Outcasts

   I've done a lot of analysis on the archetype of the social outcast, if only because I should be one but aren't. I still don't think I've quite reached it, what drives people away. Bad taste? Okay, maybe those are bad examples, each. Each of the outcasts I've brought up so far. They represent a fandom of something specific, a specific property, which can be loved or hated on its own merits.

   It's not about the idea of the fandom itself. So, bad examples all around, (excepting furries? (Try as hard as I do to find something similar, there's just nothing quite like them in the entire world, though I wish their were. It's an asceticism, which is one of the reasons I keep on returning to that as an example of pure fandom. It's based around, well, not just an asceticism, but a genre. Another thing that makes them good examples of that. Plus they're generally like really super nice people and I love the whole idea of it?)) I'm not one for fandoms much, but the thing I'm grasping for, it's not like it is a fandom. It's more... an archetype. Of social outcast. Just stuck at the bottom on the totem pole (doesn't being on the bottom of the totem pole traditionally represent more responsibility and more importance, though? The top of the totem pole, then.)

   The very bottom of that, like I said, furry fen. They've learned to be comfortable and even thrive in this environment (note the super nice people comment above.) It revolves around a very specific ideal. A higher level up from this, goths and emos. More nebulously defined. Not quite angst, at least not in the public perception and who knows, they might be right- just darkness mixed with juvenility. Punks a step above that, as there isn't really the stereotype of a loser or a loner. Between them is the thread of the idea of punk-punk: cyberpunk, steampunk. Or maybe that's also an aestheticism. No, they are all. They have to be; that's what we're measuring here. Aren't we?

   Outcasts? No. You're only defined as a loser if you're cut off from mainstream society, because of or in spite of or in concordance with these interests. But lots of emos are cool. Lots are over-angsty snots, of course. So, we're not measuring that, the level of misfit. We're ranking the aestheticisms themselves, in terms of misfit? Thought that really can't be ranked, because it's not like one aestheticism is more of an aestheticism than another or is more attractive to a degree of misfit than another. Aestheticisms, can, however, be clumped-- separated into the aestheticism of the aestheticism. (I guess furries stand alone there too, maybe half-connected to Otaku. I was right that far.) Okay, we were ranking aestheticism by degree of social outcast associated with them, that's what it was. The ranking makes sense again. Alright.

   Hipsters on top, of course. Or, uh, bottom.

   (Having that little pointless debate over what the topic even is wasn't strictly necessary because this is prewritten, but I'm keeping it here, possibly used as a rhetorical device. Socrates would be proud.)