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Omid comments on Stupid Questions (10/27/2014) - Less Wrong Discussion
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How do I stop being a hipster? I saw Bryan Caplan advising his readers to read Scott Alexander and my first reaction was "Oh no, a well-known blog is recommending people read my favorite little blog. Now more people will read it and I won't be as special." I know this feeling is irrational, but how can I overcome it?
Whether this feeling is irrational depends on what causes it. It makes sense to worry about a community you like becoming popular, since it means that an increasing number of people would join it, potentially reducing its quality.
I don't think that's what caused my angst, I think I was worried about becoming less special because more people were reading my favorite blog.
I think you want to be special -- that's an entirely legit and useful desire. The part that needs adjusting is deriving your specialness from obscurity of your interests.
If the only thing that makes you special is your choice of blogs that you read, you aren't very special.
It's like people who think that just because they change a few superficial things about their clothing and violate societal clothing norms, they are rebels. They are not. That kind of being a rebel feels a bit pathetic to me. Being a rebel actually means doing something that has an effect. That shakes up society. Don't optimize for superficial appearance. Dare to go deeper.
If you go deep than superficial issues such as how many people read your favorite blog won't really concern you anymore.
You should nurture that feeling if it drives you to push ahead to the next level of excellence that is beyond what is common today.
If it means you are just trying to be different for the sake of social signaling, then it is not quite so useful a feeling.
Tentative advice: Try exploring what you actually like and dislike, and distinguishing that from what you expect other people will think of your tastes. Also, you may need both privacy and thinking about how other people don't necessarily know enough about you to judge you.