I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “popular” recently. It may not be coincidental that a friend recently released a book called The Power of Unpopular. I actually won a copy of this book through an online contest several days ago, but it hasn’t arrived yet. So while dear Erika may have stoked the fire in my mind, I can’t yet speak on the content of her book.
Instead, I want to talk about something else that I know very little about (evolution) by talking about something I know a great deal about (myself). Not much of a stretch from the norm, I know, but I’m not working towards popularity or anything, here. ;)
Like most everyone I know, I wasn’t all that popular in high school. In fact, I know so few people who were popular in school, that I began to wonder if popularity is just a myth. The more I thought about it, the more I questioned it, and the more I realized it isn’t actually about popularity at all. In fact, it’s about something slightly (or entirely) different for everyone. There’s just a strong tendency to group that stuff under popularity because it sounds better.
I remember reading about the phenomenon where people look where other people are looking. If you stand and stare up at a tree or building or something, before long, someone else will stop there and stare, too. The more people are already staring, the more it validates the idea that there’s something to stare at, which encourages even more people to join in the staring. It’s sort of a cumulative thing. We could call staring up a popular choice, once it’s surpassed a certain threshold.
I don’t think it’s much of a logical leap to compare that to people. If I vouch for Erika (once I’ve read her book, for instance), then before long, someone else will join me in that. Not that I’m the first to vouch for her, but I’m being entirely hypothetical here. If a hundred people are vouching for her, that’s a much stronger vote of confidence. So far on Amazon, her book has 5 stars with 11 reviews. That’s a little vote of confidence, but it’s small compared to some established authors that have already had a trilogy of books made into movies.
Votes aren’t evenly weighted, though. If someone you KNOW is staring up at a building, you’re much more likely to join them. Even if they give you an ambiguous “something’s going to happen” when you ask what the heck they’re doing.
“Shh. Something’s going to happen.”
“Well, I have no idea what,” you think, “but if they’re watching, I want to see what it is, too.”
Their vote has more weight than some anonymous person. If it was George Clooney, pretty much anyone would stop. He’s popular! Of course they would. Even if nothing ended up happening, I’d tweet an hour later “Just stared at a building for a full hour with George Clooney. Nothing happened. #BucketList #NoRegrets”
Now think about high school. There were popular kids. There there were us. Or maybe you were one of the popular kids. Or maybe a bunch of us nerds THOUGHT you were, but you never really felt like you were at all. And at least we had our band or drama friends to hang out with, which seemed nice to you. Who knows. The grass is always greener in someone else’s yard, even if it’s not on the other side of your fence. Maybe it’s down the block. Maybe it’s on the upper east side.
Back to my first point, though. Imagine the word popular never existed. What word would you use, then? Is there a word? Do you need a whole phrase to get to the root of your goals, there?
“I just want to be popular, you know?”
What does that really mean?
“I just want a LOT of people to pay attention to me so they’ll watch my cooking show and I’ll have fantastic ratings so that I can save up enough money to buy a bigger house in a more popular neighborhood.”
Crap. Popularity got in there again. What about that neighborhood?
“I want to live in a neighborhood of a higher socio-economic status so that people will feel that I’ve become a figure of authority in my field.”
Let a 3 year-old into the room so they can keep asking “Why?”
“Because if I’m seen as an authority in my field, people will continue to believe I’m a credible source of information.”
“Why?”
“So that I can stay employed.”
“Why?”
“Because this neighborhood is fucking expensive, you know?”
There we go. We’re digging a bit deeper.
Look, I’m not here to judge. I get that it isn’t comfortable to really pay attention to that questioning 3 year-old. The deeper you dig, the longer the stuff you find has been buried. There are old scars you forgot about. I get it.
So I’ll turn the table on myself. Now, I can’t tell you any old scars that I’ve forgotten about, because I haven’t gotten to them yet. If I had, they’d no longer be forgotten. But I have gotten to some scars that WERE forgotten. There are things from my childhood that I still don’t get and don’t think I ever will. I didn’t have the perspective at that age to really understand what was going on. (Or I just lacked the presence of mind.) If I can find someone who was there and really wants to go over those things with me, then maybe. It’s just unlikely.
So here I am, about as naked as I can be, explaining why I want to be popular, and what that means, exactly.
Well, I don’t want the big house, but I am concerned about financial security. The phrase “it’s who you know” rings true, at least in my experience, so I feel it’s very important to make a positive impression on people who could benefit me financially in the future. One problem with that is that it’s impossible to know who could be of benefit in the future, let alone in what capacity they could be beneficial. As such, I limit it to people that I think I would be willing to work with. Or for. Or would be honored to receive a recommendation from. Distill that: I want to leave a positive impression on people with integrity.
I’m an extrovert, too, and a bit of a mental spaz. I get bored, and I like a lot of stimulation. If you want fresh music, you can’t just keep listening to the same radio station year after year. You’re just going to get more recent iterations of the same basic thing you’ve been listening to. If you want something more fresh or different, you’ll have to venture out to other radio stations playing other genres. If you want something even more different, you’ll have to look even further. Chatting up a stranger at a record store can introduce you to a whole realm of music you never knew existed. It’s easy to find things similar to what you have now. It’s far more difficult to find something really, really different. To keep my mind engaged and my knowledge growing, I want to meet really, really different people. Being gregarious helps me achieve that goal. Chatting up someone who isn’t a friend of any of my current friend, and isn’t in any way connected to any networks I’m currently connected to brings something extremely fascinating into my life. Going to a restaurant I’ve only just seen, but know nearly nothing about, can provide an eye-opening experience.
What do you really want? Why? There’s no such thing as popular any more. But there is still reaching out to people, participating in events, and hosting parties. Why do you do these things? Or why don’t you? There is no reason to place a judgment on the choices, especially before we’ve really dug deep enough to understand them. How can we judge what we don’t understand?
Since the word popular exists, it can very much look like popularity is my goal. I get up in people’s business, try to get involved with things, and butt into discussions that didn’t originally include me. Later this month, LeVar, my wife, Kia, and myself are putting on a grown-up spelling bee at the L2 event center. Why?
It’s all just me striving to be more popular. If you want to call it that.
