Thread by @wolfejosh

1/ This week I had a stop in my tracks (personal) moment.

We are social primates. The big trade off in different social settings:

fit IN?

or

Stand OUT?

2/ On a long AM NYC walk to Lux office (from Tribeca to Union Sq) I thought about why people seek to stand out--whether in fashion, music, art, science, politics, startups, investing, writing, social scenes....

3/ I find often (not always) the same people who like mainstream music (Top40) also like mainstream shows (what everyone else is watching) like mainstream clothes (mall stores)--its of course the definition of "main-stream"...

4/ Whereas the tributary seekers split off, the people out on the edge tend to consciously dress different, listen to different music, watch edgier shows + movies (things literally on the "edge" of the herd and mainstream), and connect more easily with others like them...

5/ But of course they are SIGNALING. I am different. And are also signaling they care about being different and signaling they know what the mainstream is and find music, fashion, ideas that is often defined by what it is not...

6/ Why are they signaling? I believe two reasons: STATUS and a variant of it REJECTING REJECTION(from an 'in-group' aka mainstream (coincidentally the same trait I highlighted in a previous tweet-storm on why SOME entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs)...

7/ Virgina Woolf had a nephew named Quentin Bell who was a critic and studied art + fashion. He was inspired by the Thorstein Veblen idea of "conspicuous consumption"--buying stuff to show off your wealth and thus a differentiated STATUS from others...

8/ Here is @sapinker talking about Bell and the evolutionary psychology of STATUS-seeking via SIGNALING you are different and *confident* about it...

9/ But where does that *confidence* come from?

How do you go from wanting to fit-IN to wanting to stand-OUT?

That is where I stopped + had my personal moment.

For me it was a coping mechanism, adaptation, rejecting rejection....

10/ At 8 I was in the middle of a cross-country custody battle between my father living in a CA ranch town (Leona Valley) with pop. 1,000 people and my mom (Coney Island, Brooklyn) where I grew up.

I had no friends. I was alone. I was made fun of. I was the outcast.

11/ I rejected the rejectors, was forced to be introspective (all but talking to myself;)! + had to find status in an identity outside that mainstream.

If you can fit in + are accepted in the warmth of the herd, the mass in the mean, you have no need to cope/adapt to the tails--

12/ And 32 years later I realized a quirk in my personality (for which in hindsight i feel grateful for--as it focuses me on a default search for the edge, the UNUSUAL in art, music and especially entrepreneurs) was entirely a coping mechanism that compounded.

13/ I love founders + entepreneurs who are driven by a permanent fire, often lit by feeling different + turning that into confidence to stand OUT (as individuals & in what they achieve) Maybe they were only kid of an ethnicity, were adopted, broken family, too tall or too short..

14/ But once experienced it may feel like a liability or burden at the time--but it's the biggest asset + it's completely forged in authentic emotion + also completey impossible to "learn" or replicate.