Most of my life I’ve tried to take on certain traits others possess. The reasons are varied: sometimes I started liking a certain band because the cool kids liked it, other times I would read certain books or eat certain foods or even participate in certain activities, just because they were those things that all the interesting, attractive people enjoyed.
I didn’t really have any friends growing up. I finally made a few shallow friends in junior high though, because I saw the popular kids and tried to make myself fit into their picture. I started playing basketball and lacrosse (two things I had no interest in), I listened to Sublime (a band I wasn’t into, no offense Sublime fans), I wore those soft, baggy basketball shorts and sports-team t-shirts, and I started drinking booze and smoking weed, because that’s what the popular kids did. And I didn’t truly like any of those things, but I did them anyway, and I fit in with them and made some friends.
It wasn’t until high school that I began to turn into who I am today. When high school started, I joined band and started hanging out with the older musicians, the drama kids, and the aspiring artists. At my high school these kids weren’t considered cool, though. But I had reached the point where I didn’t care, I got along with them and they liked the same things that I truly liked, and I started to feel more comfortable with myself. I got my first girlfriend, found my favorite hang-out spots, favorite bands, favorite books, and the list goes on.
But after high school, I started moving around. And I immediately looked for people who I thought I identified with. People who fit into a certain niche. And I realized that it wasn’t an obscure one at all, that there were actually a huge population of people in the country who were a part of it. I’ve always been an astute person, and I began to notice that there were certain trends that I had to follow if I wanted to stay up to date, in the know, or whatever the hell else you want to call it. Things like reading Nietzsche, Palahniuk, listening to The Smiths or The Shins, things like wearing v-necks — and it dawned on me: these people were just a different reincarnation of those jocks in junior high I had assimilated myself with in the first place. And this, my friends, made me feel very sick.
At first I tried to go along with it. I maintained my own identity and my own tastes and preferences, but I always added a few of the mainstream, popular, up-to-date tastes and preferences. It was like a chore. Because it was inevitable — I’d meet some cute girl somewhere, and she’d start talking about Nietzsche and I’d have to recall the few bits and pieces I’d read of Thus Spake Zarathustra, she’d mention Joy Division and I’d have to pretend like I enjoyed singing along with “Love Will Tear Us Apart” — and that just tore my brain apart.
To make a long story short, or rather, to make a long story only kind of long, something changed in me about two years ago, and I stopped giving a shit. I stopped trying to stay up-to-date and in-the-know and hip. The shit made me sick. It first made me sick because I’d been listening to Wilco since they came out with A.M., then they blew up a little bit and became a trend. This all sounds incredibly trivial and childish, but that made me mad. It made me mad because Wilco was a very personal, intense part of my emotional timeline, and along came these people wearing thick-framed glasses with perfect vision quoting Wilco songs, and I knew it wasn’t because they actually loved Wilco, but rather because it was cool to listen to Wilco.
This doesn’t just apply to Wilco, obviously, but you get the idea. From that day on I decided that I was going to like whatever it was that I liked because I liked it. Not because people I knew liked it, not because it was an addition to my tastes. I decided I wasn’t going to pretend to be interested in things that didn’t interest me. And guess what? Much to my disbelief, the world didn’t end. My social network didn’t implode. People didn’t find out I wasn’t listening to the new Zooey Deschanel record and decide to set fire to my car and cast me out of the city. People still liked me. Most of my friends and acquaintances did, anyway. Why? Because of my personality. And I realized that that’s why I like the people I like; it’s because of their personality. Not because of what clothes they wear or what books they read. And anyone who decides who they like based solely on their tastes doesn’t need to be in my life anyway.
I’ve never been a terribly confident guy, but the act of sticking with my roots and staying true to myself has made me much better off in terms of self-esteem. I feel proud and happy when I tell people I’m into individualist anarchism, Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen, and that the only television I really watch is National Geographic, the only books I really read are books confronting the topic of the end of civilization, the only clothes I wear are ones that are comfortable and that I see and think “Hey, that looks like something I would wear.” And the nice thing about not having to worry about what others think is that you can listen to things with open ears. There are so many books, clothes, movies and albums that I love that I would’ve never even given a chance in the past.
So, I guess that’s the point of this unreasonably long, trivial blog post. It’s to be true to yourself.
After all, it’s what all the cool people are doing.
