Misadventures.

So. I'm about to full on rant.

There are a lot of things that bother me about how this world works. In particular, this CITY.
I live in Hyderabad but at times its hard for me to consider myself a hyderabadi.
I want to say that this is partly because the only Hyderabad that I know is between the hussain sagar and hi-tech city. Apparently, I'm missing the majority of the city in my map. Ehh.
Sometimes I'm actually surprised at how much society weaves into this city and how people here live. Theres a magazine that comes out EVERY WEEK with pictures of who wore what where and snippets of anonymous gossip. When its a movie star's birthday, the billboards that you can see from key roads get rented out to be plastered with HAPPY BIRTHDAY greetings. Everything done here is by influence. I tried to get an internship at a hospital the normal way and I waited for a week but nothing happened. I told my mom and somehow the next day I was working.

I'm proud of myself and the way that I live because I know that I can say that I direct my own life and my own opinions regardless. I say all of this but lately I've begun to feel like I'm not being real with myself. Before I came to India for the summer I remember having a conversation with someone where I ended up revealing more than I normally do about my antagonism towards 'societal expectation'. I tell myself that I am empowered and liberated from these ridiculous expectations because I CHOOSE not to believe in them or live by them. (Not that they are all bad. This is just my personal opinion.) The person I was talking to, who happens to be annoyingly perceptive and should be a profiler for the FBI or something, asked me whether I did things because I LIKED them or just because I wanted to go against the grain. I laughed that one off, Of course I do things because I LIKE them don't I?

Skammy, you hit the nail on the head. You're right. I notice myself doing things just to separate myself from everyone else who I look down on as 'societyphiles'. I call myself an antisocial, but I really DO enjoy people sometimes. I make it hard for myself to find people I like because I constantly cross people off as soon as they display ANY signs of society-esque behavior. So basically, I'm narrowing down my friends list to cavemen and socially awkward musical geniuses. Fabulous.

So, the first question that people always ask me when we have this discussion as a two sided conversation and not a one sided internet rant, is, What is society behavior that is so disgusting to you?

Okay now this is random, but after my greatest misadventure to date, I decided to stay home for a day just to get over myself. I was watching TV and a scrubs rerun was on. It was this episode where the janitor is getting married so JD and Elliott fly down to this island resort for the wedding. Anyway, theres this kid that brings them towels to their room and Elliott flips out because she apparently has this incurable aversion to redheads. JD says something about how this is a new hatred that hes surprisingly never known about before. I really feel like Elliott when I tell people and they react like "Whoa, you don't like that stuff? Well you had me fooled!"

No. I don't like that stuff.
I think I used to just not care about it but now I actively dislike it because everybody pegs me to adhere exactly to it. And I DON'T. But it won't stop following me around.
Okay, so I'm going to sound like a horrible conceited twat now.
Today I was texting someone who I KNOW but am not really good friends with. We're casual friends I guess but to no real purpose because we don't hang out, we don't divulge secrets, we don't help each other shop, I just alleviate his boredom from time to time and I guess he gets a kick out of saying he knows me. I don't know why.
Our conversation was starting to go the one-word-reply way when he randomly started talking about some night last week and he seemed to know EVERYTHING I did. Okay so, initially I just figured that maybe he was there and he saw me but didn't say hi for some reason, or maybe someone he knew was there and they casually told him that they saw me. It was a good theory since this city is so small anyway. But then he started talking about what I was wearing and conversations I had with people and how bored/happy I looked at different times. Thats when it got weird because how could he possibly know that much without actually being there to see me?

Turns out he WASN'T there. He didn't see me. He just HEARD about it from PEOPLE.
I don't know, but in my book, thats weird. I didn't know any of the people he heard it from. How do they know me? and WHY are they talking about me and what I'm wearing to other people? He told me that thats how the world works here and I need to accept my place and play my role properly and understand that the unwanted attention is part of the deal. Thats when I was like WOW this kid is the only one who has ever said that straight up to my face. I'm not going to lie and say that I wasn't a bit disappointed too. (I can give up on my poetic idea of making random friends). This is what I hate. I didn't ask to be a part of this, so why can't I just unsubscribe from this huge fake identity that keeps getting shoved down my throat. Who I date and who I'm friends with has nothing to do with WHO I am right? Isn't it clear that I DONT want to be part of this false social ladder?

It makes me so suspicious of people and so much more antisocial than I already am. I dislike meeting people and then them finding that I don't fit into their little preconceived picture of me. I feel like while they talk to me they're waiting for me to be a bitch to them because apparently thats what I'm supposed to do. Okay maybe I exaggerate a little on the Bitch part, but I feel like they expect something from me and they are so disappointed when I don't show up with my hair perfectly coiffed and boss everyone around. I don't know how many times people have told me 'Learn to act like your boyfriends girlfriend!'
How my boyfriend chooses to live and how I choose to live are not correlated. Being me is apparently what landed me the boyfriend remember? I'm not about to turn into the female version of him to appease anyone.
Plus, does anyone ever tell him to behave like MY boyfriend? Never. He is THE society image and i apparently need to strive to be like him.

I was talking to a girl I used to know pretty well and our conversation started steering towards the topic of popularity. She was obsessed with it. I totally understand that theres an age where you need to feel like you belong and everyones trying to earn approval from everyone else. But thats middle school right? Wasn't that like six years ago or can I not count?!
She didn't seem to think so. She said that there was a ranking of people and in order to be at the top you had to have a social status and people had to know who you were. She thought that she herself was beneath all these status-owning people and she asked me to help her figure out how to be one of them.
I think part of me died during that conversation because after a while I just could NOT reason with her. I gave up.
I DO believe in popularity, but I think theres a good kind and a bad kind.
The good kind is the kind where everyone knows someone because they simply are magnetic. They have charisma, they network well and they're a people person. They genuinely LIKE knowing people. The bad kind is where everyone KNOWS about someone but for the wrong reasons. Kind of like K-fed. Hes just britney's baby-daddy, hes not a particularly fabulous guy, but that doesn't mean he isn't famous. Same way, bad popularity is when people TALK about you. You're rich? You are mildly scandalous? Bingo. Hello bad popularity, goodbye life.

So what is the society behavior that I am disgusted by? THAT is what I'm disgusted by. Gossip. False popularity. Importance given to WHAT a persons label is rather than WHO they are. Fixation on money, status and power. False ideas of this societal ladder where everyone is ranked. Flaunting. Faking. Sucking Up. Assuming.

Getting back to what I was saying earlier, about how I've started to realize that I secretly do adhere to some extent to these invisible society rules. Not in the conventional way, but I still acknowledge them and therefore live with them. I'm done doing that.
People should make society. Society shouldn't make people.
There. Its on the internet. Now sue me for saying it =)