The Decline of Deviance - by Adam Mastroianni

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People are less weird than they used to be. That might sound odd, but data from every sector of society is pointing strongly in the same direction: we’re in a recession of mischief, a crisis of conventionality, and an epidemic of the mundane. Deviance is on the decline. I’m not the first to notice something strange going on—or, really, the lack of something strange going on. But so far, I think, each person has only pointed to a piece of the phenomenon. As a result, most of them have concluded that these trends are: a) very recent, and therefore likely caused by the internet, when in fact most of them began long before b) restricted to one segment of society (art, science, business), when in fact this is a culture-wide phenomenon, and c) purely bad, when in fact they’re a mix of positive and negative. When you put all the data together, you see a stark shift in society that is on the one hand miraculous, fantastic, worthy of a ticker-tape parade. And a shift that is, on the other hand,

photo cred: my dad People are less weird than they used to be. That might sound odd, but data from every sector of society is pointing strongly in the same direction: we’re in a recession of mischief, a crisis of conventionality, and an epidemic of the mundane. Deviance is on the decline. I’m not the first to notice something strange going on—or, really, the lack of something strange going on. But so far, I think, each person has only pointed to a piece of the phenomenon. As a result, most of them have concluded that these trends are: a) very recent, and therefore likely caused by the…

The Decline of Deviance - by Adam Mastroianni

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