Keep up with the Jones – so as to stay normal

The definition of normalcy is culturally, geographically and temporally specific. But statistically speaking, 82.2% of the population falls into the normal range. As an acid test, if you’re doing what the 82.2% of the population within your group or community is doing, you can safely claim yourself as normal. That’s why believing that the Earth is a globe but not a giant flat piece of land was regarded as abnormal in the Dark Age. So was not wearing bell-bottom pants in the 70s.

Although we may look up to those glamorous, wealthy celebrities whose omnipresence makes us feel sick about ourselves, deep down all of us just want to be normal. But even so, staying in mainstream is getting harder.

Now not having a mobile phone or an msn/Facebook/Twitter is like not having a color TV or a landline 30 years ago. It doesn’t matter whether you actually use those things, like a Plasma TV, you just need to have them to stay in the mainstream. Those who choose not to have a mobile phone belong to the same category as those who refuse to send their kids to schools—they are on either end of the cool-uncool continuum.

When a certain breed becomes the majority, the pariah becomes social outcasts unless they follow the tides. No, you won’t be dumped into that category right away. First, you’re just uncool, then you’re one of those weirdoes, next you’re an outcast or, if you’re lucky, a genius or the coolest guy/chick in your town (but people won’t know that after you’re dead for a few decades). So in 30 years, these groups of people will belong to the social outcast/weirdo/minority groups:

1. Those who age naturally and gracefully without using Botox or whatever beauty injections
2. Those who are not cooks but can cook
3. Those who can spell correctly without using a word processor or write correct Chinese words without using any Chinese input systems
4. Those who can tell you the radical of a Chinese character correctly or those who know how to use a Chinese dictionary
5. Those who mainly get their news from the paper form of newspaper
6. Those who pay for a newspaper
7. Those who smoke (and still think it’s the coolest vice they’ve ever picked up)
8. Those who don’t understand what "gr8 cu l8r m8" or "ne1 no wer v mit 2day" means
9. Those who wrote snail mails—by writing, I really mean holding a pen and literally writing

Even staying in the mainstream doesn’t sound as effortless as before. What’s worse, when the majority in the community is getting dumber, you have to choose between being normal and being sane. Although it sounds a simple wish to be normal—to be like just everyone else, sometimes it’s easier to be weird but sane than normal but dumb.