Fitinaphobia is the name of a disease, actually more of a syndrome or complex, which I completely made up. Originally I called it differentitus, but I think that fitinaphobia is a better name for what it represents. If you’re confused it breaks down like this. Fit-in phobia, the fear of fitting in. I use it to describe people who absolutely cannot stand fitting in with the crowd. These are people who have an innate desire and necessity to be different from everyone else around them.
The problem I have with these people is the same problem I have with most people. They are illogical, selfish, stupid and harmful to others. But, unlike some, I completely understand people with fitinaphobia. Instead of following my usual format of examples and reasons I’m going to try to write this as if it was a real disease. It might be awkward to avoid my usual method of spilling my brain into the keyboard, but we’ll see.
Summary: Fitinaphobia is the fear of fitting in. Patients experiencing this illness will gripe and moan if any of their interests or hobbies are popularized. They are only capable of expressing interesting in something as long as it is only popular or cool amongst a small select portion of the population in which they live.
Symptoms:
- Complaining and moaning when their hobbies and interests are propagated or popularized.
- Frequent changing of hobbies and interests as fads and trends come and go, but said hobbies and interest will never match said fads and trends.
- Inability to express reasons for liking or disliking certain things.
- Citing the fact that “too many people like it” as a reason that something is no longer cool.
- Wearing clothes or displaying objects and accessories which are purposefully out of the ordinary.
Causes:
- Being a leader with a tap on pop culture.
- Inability to attract the attention and admiration of others by utilizing innate sense of cool factor.
- Strong desire for positive attention coupled with poor personality and communication skills.
- Elitist attitude which implies that if the masses have obtained something it is no longer elite to posses it or knowledge of it.
- Belief that the types and numbers of people who like something, as well as their reasons for liking something effect the quality of said thing.
Cures:
- Heavy dose of logic beyond threshold of truth-handling abilities.
- Realization that the root causes of lack of positive attention is not related to hobbies and interests, but to poor social skills.
- Severe beatings can sometimes work in extreme cases, but not reccommended.
- Very extreme cases are often incurable due to lack of rational thinking abilities in the brain.
Case Studies:
- Anime fanboy/fangirl: These people are often a prime example of Fitinaphobics. They liked anime before it was cool to like anime. They were watching fansubs on betamax from the local comic book store long before anyone in the US knew what dragonball even was. You can often hear them complain about how anime isn’t what it used to be. Or that popularization of anime in America has destroyed the culture and art. They feel that all these fake fans, followers or posers are getting in their way. They never realize that they wouldn’t have all the shiny anime stuff that exists today if it wasn’t so popular.
- Indie music fans: Indie music fans can only listen to music from bands that have fewer than a select number of fans. The moment one of these bands becomes too popular the fan will claim the band sold out, and thus their music is now crap. Occasionally it will still be acceptable to listen to music the band played prior to selling out depending on the circumstances. These particular people will have a music collection with a very high turnover rate.
- Race car drivers: Race car drivers, especially customizers or ricers, will only drive cars that stand out from the crowd. If the buy a new Mustang only to find out there are hundreds of Mustangs on the road they will trade it in for something else. Usually this is due to need for compensation or very strong desire for attention. Any car that doesn’t turn heads, make loud noises and go very fast is no good.
So as you can see fitinaphobia is the fear of fitting in. Afflicted peoples cannot stand to be the same as anyone else. They have to stand out from the crowd and turn heads at all possible times. Often they are accidental trend-setters which only curses them since their poor social skills prevent them from taking advantage of the popularization of something they started. I’ve encountered many people like this over the years and most of these people are huge assholes. I even once talked to someone who was saying that Linux isn’t for noobs, and that it would be wrong to make an easy to use version of Linux. They claimed that somehow making free software more popular would dilute its quality. Nothing could be more vapid. So, if you have this disease or know someone who does, do something about it. And for anyone who encounters one of these elitist pricks, slap them upside the head. Maybe then we can move towards a world where people share ideas and do not obsess about what other people think. No matter how many people gaze upon a gem it does not shine less brightly.
