Who am I?

[Ellie]

Why must people always put other people into "groups", classifying them as if they were files in one huge file cabinet? (Ok, bad metaphor there.)

The wise men and the Wyatt

"Ah, he has his own private network of two PC's in his bedroom. He must be a geek."

"He reads a lot of books, he has his own collection in his room. He must be a nerd."

"He has a large CD collection of rock music! he must be a rocker."

"I see... he has grown his hair long and wears black all of the time. He is either a goth, or an Emo!"

"He is often seen wearing a hooded sweatshirt. Wyatt is a chav."

"I know what he is. He watches Red Dwarf all of the time. This guy's a 'Dwarfer."

"You are all wrong. I am simply Wyatt."

===================================

I guess what I am trying to say is why are people always putting people into groups?

"Oh, I hate him, he's a chav."

"She's a right slut, the people she hangs around with."

"I hate him, he's a right dirty Emo."

I blame Darwin. =)

 

[The Cry of Fallen Angels]

Everyone's different, but people are often placed in groups to quickly identify each other.

Whether it's good or wrong, I won't discuss, but it's just what people tend to do.

 

[Roman Candle]

It's easy to group people together by personality traits. I don't mean like cliques, or gangs, but people that are similar. The problem is, people are really bad at it. You can't tell much about a person by whether or not they wear a hoodie. You can tell lots about a person by how straight they stand, how long they hesitate before saying things. Taking notice of body language seems to be somewhat of a lost art now. You would have thought it would have had a revival with the whole emo thing, but 'sensitivity' seems to actually mean 'being self absorbed' at the moment.

 

[Calibre]

Alot of people will feel more comfortable purposefully placing themselves inside one of these groups to gain a sense of belonging for themselves.

I thinks that's why many people, particluarly younger people, feel as though to fit in you need to be in one of these pre-defined groups. Match the right type of music, with the right kind of hobbies with the right kind of clothing.

Therefore, though you may not be trying to classify yourself, but many people do, it's just unfortunate for the ones that are comfortable being their own classification.

 

[Sion]

Maybe its a way of seperating their traits (both good and bad) from yourself.

For instance, "Yeah, the only reason he's better than me is because he's a jock" and "I dont have to worry about overusing my computer, I'm not a nerd"

 

[BlackStaticWolf]

Classifying people into categories is simply how the human mind functions. We all do it... there's nothing right or wrong about it. It's just the way it is.

Now, attempting to classify someone based on only one element is almost always guaranteed to yield faulty results. You can't really say that someone is a rocker based solely on a large CD collection. You almost always need multiple criteria to really classify someone like that. There are a couple exceptions... you could say that someone is a bibliophile (lover of books) based solely on a large book collection.

Taking notice of body language seems to be somewhat of a lost art now.

Yeah, definitely a lost art. Half the time people think I'm fucking psychic or something just because I pay close attention to their body language and took the effort to learn what it means. I get comments about how "insightful" I am all the time... I'm not insightful at all, I'm just observant.

 

[Ellie]

True. i think the only time I have even heard of looking at body language was in business class, where one of us had to pretend to be Sir Alan Sugar and the other one a new employee =)

 

[Krank The Tank]

Alot of people will feel more comfortable purposefully placing themselves inside one of these groups to gain a sense of belonging for themselves.

I thinks that's why many people, particluarly younger people, feel as though to fit in you need to be in one of these pre-defined groups. Match the right type of music, with the right kind of hobbies with the right kind of clothing.

Therefore, though you may not be trying to classify yourself, but many people do, it's just unfortunate for the ones that are comfortable being their own classification.

I agree. Sometimes if you can match your hobbies, interests, etc. with other people's, you can find a group of friends quickly, especially if you're new at a school/in town/etc. (When I say "if you can" I mean, if you find people who are similar to you, not try to be like those people so they hang out with you)

Sometimes labelling DOES help, because if I were to say "Oh there's a group of overly sensitive kids sitting over there" you might look around and think "Huh?" but if I said "Oh, there's some emo kids sitting over there" you would know exactly who I was talking about.

 

[Lene]

Labelling itself is natural. It's what people do with the labelling that's good or bad.

I still believe that this is why gender, race, and sexual orientation are not purely biological labels because of the inconsistency of who gets labelled what. Japanese are Asian practically everywhere else except South Africa (under Apartheid where they are considered White). Transsexuals are barely even acknowledged in America, and in other places you can switch gender without any surgery or anything. There are places where people are considered hetrosexual, yet they participate in homosexual acts because of cultural tradition.

Sorry for getting a bit off topic, but I just wanted to bring that kind of angle into things.

 

[ryanwh]

Who are you to define what other people see you as? They have every right to give you their own label of what you're about. You may be "just wyatt" to YOU, but maybe you're "whiney guy" to me.

 

[Calibre]

A whiney guy is more of a persoanlity trait whereas he was suggesting how people categorise based on past times, clothing and music ownership. A whiney guy could be from any stereotype group, such as emo, punk rocker, goth, jock, chav.

I already stated above that it's a part of life and there is nothing you can do about it, but if all people judged you on those three things, I for one would have a lot less frinds, if any, seeing as most of my close friends would "stereotypically" consider me making rpgs as "sad" thing to do. Luckily they don't.

...Maybe Wyatt wants to give himself his own label because he knows himself better than anyone observing from outside does, and is tired of being pigeon-holed incorrectly.

 

[ryanwh]

Well then he needs to just deal with the fact that everyone else deals with the same exact problem. Im sorry he has problems with people having opinions on him and names for character archtypes cus, like everyone else he thinks he's a unique flower, but taking that away from them would give wyatt a new label: faschist.

 

[Calibre]

I agree, but it's most likely the fact that people do pre-judge is why people seek to be in a stereotype in the first place, so they can avoid it altogether. Therefore anyone wanting to say, where the fashion of a goth, but listen to Eminem and write poetry about love too is going to most likely have a hard time with other social groups.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm an equal split of just about every stereotype there is and I'm not personally concerned one bit.