Humans are conformists by nature- it’s time to talk about it.
I used to be a perfectly constructed puzzle, made up of parts of other people. My influences were simply just people who I deemed as ‘cool.’
The tendency to allow myself to be so easily influenced was displayed before high school, in my middle school years, the most significant developmental age range.
In seventh grade, I went to my former best friend’s house one day. She loved football, so we watched the Eagles game. I was not interested in sports at that time, in any capacity. But for some reason, when I got home, I created an Eagles pinterest board.
I truly thought that if I forced myself to learn about football plays, team members, and statistics, I could become a true football fan. My best friend and I could bond over something. Of course, I never got into football during middle school, because it wasn’t for me. I enjoy football now, but that enjoyment came naturally, from physically being involved in sports and understanding the appeal of it.
In eighth grade, my friend told me that she hated Taylor Swift, so I suppressed my liking of her music, forcing myself to emphasize her flaws, until I didn’t really seem to have a favorite artist.
That same friend had an obsession with the musical Hamilton, as did a few other members of our friend group, sending me into a Hamilton phase. I had a whole playlist dedicated to it, but it wore off easily.
When asked about my favorite color, I would always say ‘pink’. My peers would laugh and tell me that they had outgrown pink years ago. So, I started telling people that I liked blue.
For some reason, everyone I was friends with in eighth grade was a vegetarian, so I tried becoming vegetarian. Of course, that did not work: I was so used to eating meat that every day was a ‘skip day’.
My parents made fun of me, saying that I could not actually be a vegetarian if I ate meat at all, but my peers would say, “cutting some meat from your diet is better than eating meat all the time,” further affirming my ‘diet’.
I didn’t realize it, but I was losing fragments of myself throughout the years by suppressing who I was. I was changing my identity to the point where I began to realize that I did not have an identity- I lost what I liked, what I disliked, and who I was.ll for the thrill of simply being liked by others.
It took time- and good influences-but I gradually regained parts of myself that I thought would be gone for good: Taylor Swift is my favorite music artist and I listen to her the most out of anyone. Pink is my favorite color and I wear it every day, even if it is in the most minimal detail: like the color of my nails or my Apple Watch band.
I’m not afraid to like ‘girly’ or ‘immature’ things. I’m also not afraid to shout these things from rooftops, since they make me who I am. Oh yeah, and I eat meat now- fully.
I no longer care about being liked by others, mostly because I began to realize that nobody cares. Nobody cares what I like, what I dislike, or what I do for fun.
My current best friend loves the color purple. She enjoys listening to Glass Animals and Arctic Monkeys. I never once thought to change my favorite color or force myself to listen to her music. And she has never done the same for me- because we don’t care.
We accept the minimal parts of each other that add up to who we are as people, because we know that humans are meant to be unique. We are supposed to separate ourselves from other people in order to explore new perspectives, connect with each other, and more importantly, find ourselves.
I have come to the realization that it is only natural for humans to strive for validation from others. Psych Central wrote an article in 2022, essentially explaining that approval validates us. Timothy Jeider, a psychiatrist at Nevada Mental Health, stated: “When our internal sense of worth fails, whether from not ever properly being built, mental illness sabotaging it, or just having a bad day of doubting ourselves, that’s when we turn to approval.”
Of course, the instances I described are extreme since I was young and my brain was not as developed, resulting in me being overly impressionable. However, taking a look at history, it is generally clear that humans have always been conformists.
Perhaps this is an even more extreme example, but it holds true: look at dictators throughout history. It takes two people- one with a strong opinion, and another to affirm the opinion. From there, others gradually become aware of the opinion and identify with it, causing it to build.
Brittanica explained that people conform to groups, “because they are dependent on the group for satisfying two important desires: the desire to have an accurate perception of reality and the desire to be accepted by other people.”
People conform out of fear of being judged, rejected, disliked, thought of as stupid, and even physically harmed. That’s why our society has gone through so many negative changes- it is made up of terrified and weak conformists.
Giving What We Can, an activist community, explained that creating change means taking risks, which is, in fact, terrifying. But they also explained, “the personal consequences are rarely as negative as we expect, and more often than not, they are positive.”
Humans are obsessed with validation, and the idea of love, even if it is superficial or fleeting. We’d rather be liked than right, and challenging social norms is embarrassing because nobody else is doing it. That’s why nobody raises their hands in class when a teacher asks an obvious question, and why when one person in a friend group unfriends a member, everyone else follows.
Psychology Today confirmed the phenomenon, saying, “it feels good to be right. When you’re right, it means you’re not wrong. And if you’re not wrong, you don’t need to change.”
Notice how there is always an exception to this rule- there are always a select few who participate in class, and sometimes there is a group member who will stick by the exiled one.
The only time that we see positive change is when a fearless person challenges the ‘trending’ ideas. One person rejecting an idea forms a base and a new group that is more willing to reject ideas because they feel like they are not alone or judged in the new community.
Overall change never happens without action amongst many, and those who bring change are often admired for their bravery. The silence of the majority carves a path to a world in which nobody wants to exist.
Togetherness brings strength on both sides- the question is, which side will you choose to be on?
