our small “group”. We did not care what we said to them, or how they perceived us. We were asshole and proud of it.

We were all anticonformists, which made us conformists in the long run. This was my main dilemma. I could not reject conformity, for doing so would be conformity in itself. We maintained this level of anticonformity by sheltering ourselves in cynicism and rejecting everything. Everything was meaningless, everyone was stupid, she’s a slut, and he’s an idiot… but most of all, we ripped on the phonies. And in our eyes the phonies were everywhere.

In the height of my frustration, I too, saw myself as a phony. Everything I did, every where I went, everything I said, was phony and contradicted everything I was and wanted to be. I turned to hate myself as well. I hated everything that was commercialized and rejected it. I began reading about existentialism, and the more I did so the more I hated myself for being such a walking cliché. The cycle only continued. My attempts at being my own person where perhaps working, but I began to hate this person. My identity crisis drifted away from the idea of labels and the idea of “What am I becoming?”. All of this was rapped in the shame of the fact that I was just like every other typical angsty teenager in the history of literature.

Adolescence is a time of contradictions. In yourself, and in the people around you. Things are changing and its not always easy to pick a road and follow it. But rejecting a road and wandering aimlessly in circles through the wilderness leads you into s greater self-hatred and confusion. The bottom line was, I had no idea who I was or what I wanted and it was all I thought about. Through conformity I would have peace, but lack of individuality. And through individuality, there was a constant turmoil. Through anticonformity, you hate everything you do, because everything is exploited and “done”.

So I concluded, when dealing with conformity, there is no winner. In our modern society you have to label yourself or your adolescence will be the most difficult and challenging, confusing and frustrating times of your lives.

I don't really need to critique this, since it was just for your own theraputic use. It was well written, however, and I don't really agree with the views in it (it's very different from the experience I had at that age).

The only way to be a non-conformist is to not give a fuck about it. It's really easy if you just stop looking at labels and look at the people behind them. There's a winning side, and that's the side that doesn't try to win. You destroy conformity by not acknowledging it. I personally hate the fact so many people put theirselves in labels. Not to mention the mediocre goth's claiming individuality. If you're goth, you're not an individual. So that "you laugh at me because I'm different but, I laugh because you're all the same" slogan, is kind of... hypocritical. Individuals just 'are'. The other day someone asked me if I was a punk, and I said, "no, I'm human." And that's really all there is to it.

Thats a good way to look at it Sigur. I guess the only thing you can really do is just let go. But for me thats so fucking hard and I have no clue why. I think maybe when I'm older and I have a little bit more maturity and I can figure out who I AM before I think about who I WANT to be, I will be able to just let go. And I agree with your statment on "You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same". That just seems to be the slogan for really insecure people, trying despreatly to be different while following a trend that simply labels itself different. I'm no better, but I don't claim that I am.

Con-formity.