High Weirdness goes Mainstream Pt 2 - Weird Good vs Weird Bad

In the first installment of our pop-cultural exposé... "High Weirdness (finally) Goes Mainstream"...we revealed how the obscure, occluded, sub-cultural phenomenon known as High Weirdness (or High Strangeness, if you will) has recently taken our communications industries by storm. We reported on how the use of the word Weird caught fire, as it resonated within multiple segments of our socially-mediated pop culture. We proposed that this is because Weirdness... as a personal and societal trend... has become a major cultural marker of consequence in our post-modern world. In these strange days, increasing numbers of discerning people have come to identify with various aspects of... weirdness.

As High Weirdness has gained cultural significance as a societal indicator, larger segments of our pop-population have not only recognized it as such, but have additionally become increasingly comfortable with the concept of Weird. So when those societal laggards, the politicians, recently began using the term... it naturally resonated... because everyone knows (already knew) that we are living in weird times.

We then reported on how many of us have come to realize the important cultural distinction between being Weird-Good, & Weird-Bad, which implies a value structure of the concept: Weird. Here, Weird-Good & Weird-Bad manifest in ways that are increasingly discernable to larger segments of the population at large. In part two of our exposé of weirdness... we shall delve into the ramifications of Weird-Good vs Weird-Bad.

He-man Woman-Haters Club

Prior to being selected for the VP slot by Kamala Harris... Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz made headlines by describing certain personages within the Republican Party as... WEIRD. Governor Walz was on the Morning Joe show... arguing that Republican conservatives had pushed division through book bans and intruding into medical exam rooms... “We do not like what has happened,” Walz said, “where we can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner with our uncle because you end in some weird fight that is unnecessary.” When host Joe Scarborough laughed, Walz responded “Well, it’s true... these guys are just weird.”

Little Rascals' Spanky presides over the He-Man Woman Haters Club

Walz's comments immediately became an effective catchphrase used by Democrats, to successfully counter Republican culture war talking points. As Jacob Rosenburg of Mother Jones magazine points out... weird reveals that the appeals by the Right to supposed family values (anti-trans bigotry; restricting no-fault divorce; slashing public school funding; hatred of immigrants) are not normal. They are, instead, deeply strange. And “we” (a new silent majority that Walz invokes in his use of “weird”) are tired of it.

Pointing out that the MAGA Republican embrace of misogynistic tropes such as JD Vance's comment on childless cat ladies... effectively flips the script on MAGA's success with cultural war tactics. Hence Walz's reference to MAGA Republican's membership in the He-mam Woman Haters Club. The fact that Kamala picked Walz as her running mate only reinforces that Dems found success in fighting fire with fire, utilizing culture war rhetoric.

The above is a breakthrough example of how High Weirdness has crept into our political discourse in the leadup to the 2024 Presidential Elections. Here, weird is obviously used as a derogatory term. The Dems have gotten traction in the narrative, pointing out just how weird it is for conservative Republicans to have the audacity to attempt to restrict reproductive rights of women... or to obsess over what LGBTQ people do or don't do...

Anyone... no matter the political affiliation... who obsesses over what other consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home... who they love... or how they love... or how they present... is pretty damn creepy... weird and creepy... bordering on obsessive and pathologic. How dare anyone not intimately involved, even presume they have any say in the matter. In the words of Coach Walz... mind your own damn business. 

We've all experienced weird-bad, beyond the MAGA variety... you know... the creepy guy mumbling to himself at the end of the bar. Or the girl who invades your personal space... smiles way too much... and dominates the conversation. Or maybe you've visited an acquaintance's house only to discover their hoarding obsession. Such people and their places certainly give you the heebie-jeebies.

But what about Weird-Good?

In my new book... Brave Noö World A Guerilla Ethnography of High Strangeness ...one of the anthropologic findings identified is the rise of weird as a cultural phenomenon. Brave Noö World outlines the strange and obscure origins and history of weirdness in America. What first appeared in the pioneering poets… the clowns, jesters and tricksters of our post-WWII culture, began to catch on to greater segments of our society at large.

Acting as a cultural cosmic trigger, weirdness spread. The first big push occurred in the turbulent 1960's, which saw the accompanying rise of civil rights movement, the woman's liberation movement, and the anti-war protests. All these movements were fostered by charismatic leaders, who shared the common trait of weirdness. These movements were of course triggered by the weirdness of the Beats of the 1950's.

The next wave of weirdness washed over America with, first the Punk... then the Cyberpunk movements. The Punk scene transformed into the New Wave scene as it became more mainstream. If Punk was musically driven... Cyberpunk was literarily driven. Cyberpunk as a cultural phenomenon grew out of the computer revolution, incubating in California's Silicon Valley. An often overlooked facet of the cyberpunk genre, was it's focus on dystopia. As I point out in Brave Noö World... this is the moment when dystopia became cool.

American television of the era... in it's final heyday... sparkled with the brilliance and strangeness of the Addams Family... the Munsters... American families who were depicted as actual monsters. Later the strangeness of our times became more relatable with the likes of Robin William's Mork... Jerry Seinfeld's Cosmo Kramer... and last but certainly not least... the animated, prophetic pillar of strangeness... the Simpsons.

 

Wave after wave of cultural strangeness came crashing down on the American landscape at an accelerated pace... right up to the paradigm shift of September 11, 2001. And as we all know... that was when things got really weird. Even with the horrors of our post-9/11 world... High Weirdness morphed into the predominant paradigm of our times. The wonderfully strange among us became increasingly more influential.

Which leads us to the contemporary manifestation of weird-good. Weirdness was once viewed with ambivalence at best... yet the persistence of the afore-mentioned poets, clowns, jesters and tricksters... the creative instigators of pop culture... acted as a cultural vanguard... as cutting edge agents of change within modern culture. Their brilliance inspired us all. They were the prototypical influencers of our post-modern social media streams.

Our intrepid pioneers of pop culture, our poets and jesters... our consistently creative LGBTQ communities... have always demonstrated a visionary sense of fashion. Whether in style, apparel, art, design, interior decorating... our fashionistas have increasingly embraced the weird. All great art was made by weird people. Through their style, they assured us all that weird was cool.

The rise of the Influencer Industry has demonstrated that you don't have to be a celebrity or sports star... or even a reality star... to be influential in our post-pop world. Yet weird can be found in contemporary network programing as well... HBO's remake Gossip Girl costar: Evan Mock has created a genderless skin care product line called: Good Weird. This product line caters to the noö fringe as gender and identity morphs and blends... as the fashionably strange becomes the noö trend.

Weird-good demonstrates a healthy approach to the fact that we are all different. As the definition of gender broadens... a broader scope of experience is made available to the curious. Gender fluidity allows the curious the ability to experience different lifestyles as the situation dictates. If the new lifestyle fits... great... if not... no worries... simply migrate back. Things change... people change... the situation changes... in the words of Douglas Adams... don't panic!

And here is the final secret of weirdness as a noö cultural marker... Just Relax... there is no such thing as normal. What you may fear is weird within yourself... is in reality your super-power. Embrace your weirdness... for this demonstrates your authenticity. This is a secret that our dear millennials and gen-z intuitively know. They own their weirdness... and in so doing... they transform our post-pop-culture.

We have seen the weird... and they are us...

Part One

High Weirdness by Aggregation