A few things have been bothering me a lot lately, mostly when dealing with other people who have decided that they are Satanists...

1. Compulsive Non-Conformity:

If any group of people are doing it, the compulsive non-conformist wants nothing to do with it. "I am not one of the herd," they say while denying themselves things which would give them pleasure. These people are so obsessed with not conforming that they will often go to great lengths to be different, even if it is a major inconvenience to themselves. They see anything which is popular as a scam, and "for chumps".

They will often lock onto some fantastic idealized past so they can talk about the "good old days" (before they were even born) -- a time in which they seem to think they would be glad to have conformed.

If someone was giving out money to everyone, these people wouldn't take it because it would be "herd behavior", and they are unlikely to have life insurance, vote, or own any comfortable clothing.

2. "Not a cliché" Satanists:

These people seem to think that because other Satanists like painting rooms black, or string up faerie lights that it's some kind of "cliché". Unaware of the concept of archetypes they will avoid doing anything that they see as being "typical" for a Satanist.

These people are also completely unaware that perhaps in any group there are certain unifying tastes or interests, and that most of the world at large has no sense of what a "Satanic Cliché" could be in the first damn place. A group of people who share the same unusual tastes does not a herd make.

This leads quite nicely into the big peeve...

3. The Burden of Being Different:

There are some who pride themselves on being different, and then go on to whine about how hard it is, in the same breath. Being unusual is something for which the general populace does not have any pity, and whining about it is something for which I have no pity. I just want to smack these people.

You are not being persecuted because you are different, although it is possible that you are different because you enjoy feeling persecuted.

The next time I hear someone complaining about how hard it is to find incense that smells like rotting meat, or black toilet paper, or a record store that carries super-rare-recordings-of-some-obscure-band-of-which-no-one-has-ever-heard, I'm going to tell them to stick their whiny little complaint where the sun does not shine.

These are often the very same people who avoid conformity all the time. Sometimes they even complain about avoiding conformity. "Oh it's so hard to use public transit without getting on a bus that has other people on it..." -- POW!

If you have interests, needs, or collections that are not popular, or just plain unusual they are going to be more expensive, more difficult to locate, and less understood by the average person -- that is just the way it is. Don't expect that suddenly there is going to be a huge change in fashion trends and every designer in the world to suddenly start making top-quality inexpensive clothes for a very small segment of the market. Don't expect superstores dedicated to the manufacture of knick-knacks which run to the tastes of a handful of people.

Unusual tastes are generally expensive tastes.

Enjoy your differences, embrace the unusual. It is not a burden, nor an inconvenience, but a different path which will take you places few others have been.

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