Clean up and look good. Lookism is a problem in society, and I wish people could look “weird” and still be socially acceptable. But if you’re a guy wearing a dress in public, or some punk rocker vegan advocate, recognize that you’re spending your weirdness points fighting lookism, which means less weirdness points to spend promoting veganism or something else.
Caveat—if people already know you are well liked and popular, the weirdness actually functions as counter-signalling which makes you more popular—similar to how teasing strengthens friendships. You’re signalling, “look, I’m so well liked that I can afford to be weird.” If you’re surrounded by chattering friends, or a straight A student, or the most skilled person in your field, people see the fact that go out in your pajamas, suffer from Einstein hair, or are covered in tattoos as a sign that you are unconcerned about social status, which in turn raises your status.
This is something I learned by initially not caring due to social ineptitude, and then slowly starting to care with age...and then noticing that caring about appearance strengthened my reception among total strangers but not caring about appearance strengthened by reception among friends and strangers who plainly could see that I had tons of friends.
In another situation, if I was doing poorly in class, dressing like as slob made me look bad...but if I was an impeccable student, it came off as an eccentric genius sort of thing. Weirdness seems to just basically magnify whatever you’re already seen as.
I think this applies more to neutral stuff like appearance than to deep stuff like beliefs—but it does generally hold true with weirdness in social behavior. Even with ideas though—I suspect the ideas that made Kurzweil sound cooky would make Einstein seem even more visionary.
Caveat—if people already know you are well liked and popular, the weirdness actually functions as counter-signalling which makes you more popular—similar to how teasing strengthens friendships. You’re signalling, “look, I’m so well liked that I can afford to be weird.” If you’re surrounded by chattering friends, or a straight A student, or the most skilled person in your field, people see the fact that go out in your pajamas, suffer from Einstein hair, or are covered in tattoos as a sign that you are unconcerned about social status, which in turn raises your status.
This is something I learned by initially not caring due to social ineptitude, and then slowly starting to care with age...and then noticing that caring about appearance strengthened my reception among total strangers but not caring about appearance strengthened by reception among friends and strangers who plainly could see that I had tons of friends.
In another situation, if I was doing poorly in class, dressing like as slob made me look bad...but if I was an impeccable student, it came off as an eccentric genius sort of thing. Weirdness seems to just basically magnify whatever you’re already seen as.
I think this applies more to neutral stuff like appearance than to deep stuff like beliefs—but it does generally hold true with weirdness in social behavior. Even with ideas though—I suspect the ideas that made Kurzweil sound cooky would make Einstein seem even more visionary.