My Ongoing War On Fashionably-Quirky, False Noncomformists

For my part, I try to do my part to discourage such sham quirkiness. If I pass a group of willfully, stridently quirky dressers, I take them one at a time: loudly critiquing each person's fastidiously-assembled quirk collage, pointing out how their various pieces of quirk flair clearly don't hang together, clearly don't proceed organically from one quirky soul but are merely accessories after-the-fact, inadequate attempts to pass: quirk bling. Their quirkiness is not an expression of personal truth, but an affectation - an aggressively acquired and self-consciously flaunted commodity.

However, if I pass one lone quirker of that affected sort, I dispense with the critique. There's no point - it simply won't have the same effect without the whole crowd of affected quirksters standing there helplessly awaiting their individual humiliation and enlightenment, while simultaneously feeling the vicarious bite of each plain, stinging truth that I deal out so candid and calm to their comrades. The approach won't work at all if it's just one quirky person. So in that situation, as I walk past I just shove them as hard as I can to my left (their right). Most of these folks are pretty slight, so they go pretty far.

See, I have no problem with real true bone-deep natural quirk. But that kind of quirk tells. It's not something that a person can fake, just because they decided that they look up to Napoleon Dynamite. Real quirk vibrates out from a serene disregard of convention. The current phase of quirk-chic is no such thing. It is affectation, pure and simple. The new trend amongst sheep: conform to the uniform of the abnormal. Real noncomformists will have None Of It.

I'm not a noncomformist, by the way. I refuse to be labeled.