You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps

I’ve met more messed-up, weird, freaky, oddball, and flat-out crazy people in my last six months online than I did in my entire ten years working at the S&M Slip n’ Slide Factory for the Criminally Insane in Hoboken, New Jersey — just across the street from the Klingon Language University.

It’s strange. Everyone I know who is successful online is crazy. Every one of them is unconventional. Many have A.D.D., and some have mood disorders. Most are wacky and have a dark — if not deviant — sense of humor. The crazier these people are, the better they seem to do online. I’ve come to accept it. I’ve come to revel in it.

I dig weirdoes. And in fact, I’ve realized I’m one of them. Sure, I’m a middle-class white guy, but I’m totally unconventional and scatterbrained and I have a ton of stupidly out-there ideas. I have a history of panic attacks. I think disgusting things are funny (search on YouTube for “Kermit 2 girls 1 cup reaction,” but only if there are no kids or your boss around. SIDE-SPLITTINGLY hilarious to me). I expose way, way too much of my thoughts and emotions online. I’m a geek. I enjoy Star Trek. I can’t hear the name of baseball player “Albert Pujols” (pronounced “poo holes”) without giggling like a little girl.

Face it: I’m a freak.

Which is actually a good segue, because I got it into my head to write this post when my two favorite oddballs, Pace and Kyeli of Freak Revolution, released their Freak Revolution Manifesto yesterday.

Now, in case you haven’t heard about it, the Manifesto is all about changing the world. (The full version, “changing the fucking world,” was probably trademarked by Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz. Naomi actually tried to trademark “fuck” in and of itself, but the trademark office told her that it was public domain. Then she was all like, “But I invented it, fucker.” Still no dice.)

I got an advance copy of the Manifesto last week, read it, and really dug it.

So, having done that, I wanted to say something.

You listening?

I want to say it to everyone out there who considers themselves mainstream. And what I’m going to say, I say as a reformed quasi-mainstreamer, because I’m a white heterosexual middle class religiously unremarkable man living in America. You live that way and the mainstream has its way with you. Much like going to prison and being indoctrinated by the Aryan Brotherhood and the Black Nationals (or both; I’ll just say that I’m good at reframing and that membership has its advantages), when you grow up in the middle of this country’s social strata, you get sucked into it even if you’re a weirdo at your core.

So as someone who knows the mainstream perspective, I want to say this: Listen to these freaks. Read them. Think hard. And change the world.

See, I have to admit something. I’m a really tolerant guy. I have friends of all races, religions, creeds, Hatfields or McCoys. I’m cool with gays, punks, goths, whatever. I dig what they’re about and I’m totally behind them. But…

…but…

… but I’ll admit that deep down, I used to pretty much just expect them to be weird.

And weirdoes, while entertaining, aren’t people you take seriously.

I’m not proud of this. I blame Beverly Hills 90210 and American Express commercials. Those things teach you that mainstream is the way things are supposed to be. You can tolerate the fringes, but that’s not where sense and logic are to be found. That’s not where leadership or governance lies. That’s not where good ideas lie in wait to be discovered.

You meet a lesbian bisexual witch tattooed and blue-haired half-transsexual couple and you think, I like these people. I can hang with these people. These people have some interesting ideas.

But from that 90210 perspective, you don’t, on a deep-deep level, truly expect to learn from them. You don’t expect to hear a set of ideas, laid out so perfectly and sensibly, from people so far from the norm. The top of your head likes the idea of a revolution of freaks, but the bottom part kind of thinks subconsciously that it’ll be about waving anarchist flags while listening to Joy Division.

Dammit, I’m not proud of what my conditioning has made me think. But I’m saying it here and now because plenty of you reading this consider yourself mainstream and while you may be tolerant of the weirdoes around you, you may not truly give full air time to their ideas. You may not realize that you’re a weirdo, too.

My name is Johnny B. Truant. I’m a straight white guy living in the middle of America with my wife and 2.5 kids.

My name is Johnny B. Truant, and I’m a freak.

So think on this for a minute:

Kyeli and Pace’s tagline (I’m switching their order because much like McCartney to Lennon, I imagine Kyeli gets tired of always being second) is that “Normal people won’t change the world. We will.” So now you’re imagining crowed of slow-moving people with black eyeliner and you’re hearing Ian Curtis singing that love will tear us apart. But that’s dismissive. And it doesn’t really stop to think about the fact that this internet culture is full of weirdoes. Founded by freaks. Run every day by people outside of the mainstream.

Who first embraced the internet? Geeks. Programmers. Hackers. People who couldn’t find a niche in their outside world, so they found it online. If you live in Duluth, you’re not going to find a terribly thriving punk rock community. But online? It’s a snap. The internet helps the freaks come together. It helps the outsiders find a group that they can be inside.

In other words, whether you realize it or not, the very fact that you’re here means that a hell of a lot of you are freaks. You think you’re in the mainstream, but you’re not.

So who will change the world for the better? You will. The freaks will. It won’t be the people who are content. It will be the people who don’t fit, who are discontent, who aren’t entrenched in the current paradigm.

Look, I don’t know if the world can be changed. Look up philosophers Hobbes and Locke, and then come back here and finish this sentence because I don’t know which one of those guys I agree with.

But what I know is that the Freak Revolution Manifesto is really, really interesting. It’s a thinker. If you open your mind to learning from people who weren’t placed into a teaching position by an institution, you’ll walk away scratching your head. You’ll start to think, “Wow, that is the problem with the modern world.”

So you should go and get it. Read it. It’s free; you have nothing to lose.

Except for your current way of thinking, that is.