I’d been ready to fire off a priceless rant about joiners and what it means to belong. It was triggered by me seeing a slew of people in high black socks with Nike SB on the side–a clear sign that you want to identify with the skater culture but aren’t actually from one of those pockets where skating was first popularized. I wanted to talk so much trash. Then I stopped and wondered, why?
I am not formally a sociologist. I abandoned that career to write stories and teach english. The writing could’ve been continued alongside the sociology, but I needed to get paid. Despite not holding the job title (yet brandishing the degree) I see things in human nature that interest and often disturb me. I get disturbed and have no other recourse but to write. This is not so much out of judgement but out of understanding and awareness. I am not disturbed because x, y, or z is wrong. I get disturbed because of how often our behaviors model that of pack animals. We laud grouping. We seek a visual leader. We grab onto anything that signifies belonging. What bothered me about the Nike SB socks is that the people who had them on weren’t wearing them because of what they felt like but because of what message the wearing sent to other people. It remains a social cue–saying what set you rep.