NiceMemes

I care. Because other people's perceptions of me have a real impact on my life. It impacts the jobs I might get, the people I might date, the parties I might get invited to, and the people who might want to be my friends.

The thing about being weird and quirky is that it is art - and bad art is not appealing to almost anyone. A good "quirkiness" needs to hang together - it needs to have good execution, an awareness of the social norms around it even if it is breaking them. And the quirky person must play the role they have set for themselves - either as a deliberate act of art, or else by choosing to emphasize those features of themselves which naturally manifest most readily. And, doing this well, you can become a more appealing, unique, or endearing person.

But that doesn't mean that every impulse you have needs to be expressed at every time. Being the 35 year old in the IT department who wears a Naruto headband might be quirky but... why? There is a common cultural understanding that doing this is in bad taste - so even if you have other coworkers who like Naruto who you may very well like to be friends with, they will avoid you, because you are demonstrating an inability to either understand or abide by common social norms.

Which is what cringe is - similar to how something can feel painfully hot to warn us that we will get burned if we touch it, cringe is a feeling of pain to warn us that we will get hurt socially if we get too close to the source of pain. It is your mind-body telling you that this person is dangerous to your social standing in whatever group you are a part of.

Hence, Naruto-headband-guy has a quite poor work life. He may have some people who are friendly with him - but no real friends. Few, if any, more experienced coworkers want to mentor him. His supervisor is likely not very fond of him. And as a result, he is typically put on the worse projects, is never promoted, and rarely gets pay raises. Of course, maybe he just doesn't care about any of those things - but it seems difficult to imagine someone happy to take a $30k pay cut for the sake of a minor fashion accessory.