To be or not to be weird.

My dad told me, “You don’t need to test everybody.” He is a receptive father who thankfully understands his son’s unconventional ways.

I have always been curious about people. I’ve come to realize that most humans do not express themselves fully or verbally experiment as much as they can.

So, I suddenly feel like the one who needs to introduce chaos or bring some randomness into the situation. I see dull personalities as my prey. Unboxing their layers becomes my short-term entertainment.

Is it wrong to see others as a means of entertainment? Possibly…but I’m not writing this piece to dwell on the ethics of testing others. I seek to explain the benefits of acting obscure while digging into structures that limit our expression and human potential. I want to live gracefully and let my thoughts and words encourage others to construct their most palatable rhythm in life.

The world and the market

I’ve learned that venture capitalists have to act seriously and wear tight clothes even if their job doesn’t rely on these antics. You got to look the part. In a firm, no one gives a f*ck about the dialogue you got going on inside your head unless it benefits the firm’s profit or a jackass executive’s ego.

Obedient people operate under these local rules that limit expression. For better or for worse, we stand in line and forget how to step out. Following the rules produces order and cleanliness that can be appreciated, especially at higher levels. This order maintains prosperous nations like Taiwan and draining work environments like Tesla. Collectives thrive when conventions are validated and people stick to their roles.

Is there a risk that comes with this order?

I think excessive structure breeds a sort of spiritual complacency or compressed range at which an individual thinks, moves, and applies their feelings and intuition.

It feels like these increasingly rigid structures have allowed us to abandon the kid inside us. No more acting goofy unless you want to be an entertainer. You can’t be too energetic or explosive unless there is a camera in the vicinity or a stage nearby.

Many possess a limited window in which to act strange or deviate from the norm. Acting proper or looking proper trumps being real and fluid.

Some programs tell us to make money and be quiet. Up your status and stay in your own lane. Know when to shut up because everything (all the manufactured status and wealth) could be at stake.

And if you’re really really good at working hard and progressing the ladder, they may call you smart, intelligent, maybe interesting, but never weird or anything non-trivial. People fight for status and get lost. They lose themselves to the game and the largely pre-determined decision trees.

I believe humans are too dumb and beautiful to take themselves too seriously.

Think about the classic tale of a miserable rich man who gives up his child-like wonder of the world for a career in banking, a Miami condo, and a new Lamborghini. He stood in line for so long and finally got to the front, albeit with a lot of “hard work and determination.” And once at the front of the line, he looked back and finally questioned whether the line even satisfied his deepest needs. Did he want to be a sailor or perhaps a pirate? Was crunching numbers and wearing a tailored suit everything?

Is shutting up, getting in line, and getting the gold our best use of a finite life?

My argument has less to do with an individual’s profit-seeking behavior and more to do with giving up self-expression and self-exploration. There are plenty of rich folks who have navigated their limits and kinks too. Money and strange are not mutually exclusive – they can go hand in hand very well depending on the person steering the wheel.

Am I saying obedience and shutting up sometimes is a bad thing?

Not entirely

I’m just trying to understand this whole idea of opening up all while questioning why we can’t laugh at heinous jokes anymore or loosen up a bit given that most people don’t possess any unique piece of knowledge or skill. Why do many of our interactions have to feel so mechanical or transactional?

My question is:

Do we concede core human features to these structures or roles we’ve designed and assigned? 

I sure hope not.

This is not a critique of capitalism or a breakdown of a certain caste of people. I will not bore you to death with some message on how the modern world sucks – go check the news for that. Instead, I hope to encourage people to experiment more, feel more, see more, and make more use of some social maneuvers that may not come as intuitively. Explore functions that are fundamental to our being.

My way works for me

Here is how I go about being a pretentious attention whore an eccentric personality in various settings.

I naturally act weird around people because doing so is fun, unserious, and yet necessary at times. It brings the other person’s guard down and allows me to test them – throw curve balls and try new chains of funny words.

If we are on a balcony in Buenos Aires, I will find new ways to ironically mock or critique an idea. I will engage my friends or whoever is there to remember what I’m saying and extend the irony.

If I can cause continuous laughter with out-of-pocket politically incorrect jokes then I can trust that the other person is human. Instead of identifying fallacies in my act, they may resonate and contribute to the laughter I’m producing. A safe space for banter is established, and we can all smile and be ourselves.

In a more professional workspace, I try to make anecdotes or connect ideas through a more cultured lens. I may connect a product feature on some app to a recent hip-hop album or discuss how my creative process ties into financial technology. Transferring specific knowledge across disciplines is my obscure contribution to the conversation. I am tired of speaking to professionals who only see the world through code and haven’t developed the taste or vocabulary to express the abstract.

Most organizations won’t tolerate the crazy types unless that individual’s nonlinear abstract flow produces the random alignment or magical twist that was missing all along.

I love it when others suddenly realize how great it is to be real, strange, dynamic, expressive…and the world becomes a better place. Instead of communicating through the perimeter of their shell, they embrace the colorful core traits and emotions that have been locked away.

Conversations get longer, characters become more interesting, and the world (once again) becomes a better place. We are children building LEGOs once more, climbing play structures, and staring into the sun with no sunscreen. We let loose and relearn how to be joyous and simply have fun.

Your way works for you

It’s very human to be expressive and show this fluidity across different rooms and situations. I enjoy feeling my internal mechanisms change and try new colors outside of the usual camouflage that permeates social settings. Different friends absorb different derivatives of my core personality, and the feedback I gather and work with is robust. This is not the usual code-switching behavior or ‘fake’ persona you see in the confused clan; this is intentional work on what is being projected and expressed from the inside out.

My appreciation of randomness does not need to be shared, and some could say I’m just too weird, provocative, or strange for their companionship. Core differences do exist between people. We can’t all converge on one mode of open-minded operation – one model of acting and manipulating the senses. Yet we can choose to understand and acknowledge the underlying humanity in us when we wake up, go to work, communicate, and reflect on experiences.

You don’t have to shell up and act tough or mesh into the walls around you. And you certainly don’t have to conform to any structure immediately. Internalize the chunks of identity gone missing or dormant in the act of obedience you partake in.

Everyone has a unique perception of these trade-offs. Compromising your creative faculties for money or acceptance isn’t always a bad thing either. It might make your local hippie philosopher sick to the core, but your way works for you. You are inevitably accountable for the gaps or trauma that might emerge from that dormant child or animal inside. Just be aware of how tight you hold honest truths of yourself back. Be real about the compromise.

Understand the significance of changing your mind, reassessing actions, and reconstructing the character you present to others. Consider being weird, being new, and being a breath of fresh air to yourself and to your peers; people respect and take note of the charismatic characters that cut the bullsh*t and behave in line with the human spirit instead of some assembly line.

Deep down, I feel that everyone is tired of the fake and plastic – the unwarranted boxes reducing the saturation of our dreams. We all want to be free and acquire the medium to let things out. We just lack the bandwidth, taste, and timing to crack the shell.

Being weird is dope unless you intentionally violate someone else’s boundaries. I spend most of my time around weirdos and characters to ensure that I don’t lose my edge or lifestyle.

There just isn’t enough life and vibrance coming from those who mock the strange and spend much of their time blindly running away from themselves. I do wish everyone well, though. We all reach these conclusions and map out the authentic bits at our own pace. The sooner we understand our self-inflicted filters and compressors, the sooner we can assess how real or obscure the future can be.

Thank you for sticking through this stream of thoughts. That is all for now.

Be real and be weird. Think twice before giving yourself up to any confined system that kills the kid.

More Culture

If you value my work, consider joining my newsletter. Free goods & exclusive content will be shared there in the future.

Additionally, stream and save Everything I Need – a special song about adolescent love coming to an end. I have so much more to share and explain. Stick around :))