On Conformity

Beyond all the material things such as baseball or technology, one meaningful annoyance exists in conformity and individuality.
While I am a firm believer in the idea that someone can refute almost anything in life, as I am a very stubborn person and enjoy the sake of an argument, conformity is irrefutable. Oppositely, individuality is always refutable and can easily be debated as unattainable.
Conformity is determined as compliance in actions or behaviors, acceptance of norms or even as simple as agreement. I mainly think of accepting norms and complying in action as the essence of conformity. Those around us influence us all, we have all made decisions, performed actions based on thoughts of our peers.
Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri (until finally moving away to Columbia, Missouri for college), I too have conformed to several thoughts of a typical “St. Louisan.” The first question anyone from St. Louis asks a stranger they meet and find out are also from St. Louis, “Oh, what high school did you go to?” In thinking about this, I have come to a small conclusion about many people from St. Louis.
In no offense to anyone from St. Louis as I too am from St. Louis, we are terrible and unintelligent social conversationalist when it comes to first meeting and introducing ourselves to another person from St. Louis. We don’t bother to ask for a person’s name, it’s over-rated. We’re all expected to be educated college students who thrive for knowledge, but we don’t think to ask about their major or perhaps hobbies they enjoy, or even what they want to do after college. Honestly, I don’t think I ask those questions because we both know if this is our only meeting, then we will never remember each other once this conversation ends. So instead, we have some sort of alarm in our heads that when we hear or over-hear a person is from St. Louis we have to ask what high school. The person were “meeting” could even be very formal but we don’t care,
“Oh your from St. Louis, what high school?”
“Oh hello, yes my name is …”
We cut them off, “Did I ask your name? No, I didn’t. Now, what high school are you from?”

***Continued in On Social Rudeness***