Disturbing the Normies
Be Who You are Without Committing Mass Murder
Some days ago, I decided to create a shirt that would reflect how I felt nearly everyday. I went to my local Brand it and asked them to print on the words "BEWARE OF HUMANS" in bold yellow letters on a black shirt. I can't stress enough how many "unique" people I come across in one given day so why not have a shirt that warned other people about the crazies out there?
The odd thing is, I didn't expect people to have so many different reactions to it. Like the day I was on my way to school and I passed a large woman who looked extremely....skettel (click this link here if you don't know the meaning of skettel). She was walking with a 3 year-old on her hip and a friend who was wearing a dress that was obviously more suited for night life. As they passed me, the skettel woman glanced at my shirt and said loudly for me to hear "beware of humans? What a stupid shirt!"
Frankly, I wanted to wack the horse hair off her head and give her a piece of my mind but I'm not very skilled in combat and, like I said, she was a very huge woman. Instead,I held my head high and continued my way.
When I was 5 minutes away from school, I passed a girl who was dressed in a 30's looking dress and a big bow in her texturized hair. She was probably about 17 or 18? Anyways, as we were passing each other, she stopped in front of me and said "wow, your shirt is pretty cool. I like it."
After she was a good distance away, I started to laugh to myself about how differently both persons reacted to my weird and unusual shirt. It made me realize that defying the norms depends on the norm you're defying and the type of social group.
To the skettel woman and her friend, my shirt was considered a negative deviance and "stupid" because it wasn't what people from their social group considered "normal". While the 17-year-old girl with the big bow in her hair considered my shirt to be a positive deviance because she's from a social group that condones all things unique.
So, what I figured out from these encounters is that you should always be who you are even if it is considered deviant. Just as long as your thing isn't committing mass murder.
