Eli: I blame the school environment in general for people’s bitterness. Seriously. I don’t hold anything against you. (He sincerely believed that. Later, he explained, “People feel a need to act in conformity to what everyone else wants them to do. I know that half the people aren’t really like how they act in school.”)
Debra: because I know that I am/was a jerk. And I just wanted you to know that I do feel really bad
Eli: Thanks, that actually really means a lot. To be honest, I didn’t think you were mean. I just thought you didn’t like me as a person.
Debra: no I do. But at school I get negative feelings towards you FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON
Debra: and I do like you so I’m like wtf brain. Stop it.
Eli: I really appreciate that you said all that, but you didn’t have to.
Debra: okayy. But if it is okay, i’d like to go with y’all this weekend
Eli: YES!!!
Debra asked Eli for a ride and logged off.
That Saturday, Eli picked up Raj and Debra, who immediately unplugged Eli’s iPod and replaced it with hers. They met Ashley at the mall. Eli had been discouraged that only three of eleven of his supposedly closest friends had shown up, but what was worse, the three were unenthusiastic. When Eli attempted to keep the conversation flowing, someone inevitably talked over him.
Eli found himself walking behind the others, who traipsed through the crowded walkways side by side. Whenever Eli tried to step into their line, Raj shifted so that Eli couldn’t squeeze in. On one such attempt, Raj said, “He’s so socially awkward!” to the others in a voice he knew Eli could hear. I was nice enough to give you a ride, and that’s how you treat me? Eli thought.
After Debra and Ashley veered off to check out a girls’ store, Eli followed Raj into The North Face. Eli was at the mall for the company; he hadn’t planned to shop. He trailed Raj around the store, expecting to chat. As Raj thumbed a jacket, he turned to Eli and said, “Why don’t you just go look around yourself?” When Eli obliged, Raj meandered toward another store, leaving Eli feeling awkward because they had told the girls they would be in The North Face and Eli thought it would be “tacky” to make them search the mall.
Eventually the group rendezvoused at Barnes & Noble so Eli could buy a new biography. Undeterred by his friends’ arguments that fiction was a much better genre, he picked up a biography that interested him. “What is that?!” Debra asked.
“A Grace Kelly book.” Eli liked Grace Kelly because she had been in Hitchcock films.
“You are such a movie junkie. ‘Oh, I won’t watch anything after 1970.’ ”
“I just think most of the good movies were made before 1970,” Eli said. He asked Debra, “Have you seen any Hitchcock movies?” She hadn’t. “Okay, you haven’t seen a movie until you’ve seen a Hitchcock movie.” Eli mentioned a few specific Hitchcock films he loved.
“We get it,” she said. “You like Hitchcock. I don’t understand why you don’t like any recent movies. They’re so good!”
Later that weekend, Eli pondered his disenchantment over what should have been his big social outing. The mall trip had reaffirmed his desire to get as far from home as possible, as quickly as he could. “I’ve been wondering,” he mused, “am I really cynical toward society? Is there even a place for me? What is it even like to have friends? I feel really isolated because there isn’t anyone who identifies with me. I have a few strong ideals and interests: adventurous travel, old movies, conservatism, Agatha Christie books, British music. But there isn’t a single person who seems to relate with me on any level, especially when taking those interests into account. I guess part of the reason I want to get out of Virginia is to leave everything behind.”
Soon afterward, Eli was rummaging through the mail on his father’s kitchen table when an envelope caught his eye. The return address label read “Westcoast University Admissions.” Eli held his breath. Uh-oh, he thought, the envelope is super-thin. He skipped to the end of the letter to determine whether he wanted to read the beginning. He saw a line about sending him more information in the mail at a later date. He began to get excited. Finally he forced himself to read the first line of the letter. “Congratulations!” Wow, this is it! he thought. It’s all over. I never have to live in Virginia again. He couldn’t wait to make the move.
______
THE OUTCAST SUCCESS STORY
In 2010, press headlines crowed about Lady Gaga’s sudden meteoric rise to iconic stardom. Known as much for her unique apparel and outrageous performances as for her music, the singer and shock artist debuted at number four on Forbes Celebrity 100: The World’s Most Powerful Celebrities. Time also included her on its 2010 list, prompting Cyndi Lauper to observe, “When I see somebody like Gaga, I sit back in admiration. . . . I did an interview with her once, and she showed up with a sculpture on her head. I thought, ‘How awesome.’ Being around her, I felt like the dust was shaken off of me. I find it very comforting to sit next to somebody and not have to worry that I look like the freak. She isn’t a pop act, she is a performance artist. She herself is the art. She is the sculpture.”
Lady Gaga’s outfits are not just a fashion statement. They are a lifestyle statement intended to encourage fellow cafeteria fringe to be themselves. “I didn’t fit in in high school and I felt like a freak,” she told Ellen DeGeneres. “So I like to create this atmosphere for my fans where they feel like they have a freak in me to hang out with and they don’t feel alone.”
At her all-girls private school in New York City, Lady Gaga was a self-proclaimed “nerdball in theater and chorus” whom classmates teased for her eccentric style. Meanwhile she played open mic nights at clubs as early as age fourteen; by age twenty, she was signed to a label. “This is really who I am, and it took a long time to be okay with that,” she said. “Maybe in high school you . . . feel discriminated against. Like you don’t fit in and you want to be like everyone else, but not really. . . . Sometimes in life you don’t always feel like a winner, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a winner; you want to be like yourself. I want my fans to know it’s okay. . . . It’s all about letting people who don’t fit in know that someone out there is fine with who they are—and that other people have gone through the same thing.”
Like Lady Gaga, quirk theory assures marginalized young people that someday they will be welcomed for the same reasons that classmates relegate them to what one former outcast called “the land of misfit toys.” Whereas the popular crowd in school might reward conformity, aggression, and a silent acceptance of the status quo, people outside of the school setting tend to admire entirely different qualities.
In a comprehensive review of literature about success, happiness, and influence, the same core qualities repeatedly appear as the characteristics that cause people to be respected, honored, and appreciated outside of school. They are applicable in both personal and professional lives, and to artistic endeavors, corporate undertakings, and the vast range of pursuits in between. And all of these qualities are found in the cafeteria fringe in droves.
CREATIVITY, ORIGINALITY
No matter how trite the observation, there can be little doubt that creativity and originality, earmarks of the cafeteria fringe, are valued exponentially more outside of middle school and high school walls. Companies scramble to come up with The Next Big Thing. The “life of the party” is the adult who has the most interesting stories or the most novel ideas. The celebrity sphere revolves mostly around actors, musicians, and fashionistas, all of whose public works involve artistic expression.
Many companies that have distinguished themselves in the twenty-first century have done so by prioritizing creativity and originality. HBO, which holds the record for Emmy nominations in a single year, is successful because of its originality. When deciding the fate of a show, HBO executives ask themselves, “Is it different? Is it distinctive? Is it good?” Southwest Airlines, which focuses on an unusual low-cost, direct point-to-point route system and ebullient customer se
rvice, is the only airline that has thrived in recent years; in 2010 Southwest celebrated its thirty-seventh consecutive year of profitability. Even training for the most senior government executives in the Senior Executive Service emphasizes unique thought processes. The six-week intensive training course makes a number of suggestions to jump-start that thinking, including commuting different routes to start the day by thinking differently. As William Taylor, the founding editor of Fast Company magazine, has written, “The work that matters most [is] the work of originality, creativity, and experimentation.”
Yet so many of the students who demonstrate these qualities in school are branded as weird. Take Steven Spielberg. The legendary director has said that classmates saw him as “a real nerd—the skinny, acne-faced wimp who gets picked on by big football jocks.”
In one high school, Spielberg was beaten up because he was Jewish. “I got smacked and kicked to the ground during PE, in the locker room, in the showers,” he said. “Pennies were thrown at me in the study hall in a very quiet room of one hundred students. People coughed the word ‘Jew’ in their hand as they passed me in the hallway.”
In another high school, students mocked him because they thought he was “weird” and “independent-minded,” said a classmate who played in the school band with Spielberg. At that time in his life, Spielberg was already preoccupied with filming, constantly snapping photographs with the camera he carried around school. His mother recalled, “He always saw things differently than anybody else.” Described by classmates as shy, introverted, and ostracized, he “formed his own tight little social circle in response to his exclusion from the jockocracy of Arcadia High School,” according to biographer Joseph McBride. “Steve’s friends were mostly creative oddballs like him, and the things they were doing were not mainstream interests at Arcadia. When he became part of the drama group, it was the first time he ‘realized there were options besides being a jock or a wimp.’ But he still could not help regarding that group as ‘my leper colony.’ ”
Outside of school, Spielberg concentrated on filmmaking, creating impressive special effects and shooting movies in his backyard. For one of those movies, he cast his most intimidating bully as a fighter squadron leader. “He was my nemesis; I dreamed about him,” Spielberg said. “Even when he was in one of my movies, I was afraid of him. But I was able to bring him over to a place where I felt safer: in front of my camera. I didn’t use words. I used a camera, and I discovered what a tool and a weapon, what an instrument of self-inspection and self-expression it is. . . . I had learned that film was power.” The film won first place in a statewide amateur film competition. Spielberg was fourteen. He would go on to become what the New York Times called “the most bankable director in the business,” and to win countless awards, among them Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for Schindler’s List, the first major Hollywood film to portray the Holocaust.
FREETHINKING, VISION
“Big ideas come from big thinkers: the eccentric genius, the inspired founder, the visionary CEO,” Fast Company’s William Taylor wrote. “Business history is filled with heroic tales of breakthroughs fueled by unique imagination and individual determination. Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone. Henry Ford and the assembly line. Edward Land and instant photography.” Innovation of thought is just as important as creativity of expression. We wouldn’t have progress—cures for diseases, ways to harness new energy sources—without the foresight of people who devise or are willing to operate under different philosophies and points of view.
In 1896, French naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre developed an interest in processionary caterpillars, which move in long, head-to-tail lines. Fabre observed the caterpillars circling the rim of a flowerpot in a continuous loop. He placed the caterpillars’ favorite food “not a hands’ breadth away.” For seven days, the caterpillars instinctively followed each other around the rim until they died of hunger and exhaustion. They were so focused on the trail in front of them that they could not see that a simple six-inch deviation from the line would save their lives.
As opposed to the habitual human equivalents of these followers, freethinkers are people who are able and willing to look beyond the rim of the flowerpot. Fortune magazine’s Manager of the Century, Jack Welch, who, during his tenure as CEO of General Electric turned it into the world’s most valuable corporation, addressed the importance of this trait in his book Winning. He sought in a senior-level leader “the ability to see around corners. Every leader has to have a vision and the ability to predict the future, but good leaders must have a special capacity to anticipate the radically unexpected.”
The cafeteria fringe are well-suited to seeing around corners; they are not so mired in the mainstream that they cannot step back and view multiple angles. Blue demonstrated such freethinking when he opined that Facebook could take over Google. (Incidentally, I ran Blue’s argument by The Google Story coauthor Mark Malseed, who said, “Overall his point is valid and shows a deeper understanding of how these services and businesses truly work.”)
Living life on a tangent to the prevailing norms places the cafeteria fringe uniquely at the threshold of new movements and new directions. As National Book Award winner Don DeLillo observed in the Hungry Mind Review, “The Writer . . . is situated now, if anywhere, on the margins of culture. But isn’t this where he belongs? How could it be any other way? And in my personal view this is a perfect place to observe what’s happening at the dead center of things. . . . The more marginal, perhaps ultimately the more trenchant and observant and finally necessary he’ll become.”
Experts say that this kind of vision is why Albert Einstein was able to understand physics’ biggest puzzles. Considered a rebel and a loner as a child, Einstein, said a colleague, “was inclined to separate himself from children his own age and to engage in daydreaming and meditative musing.” He often preferred to tackle mathematical proofs than to socialize. “Play and playmates were forgotten. For days on end he sat alone, immersed in the search for a solution, not giving up until he found it,” his sister told biographer Walter Isaacson.
As a child, Einstein was slow to speak. “When I ask myself how it happened that I in particular discovered the relativity theory,” he said, “it seemed to lie in the following circumstance. The ordinary adult never bothers his head about the problems of space and time. But I developed so slowly that I began to wonder about space and time only when I was already grown up. Consequently I probed more deeply into the problem than an ordinary child would have.”
At school, Einstein wrote, being bullied gave him “a lively sense of being an outsider.” Although he earned good grades, he was so uncomfortable with the “mechanical,” militaristic teaching style, which was devoid of creativity, that his obvious aversion to it led teachers to push him out of school before graduation.
Being an outsider helped Einstein immensely; because he wasn’t accepted into the physics establishment, he had nothing to lose by challenging the status quo. “He comes in entirely as an outsider. He lets his mind wander. He’s not endangering his academic position because he doesn’t have one, and he can take those risks,” Einstein scholar Gerald Holton told the Boston Globe. While other scientists metaphorically climbed the north face of Mount Everest, Holton said, Einstein thought “it’s the wrong mountain and it’s the wrong face, and you ought to really be hovering above it all.”
Einstein developed the theory of relativity precisely because of his different way of thinking. “Other scientists had come close to his insight, but they were too confined by the dogmas of the day. Einstein alone was impertinent enough to discard the notion of absolute time, one of the sacred tenets of classical physics since Newton,” Isaacson wrote in a Wired article. “What made Einstein special was his impertinence, his nonconformity, and his distaste for dogma. Einstein’s genius reminds us that a society’s competitive advantage comes not from teaching the multiplication or periodic tables but from nurturing rebels. Grinds have their place, but unruly geek
s change the world.”
RESILIENCE
Activist Marian Wright Edelman is the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, the nation’s foremost child advocacy organization; she was also the first African-American admitted to the Mississippi Bar. When asked for her secret to success, she identified two characteristics that happen to be applicable to people who have been on the margins. She said, “Give me the man or woman who sees the big picture, who grabs the larger view. Show me the child who has heart and purpose and stands firm amid ridicule and defeat. It is the homestretch that builds the individual.”
Resilience is a globally admired quality. The character-building and fortitude gained from missteps can lead to endurance, patience, passion, growth, knowledge, and a host of other key qualities. Bestselling business author Jim Collins called this feature “the hardiness factor,” in praise of people who have used a negative experience “as a defining event that made them stronger.”
Television and film actor Freddie Prinze Jr., a onetime teen idol, is an example of this type of resilience. He was too young to know his famous comedian father, who, under the influence of drugs, killed himself when Prinze was a baby. But he had to cope with the resulting feeling of abandonment, combined with constant reminders of the void in his life; reporters grilled him about his dad even as he stepped onto his school bus. He dealt with these issues by creating a fantasy world in which to escape.
An avid comic book collector, Prinze found comfort in Stan Lee’s characters because, he said, “somehow they embraced who they were and they became great heroes. They made me feel that everything could be okay.” He especially related to the X-Men, outcasts who used their superpowers for good even as society rejected them only because they were different. “I would always pretend that I was this new member of the X-Men, this kid, this young boy, who really didn’t fit in with society because he couldn’t control his power,” Prinze has said. “I named him Prism because he would absorb emotion from other people. Like, if they were mean to him . . . it would be released in all these different directions, and he wouldn’t be able to focus his energy.”
The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School Page 18