Who is more the robot?

[timesend]

One amongst millions who share adoration for a thing of greatness?

or

One who refuses to love it simply because so many people do?

One whose path to individuality causes them to turn off their mind and their emotions?

One who proclaims their superiority by blanket disregard for anything popular-- a response that requires no thought or feeling?

Comments

[ddoss]

The former response is loaded, since it assumes that the thing being adored is actually great. There is also the response of someone who adores something just because millions of others do, and not from their individual proclivities.

Anyways, I consider those two position equally robotic. The latter position you state I know as the "war of obscurity" where people flee something as it becomes popular and looses the veneer of hipness.

[timesend]

It's not loaded, it's exactly what I meant. Some things are great. Not everything, but some are the real deal. And it's okay not to like these things if they simply don't appeal to you, but because other people like them is a really shallow retreat.

[kejakalope]

Pop will eat itself, they say.

Anybody who ever utters the words "it's too mainstream" is an irredeemable retard though.

[gpturismo]

What's funny is people who refuse to conform usually end up conforming to the anti-conforming opinion.

[timesend]

That's part of my point. People in a rush to be different are just another flavor of the same.

And yeah, there are a lot of people who like things just 'cuz other people like them, which is robotic. That's choosing to like something without thinking/feeling, which, while at times annoying, has never caused me any grief.

[abelburning]

There's a quote by R. W. Emerson that says "But the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." It's probable that there just isn't enough of that sort of sensibility when it comes to objects of veneration and/or established mores. In psychology, there's a concept called "self-monitoring" which may apply. People who are high self-monitors are more inclined to behave/express themselves differently among different groups of people, as well as engage in behavior that establishes them as concordant with the majority despite what their actual beliefs might be. Conversely, low self-monitors are those who have a firm set of beliefs/principles/what-have-you and will generally not care about how they might appear to others around themselves. In relation to your post, I think that the robots fall into the former category; those people are the ones who mindlessly adopt *insert applicable term* out of an instinctive need to be "in the in-crowd" or just plain contrary. Like Doss