It’s 18 months old - but 🔗 this post from TimUrban resurfaced this morning, where he talks about how long it took to write his book, reminding me of a post I have had parked for a while now. Time to unleash it.

The title of this post was originally ‘Are We Being Forced To Conform?’ I changed it because as I read it before publishing, I think I answered my own question. We are.

It all started as I was 🖇️ building on this post which was about flavor (🔗the original Substack and how it reminded me of Rick Beato’s piece on people not understanding something being ‘📼 🔗 out of tune’). Small potatoes really - a little bit o' fun.

At the time - over on Substack I commented on the flavor post

I couldn’t work out which bit to highlight so read the whole thing it’s the food version of Rick Beato talking about people not understanding what ‘out of tune’ means … and we wonder why the world is being turned upside down?

Then I started thinking more about a thread that emerged over on Micro.Blog, where @manton commented that he had started and been noodling a post for months before scrapping it and starting again before he published a post he had been noodling on Gaza.

🔗 The comments on the original post are informative

I think 🔗 this is the post that Manton finally settled on., which on the whole assumes a reasonably fair and neutral position that everyone applauded .. and what is really not to love? (A lot IMHO - but that is for another post.)

What follows is the nub of my worry …

The French have (had?) an expression

vive la différence

.. that in my life I have used a lot, despite the fact that according to the OED, there are around 0.3 occurrences per million words in modern written English of the word ‘vive’ - let alone ‘vive la différence’. But heh - vive la différence 😂

The phrase is used to express appreciation of diversity. Maybe that is why it has fallen out of use? Should I stop using it too?

When I was a lad I learned about standard deviation and how oft times populations fell into some kind of ‘normal distribution’ with the vast majority sitting within ‘±3𝜎’.

It seems to this bear that no matter what our private beliefs and personas might be - the crowd is forcing us into only sharing the parts of our personas that fit the vanilla of modern life, with the result that on the face of it, society is forcing conversation in ‘the town square’ to something more like ±𝜎 - and you keep anything outside of that to yourself - for fear of retaliation.

Consider 🔗 this post from @pratik for example.

Sadly the Internet has been weaponized and far from creating a place to be educated about the differences of people and countries and life - we are being forced into submission. It’s a place where ignorance is not so much celebrated as ignored - and ignored because on the whole it isn’t recognized, and if you do anything counter to the noise - expect to be piled on because 🔗 you are either with us, or against us.

Our Way - Or The Highway

The Road Less Taken .. ‘Less’, by Bob, not to be confused with ‘Not’, by the other ‘Bob’.

Bob L agrees.

Rick’s video is referenced in para' 4.