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Time for more cynical bitchin' fun from your favourite angst-rant Matrixphile androgenous... yeah.


Stereotypes and the modern blah - society and the need to fit in.


Stereotypes. Groups. Society. It seems that, from childhood onwards, society and the captialist world indoctrinates us to 'group'. Naturally, human beings generally want to be accepted, find friends and relate to other human beings - our interests often define a human being and help us build strong relationships with other people, be it our music taste, what kind of books we read, the jobs and countries we occupate, it's how we find our allies in life. But, like everything, there is a limit to it.

When I look around me, I notice things. I notice that other people are so easily shaped, so easily carved my the majority, it scares me. I see girls in my year group who, three months ago went round in combats and chains listening to 'nu metal' (which personally, is terrible, more on that later), are now hanging with their 'posse' (yes, they use that term) wearing the shortest skirts (you'd never believe...) and three-inch earrings, 'bling'. What is it, peer pressure? To stay 'it'? What is this obsession with being popular?

Moving on... the 'revival of punk'. Nu metal. Whatever you call it. Bands like Good Charlotte and 'singers' like Avril Lavigne, all sprouting out of nowhere and seeling ridiculously well, simply because it's 'in'. Give these bands a few months or a year, and you'll never see them again, no doubt. I see pop bands splitting up because they're arguing, chances are pop music (the kind of stuff like S Club and Girls Aloud, Westlife, all that kinda crap) is 'out'. They say they're individual and they don't give a crap - true, they don't generally give a crap about their fans - but they're practically walking out of a machine. Channels such as Kerrang! and p-rock (which I only have the, er, pleasure of watching when I babysit for my mum's friend's hellspawn brats) play the same Blink 182 and Evanescence songs over and over... bands like the Murderdolls are doing terrible covers of 80's songs (destroying them, IMO)... what's the world coming to? So much for individuality.

Even a majority of 'punks' - ones that have suddenly appeared from nowhere that probably used to be 'sk8rs' - buy their clothes from high street stores and fish out loads of money for mass-produced stuff, when they should do what they did in the 70's and 80's, going to charity/thrift stores, customising things... it's terrible, seeing all these clones, and it must be an insult to the people who have always been punks and goths and suddenly had their scene invaded by a load of teenyboppers and wannabes.

So what am I? Where's my group? I don't have one, I'm androgynous, a blank canvas, I listen to what I want to listen to, wear what I want to wear. Maybe it's because I've grown up in a society far away from the bindings of consumerism and sociality and never had the pressure, but it just saddens me to see little children seeing all these adverts and music videos and demanding these material objects that will provide them with happiness for a few days, perhaps. And that's saying something from a child-hater. I don't have the money or the transport to go and get a whole new wardrobe every time a new music 'thing' becomes 'in'.

I'm not a goth, I'm not a sk8r grrl, I'm not a metalhead, a ho, a socialite, an it-girl, a punk, a geek, some kind of sk8r-goth-lesbian-socialite-bling-mistress. I'm just a shadow. God's sake, get out, enjoy the world around you, don't be forced to be anything. And if I've upset you, then go tell someone who cares.


~AI

.."human beings generally want to be accepted..." we do? How!
I know what group you are...the group that uses big words and likes to tell other ppl what they should do lol

I think this should be in the Off-topic.

Whatever, dun mind, just posted it here by chance.

Ah, now that's the thing, Kes, I could tell people what to do all I want (and sometimes I do...), but the thing is, they don't respond. So much for the Mero's cause-and-effect crap.

Action: I say something clever, correct, and possibly useful.
Reaction: None.



~AI

no, kes...you got it wrong. I kind of agree with here with some parts. The thing is...you shouldn't be looking for an answer at this question. Just do your thing and see what turns out.
actually the 'the dude abides' line works perfectly here....

I know that kids these days are influenced by everything and change fashion like they change underwear but hey...it's their life.
Why do you care so much what other ppl do ikobe?

My 2 cents on this subject.

The steriotype that I despise is found in girls my age. "What is that?" you ask. 90% of the girls I meet that are around my age 18-25 all do the exact same things. Clubbing and Partying. I wish they would just get some other hobbies. I don't think either is bad but if it is your only interests, then you have no life.

i'm basicly a kid also...but i don't consider myself that unstable. And i especially despise large crowds of people (so that rules out big parties and so on..) Not all kids are the same but most of them form 'the majority'. the thing is if you consider yourself part of the majority or not.

this is a good question, though..

I don't know why I care about other people so much, really, when all they give me, 99.9999% of the time, is grief, stress and hassle. Still. I'm a nice person at heart, really, humanity's just dropped me on my head and made me nasty. If the average teenage squall weren't so heartless and intimidative, then I'd probably still be a nice person instead of a miniature headcase.

~AI

birds of a feather flock together.

personally i have similar arguments with my friends.... no matter what you do your lumped into some group by someone. the only way to avoid all that is to go live in a shack in the woods. it is the way it is. advertisers know what will ring your buttons and ring them... and we love to be rung.

i do want to fit in... i have a lot of friends, and we are friends because of a common bond. if i didn't do what i do, i'd have different friends... or no friends. we all wear some kind of uniform... i wear old t-shirts and old jeans that i get from friends and flip-flops 90% of the time... i have the uniform of a slacker/stoner.... and attract slacker/stoner type friends and i like them kinds.

society is like an amoeba.. always changing and adapting, it has a life of its own, regardless of the participants desires.

this a tad too much of a victim mentality

I stick out. I have friends that are all different, that's what connects us, I guess, we don't have a particular group or calling, we're not particularly left out or popular, we're the middle people (apart from me, I just generally get bitched about all the time inclusive, but I do have some really good friends who always stand by me so I should count myself lucky really). I don't feel a need to be anything but myself, though sometimes I wish I had a natural calling, a purpose, a society to fit into. I suppose I found it when I discovered the 'Net, all the 'alternatives' and artists that roam it, and when I found these things are all so far away from home it upset me.

~AI

I have absolutly nothing in common with my friends. Not in music, not in movies, not in food, not in hobbies and def. not in clothes. I respect other ppls tastes and they respect mine thats it! Ok I have one thing in common

I have two bestest-best friends. One's been my best friend for around five years now, and we don't have *that* much in common but we always have a laugh, we just kinda click. The other one's been my friend for around... four and a half years now, and we're into the same music, movies, games, EVERYTHING, and whenever she stays over or vice versa we're up to the wee hours of the morning, extremely hyper and playing console games and talking about all kindsa stuff like philosophy and pixies almost subconsciously... it's weird the kind of people we attract, really, isn't it?

~AI

Ooooo. I thought of another.

Christian girls. There only goal in life is to be married. They do not realize that there is a life before and after that day, and because of this they make the guys they date go through living hell. I personally do not want to be married young. The 90% factor does exist in this also. I am not naive enough to think there isn't any who feel differently.

Just wanted to vent some more. Continue discussing what you were.

I heard this quote from a game-show the other... whenever.

"Remember - 40% of all marriages end in divorce - don't worry, they're the lucky ones - the other 60% end in death."


~AI

i love my friends and their diversity..... i hang with a guy named dago he's a cuba/rican.. there is black mike and big redneck mike and nghi straight from viet nam lets not forget chris the dude looks like he fell while carrying a tackle box (piercings) there is christy the girl genius who is getting a phd so no one can tell she is wrong. and steph she is alway worrying about other people (she is a social worker) there is tray a rich girl how you'd think was poor... we all are stoners, other then that we have really nothing in common.

Look at it this way. Though it doesn't work on a general case.
I have a few friends and if we see something we don't like about eachother...i don't keep it in myself and think oh my god....what happend to this generation..i'm all alone...bohoo. I go.... hahahaha....what's that shit you have on you...bwahahaha
and the other way around.

Sounds like a good time. I love all people. I just wanted to vent about some recent things I had thought of. Anyway the one thing I have learned over time is that everything involves people. If you can respect and understand other peoples point of views, then you will be happier because of it, and everyone else will be happier also.

I don't really know where I fit in my group. There's Natalie aka Natz (best friend 1), who's from Cyprus, she's just that little bit crazy but really nice, Lucy aka Luu (best friend 2) who's really clever, and hyper, and sort of like a shorter version of me, only much nicer and less... me, Ben, who's extremely clever and... a geek, which means I can copy up his work if I don't do it on time or don't understand something(muahah... I'm clever too but lazy), Emily, who's really thin and pretty, and I don't really know why we get on but feh, Alysha who's really funny (has weird parents), Trina, who's disgustingly thin but quirky, Tom who's... nuts, and then there's Charlotte and David, who's been friends with everyone else (except Natz) way longer than me ('cause we just kinda appeared five years ago out of nowhere) although I can't stand them. David is constantly picking on me and making my life hell and Charlotte makes excuses for him (she's generally very snipey anyway).

Me? I'm the most-of-the-time-manic-depressive psychotic pyromaniac slightly photophobic constantly angsty irritable has-a-problem-with-everything-obsesses-over-the-Matrix-oh-gawd-someone-sort-out-my-mind-I'm-going-mad. Yet somehow I'm still loved by all except Charlotte and David who deserve to burn in hell personally.

~AI

sounds like a girl i dated for a long time... my PHD friend.... she was... no, is crazy.. too smart. over thinks everything. if the hampster keeps running wild you never have time to smell the roses. and sweet they smell.

I don't overthink too much... just when I get paranoid or philo.

How come people these days are accused both of trying to conform AND of trying to stand out too much?

Face it, just about ALL kids these days- and maybe since the dawn of time- see themselves as the heroes of their own fantasies, and girls in particular (men have more macho fantasies) see themselves as secret, special people in ways that they assume others cannot recognise (and so latch onto some people that they think DO see those things, only to violently dump them when they change their minds)

And too many things ENCOURAGE this crap, How many songs these days- indeed, in the last half century- have lyrics that have the theme of "Believe in yourself and what you do and do not let anyone else judge you." And kids think that is cool, but it is UTTERLY reprehensible. The Nazis could have excused themselves on such grounds. I guess no-one wants to sing about being responsible because no-one wants to hear it.

Ahem... sorry, yeah. Anyway. I like you, Ikobe, because you are cool in many ways, but basically all we have here is that people are under social pressures to conform, and under personal pressure to be distinctive, all their lives- and the consequences of that for people your age are what you describe. Best for you to not get too wound up about it.

wow....umm..yeah..what he said!

The things that happen in your teen years may not have as much bearing on the rest of your life as society likes to preach. If you don't go to college straight out of high school there is this idea that you're throwing your life away. Most of my friends went to college several years after high school, like me, and even then getting a degree doesn't guarantee you a job anymore. Heck, half the time you have to go for your Master's or PhD in order to get a decent paying job. Sometimes you don't even need a degree to get a good job. You can get a job in your field, but you may not earn more than if you had just stayed in that truck stop cashiering job. We're told we have to get jobs that pay a lot of money(personally I think this is a very Yuppie sentiment and probably left over from the 80's) or we won't be happy. My sister was making a lot of money, but she hated her job. She asked to be demoted so she could work a regular schedule and she is much happier, even though it is a stretch now to make both the rent and car payments. So, you should do what makes you happy and not worry about making other poeple happy because then you'll just end up miserable.