are you more like or unlike other people

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?