Efforts to be different routinely converge into uniformity.

Evidence

When the mathematician and neuroscientist Jonathan Touboul published a research paper in 2014 about the behavior of neurons in the brain changing in order to be different from the ones around it, he called it the Hipster Effect: “Trying hard to be different often ends up in hipsters consistently taking the same decisions, in other words all looking alike.” — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 164

Categorization

• SEED: The anti-conformity paradox — hipsters ricocheting into sameness — could be an essay on how distinctiveness-seeking predictably fails in fashion, subcultures, and counterculture.
• DEFINE: Names the Hipster Effect for anti-conformity converging into imitation.
• XREF: connects to: Whole groups strengthen as their parts become impersonal and interchangeable — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 3454; Mixed individuals strategically select contextual identity to jointly satisfy affiliation and uniqueness. — Anna X. Huang, Jacqueline M. Chen, and Juliane Degner, Being One or the Other, Both or…, 92; Segregation became the assumed natural norm while integration seemed unnatural — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 447 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Producing sameness requires creating and externalizing difference #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 20
• Forced unification into large structures intensifies differentiation and repulsion among parts. #complicates (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 660
• Complete segregation emerges even when individuals only mildly avoid being a minority #exemplifies (0.80) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 824
• Whole groups strengthen as their parts become impersonal and interchangeable #expands (0.78) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 3454
• Liberal individualizing and messianic group-rule modes of racial governance ultimately converge. #exemplifies (0.77) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1436
• Segregation became the assumed natural norm while integration seemed unnatural #exemplifies (0.76) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 447
• Individual diversity can be conceived as a division of labor among unique beings #complicates (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 691
• Mixed individuals strategically select contextual identity to jointly satisfy affiliation and uniqueness. #complicates (0.74) — Anna X. Huang, Jacqueline M. Chen, and Juliane Degner, Being One or the Other, Both or Neither, 92
• Arbitrary conceptual distinctions become inviolable norms through social forces, not inherent validity #expands (0.73) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 361