I am special. I am different. I have my “je-ne-sais-qoui”.
Sure, we all think that — but in reality we are more similar than we want to be. Nowadays it’s so important to differentiate from the crowd, to be in your own bubble, to have your own niche, to specialize in something so particular you can’t even explain what you do at your job. But why is it so important now to be something else than the rest?
The answer is simple. We can’t stand the mediocrity.
We grew up being told we were the special ones. Every generation gets told that, I know, but mine got told it in HD, with a participation trophy in one hand and a Myspace profile in the other. And now we’re in our 30s and the math isn’t mathing. Not everyone can be the exception. Statistically, most of us are the rule.
I noticed it first in the way people describe their jobs. Nobody is “in marketing” anymore. They’re a “brand storyteller.” Nobody just cooks — they’re “reimagining Eastern European comfort food through modern lens.” (*check the screenshots down below*) I do this too, if I’m honest. I’ve caught myself dressing up a normal Tuesday like it was a personality. It’s not a moral failing, it’s just what happens when being ordinary starts to feel like a diagnosis instead of a description. If you don’t believe, check the Linkedin feed and you’ll be convinced.
Ex1:
Ex2:
Ex3:
Somewhere along the way, average became a slur. Nobody wants to be the person who just does the job well, goes home, and lives a decent, unremarkable life. We want the plot twist. The niche. The bio that makes a stranger stop scrolling. And I understand the impulse — I started this Substack anonymously because some small part of me wanted proof that I was more than the job title on my LinkedIn and I was interesting. But wanting to be different and needing to be different are not the same hunger, and I think most of us have quietly confused the two.
Here’s the part nobody puts in their bio: most interesting people had extremely uninteresting decades before anyone noticed them. The specialness, if it comes at all, comes after years of being unremarkable in a room, doing the unglamorous version of the thing, long before it had a niche or a name. We just don’t see that part. We see the highlight reel and assume it was always a highlight.
I think what we’re actually afraid of isn’t being average. It’s being forgettable. Those aren’t the same thing, but anxiety doesn’t know the difference. You can be perfectly average and still be someone’s favorite person to sit next to at dinner. You can have a completely normal job and still be the one people call when something falls apart. Being unremarkable to a stranger on the internet and being unremarkable to the people who actually know you are two entirely different verdicts, and only one of them matters.
So maybe the relief isn’t in becoming exceptional. Maybe it’s in putting the measuring tape down. Not because average is some hidden virtue we should aspire to, but because most of a life — the good parts included — is built out of ordinary days that never needed a niche to justify them.
I’m not particularly cool. I don’t have a thing, not really, not the kind you can put in a headline. And for the first time in a long time, I said that sentence and didn’t feel the need to apologize for it.
some fireworks for the last part
Why it’s okay to be normal and average
Average is just math, not a flaw. Most people are, by definition, near the middle of the curve. If everyone were exceptional, the word would stop meaning anything.
Comparing your real life to someone’s highlight reel is a rigged game. You’re measuring your unedited footage against their trailer. The gap will always feel like failure, even when nothing is actually wrong.
Being interesting to strangers is a second, invisible job. It’s not enough to do the thing anymore — now you have to narrate the thing as unique. That’s extra work layered on top of just living.
The “everyone needs a niche” pressure is recent, not natural. For most of history, being a steady, reliable presence in a family or community was the goal. The personal-brand mandate is basically a product of the last couple of social-media decades.
The people who actually love you aren’t scoring you against strangers. They love you for small, specific, repeated things — how you show up, what you notice. None of that requires a niche or a headline.
Consistency is rarer than a flashy differentiator. Teams, families, and communities run on people who reliably show up over years, not on one impressive burst of “different.”
Needing to be exceptional makes your self-worth conditional. If your value depends on being the exception, you’re always one bad quarter away from feeling like you don’t matter.
Most of what makes life good isn’t rankable at all. A good meal, a real conversation, a quiet afternoon — none of it sits on a spectrum from average to exceptional. Grading it that way is just the wrong instrument.
The chase for uniqueness is oddly conformist. Everyone is trying to be distinctive in the exact same handful of ways — the same career pivots, the same “reimagining X” language. The pursuit of difference has become one of the most homogeneous behaviors around.