
The economy of weirdness - luu
https://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/the-economy-of-weirdness
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civilian
I had a particularly bad school switch between the 3rd and 4th grade. Going
from a strict private catholic school to the nearby public cool, I was teased
a lot. It sucked. At some point "weirdness" just became part of my identity, I
embraced it as a shield.

Having grown up, I've moved past some of it. I still recognize that I've got
an essential core of weirdness. In college I learned about the myers-briggs
and, while you can criticize the test all you want, the iNtuitive / Sensing
divide is real thing. I'm just an iNtuitive living in a sensor world.

I definitely budget my weirdness. I don't care about my clothes, but I
recognize that it's good social engineering to look good. I try to be open and
friendly to all types of people, especially people who remind me of being an
outcast in grade school.

But at times I see people who just seem to be... pointlessly wasting their
weirdness. They're talented, bright, energetic, and you're spending time
praying to crystals? There's so much more you could be doing!

I'm really worried about becoming the society that ostracized my past self.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
> I'm really worried about becoming the society that ostracized my past self.

To some extent it would be weird if that didn't happen. So, maybe that means
you have a chance?

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andor
Byung-Chul Han calls this weirdness _negativity_ , contrasting the
_positivity_ that is largely replacing it in our societies. Everything that
slows down the flow of communication, capital, consumption, information etc.
is negative. Positivity smoothes out all negative aspects.

In "Transparenzgesellschaft", he argues that too much positivity makes people
transparent and controllable, their actions operational.

"Agonie des Eros" is about the contradiction of positivity and love. It's the
weird, unexplainable things (atopos) that make people interesting. Desire
itself is negative.

"Müdigkeitsgesellschaft" explains how the positivity of meritocratic
societies, vs. the negativity of disciplinary societies in the past, leads to
depression and fatigue.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byung-
Chul_Han](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byung-Chul_Han)

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bsurmanski
I would say that the 'economy of weirdness' is closer to simple supply and
demand. Too much weirdness lowers the demand of more weirdness, and thus the
'value' in a given scenario.

Weirdness is 'different', and as such requires a certain level of cognitive
load to process. Too much weirdness can be overwhelming bordering on abrasive.

Looking at it from another point of view, if you have an action movie where it
is 2 hours of explosions, you will eventually get bored of all of the
explosions. 'weirdness' works similarly. There needs to be some pacing to your
weirdness.

~~~
tjradcliffe
The cognitive load point is extremely important. It isn't that "weirdness is
bad" but "your weirdness puts my brain in the position of having to do more
work, using up precious fractions of my most limited resource: attention."
People radically under-estimate the amount of attention we have available (and
are then shocked and surprised when they miss the guy in the gorilla suit.)

So on this basis, weirdness is always potentially rude and anti-social, unless
it becomes so common that it's no longer weirdness, but just natural
variation. It's impossible to be "weird" anymore by simply having tattoos for
example (at least where I live) because so many people have them that the
presence or absence of ink is recognized as a completely ordinary variation,
well within accepted social norms.

To be weird, something has to be outside of local social norms, and by
definition such things call attention to themselves, each one using up 10 -
20% of other people's extremely limited attentional resources (because we can
only pay attention to 5 - 10 things at once.)

As such, budgeting your weirdness wisely is simply polite and pro-social. We
should be weird in ways that matter to us enough that they warrant the
attention they will use up. People will differ on both the kind and amount of
weirdness that exceeds this threshold, but the general principle that we
should be weird wisely still holds.

~~~
natural219
This is a great comment. The attention microeconomy explains _so_ much of our
social / coordination issues. On a completely separate track, this is sort of
the fatal flaw of modern outrage culture -- it refuses to count the cognitive-
time-value of being non-offensive to the world's 7 billion population.

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vonnik
The weirdest things, like the funniest things, are neither intentional nor the
product of conscious effort. They surface despite attempts to suppress them.

I'd also argue that weird is not necessarily synonymous with unusual. You can
achieve unusual by traveling a little farther along any metric you want,
including conventional cool values like athletic prowess or symmetric beauty.

Weird is more than unusual. It is the irruption of some aspect of life that
gives us an eery feeling. It's Blue Velvet.

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forgottenpass
Did anyone take away a different interpretation of this than thay would have
if "weird" wasn't used as a substitute word for violating social norms or
"unusual" depending on context?

It seemed a bit awkward to read in terms of "weirdness economics" rather than
social groups, but I failed to see where the difference was going.

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anigbrowl
Great find, for the rest of the blog as well as the article. I am reminded of
Lacan's theory of libidinal economy, with weirdness as an analog or
isomorphism to his notion of _jouissance_.

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natural219
Also related: Kevin Simler's take on the concept of Personhood as a sort of
contract to encapsulate your own weirdness to function well with the
weirdnesses of others.

[http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personhood-a-game-for-two-
or-m...](http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personhood-a-game-for-two-or-more-
players/)

~~~
sogen
So true Wow, great writing, thanks for sharing!

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lotsofmangos
Normality is weird. Normally, normal people only have a few normal
characteristics, so being completely normal isn't.

~~~
VLM
To extend that concept with her models, there isn't a weirdness economic
market, its more like the numerous world financial markets.

Weird at gencon, weird at hope conference, weird at work, and weird in the
bedroom either have nothing in common or possibly you're living a totally
awesome life.

~~~
lotsofmangos
I guess you could attempt to combine them. Which would probably be awesome,
but might cause shenanigans.

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javajosh
This is fascinating, but difficult to respond to because it is itself a
"weird" way of seeing - it is both curiously analytical and vague in it's
purpose. Which, ironically (inevitably) is exactly the kind of weirdness I
(and many others here) really need to address.

Another point entirely missed in this essay is the fact that in general, rare
is _valuable_ , not bad. Even if you think the world is made of faceless
corporations with insatiable appetite for people who snap together like Lego,
there are always a few odd, special-purpose pieces in a Lego set. No, they
don't fit in _everywhere_ and you can't make a kit with just them, but they
are badly needed.

