Are You a Brand or Generic? (Translate: Am I Weird or Common)

We were all born weird, until society, twelve years of schooling, raised and influenced by parents or religion, friends and another influencer until we become what they all want us to be or what we want us to become.

I was born and raised in the Philippines, lived and influenced by many years and decades of influences including 23 years in the military, surrounded by diverse people across America, 18 years of academic training, 25 years of Catholic influence, 2 years of New Age religion, 25 years of Christianity and so many visuals and travels all influenced me in becoming who am I and remove my “weirdness” – if that was my choice. Or should I remain to be who I was when I was born based on my genetic mix of 60% Filipino, 30% Spanish, 10% mix of Chinese, African, Indian, European descent?

Maybe my weirdness is gone or will it accentuate my strangeness or weirdness – different from anyone else or will I compromise and be in the world who they want me to be?

Being diverse or unusual isn't on a similar term being weird or different as your choice. Your decisions to be different so that you can be successful and we recognize that don't fit in with the cultural ramifications, additionally fall under the classification of being weird like those of Oprah, Zuckerberg, Bezo, Jordan, Rihanna, Google guy, and other distinguishable or unusual personality who is technically weird or different from us.  They all just being themselves, it's gigantically useful if you can act naturally in any event somewhat and oppose the impulse to take the general way.

The world of bulk, majority, crowd, uniform and orderly is the thing that has characterized our society for what it's worth. Mass markets and mass interest have set the guidelines and helped us to improve our way of life since the 1950s to the early 1990s - factories, department or chain stores, corporations whose notion resonated with us to be either be indistinguishable, identical homogeneous.

But who are getting to the top now and getting paid for being individual without the help of big advertisers or media who have attempted to contact these masses and at last consider their general interest? We mark individuals who are different from physical appearance, to suit our needs, and specific inclinations.

In most of his books, specifically, his 2011 book “We Are All Weird”, Seth Godin views these individuals as “Rich” who has the means, money, and ways to make great choices and wins the heart of many people. But weird makes a sense of disbelief or alienation in someone. No one can argue that being “weird” or having a freedom of choice is restricted in any way whatsoever, not by any stretch of the imagination. Being weird may no longer mean as eerie or strange but it could also mean fantastic, supernatural or foreign. Also, in Godin’s book, being rich does not mean being a millionaire because nowadays, flaunting this extravagance is established on our capacity to cooperate with the market and fulfill our requests.  So those rich, weird, successful, famous billionaires like President Trump, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Bill Gates may be classified in this category together with the influencers who are now also getting richer like Logan Paul, Huda Kattan, Selena Gomez, Kylie Jenner, Zach King – who are not followed by people and money just by being themselves.

We all long to belong somewhere, so we love to sort out in clans or gatherings drove by somebody. In this social media and technology dependent age of digital lifestyle burns through no time in presenting the new untouchable culture, which doesn't echo with the Standard or typical, or ordinary or normal piece of the network.

Let us now waste our time in a uniform or consistent business or career plan that may hold us with others under a similar space. Let us be who we are, supporting the strange or the peculiar (or weirdos) and in the end turning out to be one yourself ought to be the foundation of today’s Facebook, YouTube, Streaming media era.

The odds of executing this on a bigger scale are practically nothing, however that mustn't fill in as a reason to get the show on the road.  Anyway, how we ought to sort out our social orders and make progress in this new culture that could mean your success on being “weird”.   But still in many cultures specially in corporate or military, being different or weird has a stigma. 

Government and Corporations – Who Needs Them, right?

Our society still wants to avoid the weird (Trump is a good example) and so our leaders, government, educational system and some big companies still orient our youngsters, employees and taxpayers by convincing them to incline toward old fashioned structure and the media in a hodge-podge of “mass-advertise” procedure. It may be pointless to depend on this framework, devised by associations whose techniques just exist to keep things running in support of them.  We as individuals are aversive to change, and the mass market just further supports this conduct. Everything comes down to the qualities of the mass market to make normal items for normal individuals so as to streamline their procedures, this happens with Twitter’s consistent rule on 280 characters or Facebook not letting you upload certain videos or photos.  But this social media empire, Google, Amazon, Microsoft still wants or need to fulfill and offer to the majority of what we crave for, at that point a change could end up being expensive.

We don’t want to be different just because we want to win or sell or earn more or do be trained to be unique to position our organization in the market. We are having certain convictions or similarities with others to be part or accepted into that “tribe” or social group, and yet, we uphold various qualities and loathed those who have different views or looks weirder than us. We should embrace everyone’s difference including ours.