While discussing a somewhat acrimonious issue I encountered a comment that the boingboing community used to be weirder. I have no historical perspective on that, but I’m pretty sure we’ve got lots of weird people around here and it just doesn’t come out in the conversation.
This is a place to run your freak flag up the pole and proudly state your weirdness. As such, I’m putting out a couple of rules:
No negativity about other people’s weirdness
No oneupsmanship
No telling someone else their weird thing isn’t weird, if they are posting it here their experience of it has been a weirding experience (this should be obvious from [1] and [2], but I wanted to say it explicitly)
No dragging this thread into an argument to make a point (this rule to specifically address the thread that inspired me to make this one - I’m not trying to prove anything, just trying to create some positivity)
Also, if you are sensitive to this sort of thing, if this thread is at all successful it might involve mentioning sexual kinks (not to be explicit, but fetishes and BDSM stuff are a way that people are “weird” that they might be proud of).
Of course starting this thread feels weird to me because I don’t know what to say about myself. Probably my most weird features are mental health issues that I wouldn’t say I’m proud of. Still, I can put up a few things:
I unapologetically love spreadsheets. I make them all the time for all kinds of things. Years ago I made a blog post defending the honour of spreadsheets when I felt they were publicly under attack
I proudly don’t know what gender I am
I grew up a table-top RPG gamer and have written a 200+ page RPG manual for my own game
I’ve played more than zero games of strip Magic: the Gathering
Pretty tame for now, but if the discussion actually takes off I might have more to say.
Whenever I feel the need to relax, I belt out songs from musical theatre or Disney musicals
I’m about as close to a teetotaler as you can get without actually being one (I’ve had maybe a half-dozen servings of alcohol over thirty-two years).
I don’t drink disgusting bitter beans ground up into a coarse powder and then percolated into water coffee either.
I recapped the first eleven sessions of the tabletop RPG I’m currently participating in as an epic poem.
I’m a proud inhabitant of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and am currently trying to avoid paying Disney money for things because they killed the EU.
I sometimes “walk as” different emotions, shifting from skipping to shuffling to flouncing to skulking to strutting to strolling over the space of a few minutes.
I collect (and have recently started creating) feghoots.
I prefer being outside in freezing cold weather to being outside in the humid summer heat.
Like @anon50609448 above, I might add more if the discussion continues.
Nonbinary gendered, ambivalent and fluid about what space I am in within that description but not unhappy with being there. Formerly a Kemetic Orthodox priest, now a sort of general sort-of-agnostic/sort-of-animist/sort-of-pantheist/pagan sort. Kind of as vague as the first bit now that I think about it. I love weird socks. I used to wear exclusively socks with toes (between wearing tabi while playing taiko, and often wearing Vibram Fivefingers) but I just settle for odd colors combinations, patterns, etc. The latest pair are mermaid scale socks, which were a little bit disappointing. I do have kind of a thing about mermaids. Clan MacLaren folklore claims at least one mermaid in the genealogy, and “it’s your mermaid heritage” has become a standard teasing item from my spouse. Electronic musician, creating stuff without regard to genres. Some of my stuff is easily classified as ambient, some drone, some noise, some powernoise, some is probably some sort of jazz, none of it is trance/techno/EDM/flavor-of-the-month. Some is definitely experimental, some less so. My main hobby. I finished 119 tracks and 2 remixes last year and I’ll probably sail way past that this year, and in previous years, self-released 15 albums under three artist names. I also performed with a taiko drumming group for about 18 months. I quit because it took too much time away from my own music making. Also, while I was better than average at improvisation, I found the choreography aspects of it frustrating. (I have sort of mixed-up proprioception where it comes to certain kinds of movements, possibly related to my poor sense of direction/navigation when traveling.) Non-sports-liking, non-TV-watching, introvert geek. Not that this is weird by internet standards of course. Former game developer, but I worked for the same company for 17 years. I did everything from rebooting a stubborn web server every 20 minutes for a 12-hour shift, to creating fantasy languages, to accidentally writing a script that set a player character on fire an infinite number of times, to implementing an online, real-time, multi-user terrain editing system with different erosion models, to writing loading screen music. I most likely have Summer SAD (heat, humidity, and bright direct sunlight all make me very irritiable and twitchy).
Oh, and Green / Socialist, which I guess is weird in the US. A bit frustrated with the Green Party in some ways and… not going to talk about politics except to keep a middle finger extended toward Washington (and/or NYC) for the next four years.
I can go months without talking. I know this because I’ve done it. (Addendum: It was part of a writing project of mine. No spiritual reasons (though I had some unexpected moments of connectedness) nor was it part of a depressive episode. On the contrary, I felt really good. Maybe too good; a close friend later told me that I sometimes seemed hypomanic during this time.)
I’m pretty much indifferent to skinny women. Significantly more attracted to those who are stout/stocky. Again, I know this because most of my intimate relationships have been with women who fit this latter body type. I don’t see this preference as ‘freaky’ but it seems society does. (Addendum: my own body type is ectomorphic, lean, with functional muscle from my job as a metal worker.)
I don’t feel nearly weird enough but I really want to help this thread so I’ll try and come up with what I can.
While physically male I’ve been told I have a very feminine personality. I’m not sure what exactly this means although it’s always been offered as a compliment and I’ve taken it as one. I’ve had a radical orchiectomy and while that was a physical alteration I don’t think it changed who I am as a person.
I’m a huge Kinks fan.
I love games but I’m not competitive. Unlike other gamplayers I’m not interested in winning, I’m in it for the social interaction.
I have extended conversations with our pets in which I often imagine them telling me, “You’re so weird.”
I sleep with a light on when alone.
I really like spiders. I try to explain this by saying I have the opposite of arachnophobia which sounds like it would be arachnophilia but I have to clarify that I don’t feel any sexual attraction to spiders.
I’m very nonjudgmental when it comes to other peoples’ kinks and fetishes as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult. Here that might not be so weird but, to take an example, I don’t understand the disgust often directed at furries. In fact I’m fascinated by what turns other people on.
I’m a middle aged stocky guy often with a full beard that gets called ‘ma’am’ all the time.
I’ll try to think of more later, tune in for updates!
Back already! I find this kind of an odd question, not that it is an odd question but my interpretation of it makes it one for me. Most of what makes me a “freak” doesn’t feel freak anymore because I’ve become socially irrelevant enough it’s easier to be personally okay with my idiosyncrasies, and I’ve had the luxury of structuring my social groups to peers who are mainly tolerant of me. A lot of that, unfortunately, has its roots in isolation rather than discovery.
Back to the fun:
My speech tends to be quite different from my writing, in that it is more formal and full of anachronisms. I spent a lot more time with 19th-early 20th century authors than I did people, as a youth, and my diction often confuses people.
I could kill a human for breaking into my house, but I couldn’t kill a bengal tiger or mountain lion in self-defense, because it simply wouldn’t be worth my life to destroy such a beautiful thing.
I was more devastated by the death of the beagle puppy in John Wick than I was of the mountain of bodies Keanu left in his wake, though I suspect I wasn’t alone in that respect.
I collect insane rants. The carefully hand-written kind that people staple to telephone poles. The kind that when you see someone posting them, if they notice you noticing them, they’ll throw the remaining papers in the air and run away weeping or screaming incoherently.
I read them carefully and thoroughly, and periodically re-read them. I wish I had a lot more.
Nonbinary gendered, ambivalent and fluid about what space I am in within that description but not unhappy with being there.
