It seems a poignant topic based on the origins of SG.
Life's all about do you flow with the crowd or swim against the current and be 'unique'. But what if so many of you start to swim that you change the direction of the flow, when does unique stop being unique and becomes mainstream.
I remember when I got to college many, many moons ago, after years of having to wear school uniforms and kids not really knowing trends. All of a sudden the removing of all dressing the same created an almost euphoric panic of I GET TO DRESS HOW I WANT... oh god I get to dress how I want... what do I want to dress like, what do I want people to think of me. It was at this point some people managed to pick their style relatively easily (or some of them felt they'd made a choice and couldn't change) some went through phases that changed with each half term.
I didn't have a particular idea in my head of how I wanted to appear, I wasn't what would be classed as mainstream, but I wasn't dedicated to the wave of emo and goth that sprang up in this decisional freedom bestowed upon us. Ultimately I just never really did any groups identity very well so never quite fit properly.
It made me ponder having feet in both camps and hearing how people viewed the other side, the mainstream pop who followed the 'normal' magazines fashion tips, would look at what they viewed as the black n grey stabbedy stab stab people under the stairs, sometimes with mild distain at how they dressed and what they listened to. The group under the stairs would look back at the rest with equal distain at the 'sheep' following what society deemed acceptable, lauding themselves to each other about how they had broken from the norm, how they'd stuck their fingers up to society by getting their nose pierced or got a little heart on their wrist.
Only by the end of college there was so many people in the niche groups, could they really be classed as unique anymore. Some from the different groups, cliques and niches had changed allegiances to. People would still cling to how they were doing what no one else had thought to do. I suppose I was fortunate enough that I never really committed to any group, I was funny enough to hang with the mainstream sheep, I liked the same music and TV as the stabbedy stab stab, and I'd found a group of geeky almost nerdy peeps to keep that part of my mind going. I literally hung around with whomever wasn't in a class at the time and put away in the back of my mind how everyone viewed the other groups differently yet we'd all come from the same place.
The last 15years I've watched such a shift from late Secondary School as people discovered themselves, it's interesting to see the people who haven't changed, and the ones who change with the tide. Obviously college is long behind me now, but I still see it in my fair city of Manchester, a few years back we'd had the sprouting seed that was the hipster movement, they started opening cafes and then bars, there would have been as many as 5 in the whole city and you had to be told where they were because they were hidden to keep them cool and unique. Now it's probably more cool unique and new if you find somewhere that doesn't have the hipster vibe, but then you face the problem of defining the hipster because so many people are trying to do it nowadays that it almost has its own separate subspecies depending what side of the city you're on, even what is classed as the 'Bankers' part of town tries to embrace a bit of the hipster vibe, to which if a 'true' hipster happens to wander there for whatever reason they will often declare how it is a amateurish attempt.
The ones striving to be unique, are they actually unique? when in many cases they are just following or riding the wave of the latest fashion in the hopes they caught onto it before it was cool before it was known. Or is the unique one the one who doesn't change, the one who has found what they are comfortable being regardless of who or what is around them.
Is unique when you don't fit a particular stereotype. I don't think so because if you're so aware of groups, stereotypes, whether your hair needs to be parted this year, if skinny is out and fat is in, men with no muscle is the new hotness, or if 3 piercings in one ear just isn't enough anymore. Can you be unique when you're conscious or aware of everyone else, in trying to not be the sheep do you just end up in a different flock.
Surely to be unique you must be utterly oblivious to trend, fashion, popular and unpopular view, and in being so have no clue that you're unique. Is unique to be like when you were a kid and you didn't care what 'type' you were what niche you were in indeed you wouldn't have even known what the word niche meant. You were just you because that was what made you happy.