are you more like or unlike other people

Voted 'unlike other people by circumstance' although I don't quite know what the circumstance is. I assimilate relatively well but I've always felt like a misfit (even among misfits). I guess the circumstance is not really caring enough to make an effort to fit in.

voted i'm like other people by circumstance/i'm unlike other people by circumstance

I imagine option 4 will 'win' in landslide. I'll be interested to see how many people admit to being like other people.

Everyone is mostly like everyone else, people are not that different from one another.

i'm not like other girls

I’m a weirdo and bristle at the idea of being indistinguishable from the tech bros in my age group that surround me or whatever, I’ve got no idea what life is like for most people on earth, but like

idk I can’t be that different. Everyone on earth eats, poops, and sleeps, probably most people masturbate, kiss each other, get sad or exhilarated. Most people are good at something and are excited to talk about that. Everyone is cruel sometimes. Everyone is bored sometimes. We get sick and injured and die, having feared death, or with sufficient grace, ceased to fear it.

yeah it is kind of like we have 99.99% the same DNA or whatever it is. also we live for such a short time. that doesn't stop me from feeling like no one understands me bc i like to go to bed early, i have a supermemory, i have to eat lunch at 12:00 and always sit in the same place, and my only friend is my cat but whatever. i'm equal parts alienated and tickled i guess.

and i say whatever too much

all of the above

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9dHL7GA1nk

To expand to tl;dr length:

That which most distinguishes one person from another are the contents of their conscious minds. These contents can vary pretty widely, so that people can be apparently very different from one another. They also are very dependent on circumstances, such as culture and family and economics.

Although one can consciously try to alter or guide one's circumstances with modest success, it is a feedback loop that is very difficult to control due to the complexity of our surroundings. It is also notable that our pre-conscious and subconscious minds tend to run far more of our actions than our conscious minds seem willing to notice or accept. I would rate our pre-conscious and subconscious minds as having much more similarity than our conscious minds, since they are more tightly bound to more 'primitive' parts of the brain.

Then, there are the profound likenesses of physiology outside our brains that make people extremely similar. We are all the same species of animal and that determines a heck of a lot of our identity in the world.

As I look at each level where differences and similarities emerge in me, the only reasonable answer is 'all of the above", but the least applicable is "i'm unlike other people by choice".

Imma dime a dozen. I go along to get along.

do you generally feel like you belong, like you are similar to and a part of the communities around which you orbit?

I feel like I belong in my community more than I would in about 98% of the communities that exist out there. Even though I live in a diverse urban-suburban area that has changed noticeably over the decades, I grew up here and have lived within ten miles of the house where I grew up for sixty of the 63 years of my life. It's home. I'm comfortable here. I belong here in some very basic and rooted ways.

When I've felt the most estranged ever were the 1.5 years I lived in Minnesota, during college. Generally, when I was younger I used to feel more that I was unusual and unlike others around me. The longer I live and the more I've seen of the world and thought about it, the more that appears now like a self-induced delusion. Even the high IQ thing seems pretty shallow compared to the utter commonness of my humanity.

I’m very intentionally unlike other people

Being weird probably started from circumstances of course

lol minnesotans are the worst

Intentionally in some ways and unwillingly in others, I am sequestered from people to make the like/unlike question moot.

We moved around a lot growing up and very early on I learned that what I saw at home wasn't a model for how to cope in life so I very much am like other people by choice- I worked p hard at it for too long to look down on it now or ever.

as a fat lazy depressive lump of shit i am very much like other people, no matter how much i might like to flatter myself by thinking that i am somehow different

Thanks that saved me thinking of own words for same.

We're all unique sets of events in space-time but there's way more in common than there is different

I can talk to and relate to strangers well, but I'm definitely unlike other people by choice. It's a survival mechanism

i have never belonged. even among friends i always feel like an outsider. a lot of it is physical deformities i was born with and mental illness that runs in both sides of my family. my family is very stubborn and bad at communication. personally i have an exceptionally poor grasp of social cues & humor. many times i have made jokes irl and online that end up getting me in trouble. there is a contrarian impulse i have that also gets me into trouble. im painfully earnest so when people accuse me of trolling or being disingenuous it feels very alienating. add it all up and it's no wonder i spent Valentine's Day of my 36th year playing Super Mario 64 alone.

I was raised very Christian so some of the personality mutation comes as a reaction against orthodoxy and convention - tend to do the opposite of what you were told. So some of tons comes down to circumstance as well

like/choice

I’m more like some people and more unlike other people

^ write in btw

i try not to be too weird but... i'll never belong

I am empirically unlike other people and there's plenty anecdotal evidence too, e.g. everyone tells me so. I think it's Kierkegaard who claims that it is fundamental to disabuse yourself of the notion that you are different from others (well, specifically, that you suffer more than others) and I've never been able to accept that

i'm more better than other people

The absolute singularity of my consciousness is the only thing I have in common with anyone else. Nothing else about me is original.

[rush - circumstances]

― j.

nah man captain beefheart, "clear spot" 1972

i'm not as "weird" as other people take me to be. like, oooh, i listen to CAPTAIN BEEFHEART, that makes me so STRANGE... no, really, it doesn't. (i ain't hungry, either, for the record.)

i change a lot. if i fit in somewhere i probably won't fit in there for very long. if i'm "weird" in any way it's probably that.

as for whether it's "choice" vs. "circumstances" i don't think it's an either/or. it's partly circumstance, partly choice, to the extent that for me to actively choose between the two would be a lie. abstain.

i'm in ross' camp. everything started as a reaction against listening to a bunch of adults pretend to speak in tongues every sunday, and even now that i've spent about half of my life away from that world and i live a very common depresso lifestyle that BG/NV mentioned upthread, i still feel like a complete alien and always will, and i like it that way for the most part

so i guess it started as circumstance and evolved into a choice

Cheers Karl! I knew early on I didn't fit in when a family friend commented I was out of place in my family

Great question I think about a lot. With me, it's framed as wavering back and forth between thinking I'm the sanest person I know to thinking that the the world's one place and I'm somewhere off on my own planet. Still haven't made up my mind.

[rush - circumstances]

― j.

vs.

https://youtu.be/CJnZrt0TDdk

I just kinda don't 'get' people, generally. Like, I can interact with and relate to most people just fine in the short term, and I'm not in any way a misanthrope, but so much of human behavior feels alien and largely unexamined to me and I have a hard time dealing with the vagaries. I don't feel special or unique or 'better than', and there are definitely times when I wish I could just relax into being a regular guy who watches the sports and has the dinner parties and didn't overthink every aspect of everything ever, but it's just not me for better or worse.

I think one of the biggest appeals about ILX is it's one of the only enclaves of people on earth where I don't feel like I'm on the outside looking at people whose interactions feel forced and weird and beyond my ability to comprehend or replicate.

Leave america

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mmb7TU0OrOI

ILX is it's one of the only enclaves of people on earth where I don't feel like I'm on the outside looking at people whose interactions feel forced and weird and beyond my ability to comprehend or replicate.

*makes list of 143 albums that are good*

*from 1998*

Leave america

― rum dmc (darraghmac), Saturday, February 17, 2018 12:31 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

More a 'when' than an 'if' at this point tbh.

But actually a really good point. I almost always feel more comfortable around people who aren't from this stupid country.

Ever thought of moving to another stupid country?

I like your mom more

it's not you baby it's me

I'm p sure this is "unlike" but choice vs circumstances is hard.

False dichotomy imo, assumes agency where none may exist. I still stand by “weird by circumstance, then weirder on purpose” though.

Lack of agency would just be a circumstance then

I've become more like other people the older I've gotten, mostly on purpose but also without thinking

i grew up in relatively unusual circs, the child of religious left-wingers in rural Tennessee, very precocious, allergic to bees, always had to carry a little "kit" like a purse, always last to be picked for teams etc - so i have no doubt lots of my eventual conformity is a kickback against this, but i think part of it is actually just how i am so paradoxically is part of my individuality. and it started early. i wanted parachute pants and panama jack shirts and a "punk haircut" and i wanted them desperately. i still care about being "cool", looking "cool" - which is of course one of the most conformist things you can do - though as a 40s-ish dad that has (thankfully) lessened - though that, also, is exactly what other people do

when i was younger i thought individuality and originality were the most important things ever. ironically i think i thought this mainly because there was/is relentless propaganda to this effect - from books and TV shows but also from the advertising industry

now i think that i can appreciate people's strengths and talents and interests but i also really like the things we all do the same (when they're good)

basically, bring on the banaka collective, I'm ready

when i was younger i thought individuality and originality were the most important things ever. ironically i think i thought this mainly because there was/is relentless propaganda to this effect - from books and TV shows but also from the advertising industry

This can extend to online communication. I've read this board for years, and feel like I know some of the people on it a bit, but I've never actually tried to really "break in" to the community. In part this is because it flourishes with real-time conversations where it takes me too long to construct a response to really dive in (I could xxxxxxxxxxpost, I guess), but also because I tend not to form particularly strong judgments.

This vagueness or uncertainty has led me to a profound aporia in graduate school, where I've been for several years. My department will soon be cutting off funding (for me and others who've been here as long as or longer than I have). In some ways this is almost a relief, despite meaning I probably won't finish my degree.... But now I'm going to have to perform again in the job marketplace, and I'm fairly terrified of whatever adjustments this will require.

I was just reading an article about changing notions of the self in career guidance literature. It argued that in the early twentieth century self-help books tended to encourage the possibility of self-transformation and emphasize adjusting oneself to new roles, being a "self-made man." Since the 1960s, the advice tends to be to pursue a career that fits a given nature, essence, or personality, and not to try and change to fit a job that doesn't fit. I think I approached my PhD (despite earlier academic success) somewhat in the former vein but found I couldn't hack professionalization, at least not here. So now I feel like I need to try and chisel out some sort of self from what's left that can prove his value somewhere.

When I've felt the most estranged ever were the 1.5 years I lived in Minnesota, during college.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KklLsdWaoBU

False dichotomy imo, assumes agency where none may exist...

― El Tomboto, Saturday, 17 February 2018 19:56 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Similarly, there's as many claiming circumstance where it's a choice we can be sure

I'm unlike other people by circumstance and I strive to make it seem like a choice.

🙌

This is the most covert free will discussion on ilx in years

free will is a fad

\banaka

We have always been the weirdoes we strive to become. Namaste.

i feel like an alien most days but less like Zod and more like E.T.

Free will is a fap

no my wanking was predestined

sometimes u feel smacked by an awesome sense of the Universal Sameness of Man, but i haven't felt that in a while. i'm unlike others by choice. i am the way i am intentionally, and i like the way i am. it's not so much about being proudly idiosyncratic (the idea of a precious kind of eccentricity-for-its-own-sake makes me cringe) but morelike the product of having idiosyncratic influences and some degree of independent will or thought. moving to a new city has made me more aware of being 'unlike others', in that a lot of my new friends point out things about me my old friends had either gotten used to or never even mentioned. like people keep telling me that i talk a lot lol

my circumstances are pretty normal for my demographic. i mean, my parents are extraordinary people imo, but not on paper, and i'm extremely biased

I live in fear of becoming either too specific or too generic. I’m socially incompetent with anyone who is very generic or very specific.

Silly that is the perfect description of my social anxiety

I'm quite happy being me.
I tend to find that those people pushing for people to conform to them are not people I would want to be anything like anyway.

Question wasn't how delighted we are not to be notified was it folks

I can find intense passions in nearly everything, and in that sense I'm lucky and bedevilled - the charms outweighing the curses by magnitudes.

It was an active, and unnatural choice to re-investigate football at 20 years old because all my mates in my Uni halls of residence were into it. I didn't care for it and would likely have gone on that way, if not for the attempt to "fall into rank".

And now I am a season ticket holder hinging a great part of my emotion on something I can't control every Saturday at 3 o'clock, that often disappoints, and for some bizarre reason I love all of it. It's also a terrific crutch to navigate the water cooler chats with colleagues, who otherwise seem fairly alien to me.

My love of basketball on the other hand was quite naturally and instantaneously formed on flicking the channel onto the NBA playoffs after a night out. As a Scot though this interest is found particularly queer by nearly everyone I meet. They don't understand why I would regularly stay up till 3am watching a game thousands of miles away. The fact I enjoy it so much doesn't seem to cut it as an explanation.

It's like opening doors in a hallway. Some doors you can try and they won't open. Some doors are stiff but with a bit of effort you get there. Some doors open at the slightest touch. The latter is true of most of my doors. But once I have opened the door, I can't make an active decision to close the door. And I don't understand why anyone would.

So differing through choice. That choice being that I haven't put a check on behaviours that I'm well aware make me differ from other people - because I enjoy those behaviours.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over. And the insect is posting on the internet.

i'm like other people by choice

Gonna be some real cognitive dissonance when this choice comes in 4th place.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

5 people choose to conform!

Path of least resistance.

5 people choose to conform!

Eh. 'Go along to get along' is a pretty popular choice irl.

Is this a question like the classic "Are you sane?", where people's answers should actually be inverted?