You're Weird by Ashley Lasko

I’ve always loved irony, especially situational irony. Whenever something ironic happens I'm always at least smiling, if not struggling to stand in the midst of a fit of laughter. One thing that I always thought was so ironic, and puzzling, was the concept of something being weird.

Something is unusual or different is often considered weird. Wearing polka-dots with stripes or socks with sandals in considered weird. Having ketchup on something other than fries or acting a certain way can also give you the title. However, if something unusual is weird wouldn’t being completely normally be as weird as you can get? If someone had nothing to define them, they were as plain and normal as someone could be, they would be weird. They would have no personality or something to make them different. By this logic, being weird in some way makes you normal. So what makes everyone different, makes them weird, in the same way makes them normal. Ironically enough, the idea that to be normal you have to be weird and to be weird you have to be normal is weird itself.

Another thing that makes this even weirder is that for something to be weird, something has to be normal. Socks and sandal are only a weird combination since no socks and sandals are considered normal. Certain genres of music are considered weird since Pop is considered normal. What this basically means is that something weird is an opinion. The majority agrees what is normal and what isn’t, causing things to be normal or weird. However, if whether something is weird or not is an opinion and not a fact, than nothing can actual be weird, since what is weird depends on each individual. Saying something is weird is as accurate as me listing the best desserts. It’s biased.

This makes things even more convoluted, since that means that the totally normal person that seems weird may actually be weird to someone else, which would make them normal to that person. However, this does not make them weird since weirdness is a matter of opinion and no matter how many people view them as weird s/he cannot be weird on a factual level. This then brings into to question of possessing characteristics altogether. Can someone actually be funny, cute, smart, or weird if they only are because the opinions of others say so? Is this the wrong way to look at characteristics, should we be looking at it from the perspective of time, which a human creation that does not exist? Is this at least slightly over exaggerated and something we probably should not invest much time into?

I don’t have the answers to the first two questions (and arguably the third is asking for an opinion, and opinions can arguably never be fact so I can technically never have to correct answer for the third question) but in regards to the third question, going any further into this would spend some time you could definitely put elsewhere.

As my final blog, I wanted to do something a little different. Admittedly, this is still along the basis of trying to introduce a perspective on a topic and expand on it; however I obviously changed things around. Instead of focusing on issues or something impactful, I decided to look at something simple and twist into something far more complex. Unnecessary? Yes. Confusing? I did have to read my blog a few time to actually understand what I was saying. Was it different and eye-opening? I hope so.

Thank you all for reading my last blog and, to students, good luck on finals this year and years to come. I may seem like we have some breathing room until June, however as students we all know that what really spans a few weeks of the calendar passes in a matter of seconds.