I feel differently. Like the author of this article, I attended an expensive, quasi-prestigious prep school in the American South _and_ went to Columbia. Kids in both milieus were competing with each other to be the weird ones.

It’s also worth noting that tbe author has spent a chunk of her career in advertising, using what she knows (first hand!) about how young brains are seduced by the verboten to sell trend forecasting to companies who want to mine that ore.

As a parent I consider it a specific challenge to help my daughter discern between behavior that looks or seems cool and behavior that is actually worth emulating.

Yeah, I guess it makes sense that being weird for the sake of being weird becomes its own unhealthy driving impulse.

I see these sorts of anecdotes (in the OP for ex.) through a romantic lens of people who are completely comfortable sharing their interests and who have those interests understood and reciprocated by their friends, alongside the reverse, outside of the "norm", enriching your own worldview.

I'm sure much of it is unrealistic vicarious dreaming, and projected regret for not pursuing my own interests, and friend groups aligned with those, more earnestly throughout my young life.