Differences Attract
It’s no secret that my favorite TV show of the last several years was ‘Community’ – a comedy about a group of misfits that end up at community college together for various reasons. It was written by Dan Harmon after attending community college to be near a girl he was seeing at the time – he became fascinated with the unlikely collection of people thrown together in college, and wrote the TV series off the back of it.
If you watch TV shows like Community, and movies like Larry Crowne, you end up wondering what it would be like if you ditched your job and went back to college. Of course the chances of ending up in a study group in the first place – let alone one where the participants become friends is extremely unlikely.
Then I started thinking. Maybe the likes of WordPress, Tumblr, Twitter, and so on – the surviving social communities on the internet – maybe they are the equivalent to the misfits of Community or Larry Crowne.
I have made some amazing friends by taking the chance on the internet, and sharing a little of my weirdness. I have often wondered if my mundane posts about this and that are really worth posting – and written as much – and ever time I have done so, I have received almost immediate encouragement to keep posting.
I don’t think I really have a point to make here. Or maybe I do. Maybe the point is that being a misfit isn’t all that bad. We’re not so much weird – just different – and different makes us interesting to each other.