You’ve probably seen the videos. Someone is screaming at a barista because their oat milk latte wasn't hot enough, or maybe they’re wearing a full-body neon spandex suit while walking a leashed Roomba through a crowded mall. It’s everywhere. You scroll through TikTok or walk down a city street and the thought hits you like a brick: the world has so many freaks lately.
It’s not just your imagination.
But "freak" is a heavy word, isn't it? It’s loaded with history. It used to be about the circus—the 19th-century sideshows of P.T. Barnum where "human oddities" were put on display for a nickel. Today, the term has mutated. It’s less about biology and more about a radical, sometimes jarring, rejection of social norms. We are living in an era where the guardrails of "normal" behavior have basically evaporated.
The Death of the Monoculture and the Rise of the Weird
Remember when everyone watched the same three news channels? Me neither, honestly, but our parents do. That was the monoculture. It was a giant, invisible machine that forced everyone to act, dress, and speak within a very narrow band of "acceptability." If you stepped outside that band, you were an outcast.
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Now? The machine is broken.
The internet didn't just give us cat videos; it gave us "The Long Tail." This is a concept popularized by Chris Anderson, former editor-in-chief of Wired. He argued that our culture is moving away from a small number of "hits" (mainstream behaviors) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.
Because we can all find our "tribe" online—no matter how bizarre our interests are—we no longer feel the pressure to fit in with our physical neighbors. If you’re obsessed with Victorian taxidermy or dressing like a 17th-century plague doctor, you don’t have to hide it. You have a Discord server with 10,000 other people who think you’re totally normal. When those people step outside into the "real world," they don't leave their subculture at the door. They bring it with them.
That’s why you’re seeing more "freaks" in the wild. They aren't new. They just finally have the confidence to stop pretending.
The Psychological Toll of Constant Performance
There’s another side to this. It’s darker.
Some of the behavior that makes us think the world has so many freaks is actually a collective mental health crisis playing out in public. We’ve spent the last few years under immense pressure—economic instability, a global pandemic that rewired our brains, and the relentless "attention economy."
Psychologists often talk about "disinhibition." When people feel anonymous or pushed to their breaking point, they lose their social filters. You’ve seen the "Main Character Syndrome" posts. This is where individuals act as if they are the protagonist in a movie and everyone else is just an extra. It leads to some truly bizarre public behavior.
In 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported thousands of cases of unruly passengers. We’re talking about grown adults biting flight attendants or trying to open cabin doors at 30,000 feet. Is it because they’re "freaks"? Or is it because the modern world is a pressure cooker and some people are finally cracking?
It’s probably a bit of both.
Why We Can't Stop Looking
Why are we so obsessed with the "freaks"? Humans are biologically hardwired to notice outliers. It’s an evolutionary survival mechanism. If everyone in the tribe is calmly picking berries and one guy starts dancing naked and screaming at a tree, your brain is going to prioritize looking at the dancing guy. He might be a threat. Or he might know something you don't.
Our digital platforms exploit this lizard-brain reflex. The "For You" page doesn't show you the 99% of people who are behaving perfectly normally. It shows you the outlier. It shows you the "freak."
This creates a "frequency illusion," also known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Once you start noticing that the world has so many freaks, you see them everywhere. The algorithm feeds this. It serves you a steady diet of the strange, the uncouth, and the eccentric until your perception of reality is warped. You start to think the "normal" person is the exception.
The Influence of Extreme Aesthetics
Social media has also turned "freakishness" into a currency. Look at the "clowncore" or "liminal space" aesthetics. Look at the high-fashion runways of Balenciaga, where models walk through mud pits or carry bags that look like literal trash bags.
- Shock Value: In a world of infinite content, being "pretty" or "normal" is boring. It doesn't get clicks.
- Identity: Being a "freak" is a badge of honor for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. It represents authenticity.
- Subversion: Using "ugly" or "weird" styles is a way to protest against the polished, fake perfection of the early Instagram era.
Is "Normal" Gone for Good?
Sociologists like Émile Durkheim talked about "anomie"—a state of social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values. We are in a massive state of anomie right now.
Old institutions (church, traditional family structures, stable 40-year careers) are crumbling. In their place, we have... everything. When there is no central authority telling us how to be, people make it up as they go. This leads to a lot of experimentation.
Some of that experimentation is beautiful. It’s art. It’s the kid who feels safe enough to express their true gender identity. It’s the artist who creates something genuinely new.
But some of it is just chaos.
We are living through the Great Fragmentation. The reason it feels like the world has so many freaks is that we no longer share a single reality. We share a physical space, but our mental spaces are miles apart. Your neighbor might be living in a mental world where they are a high-level mage in a simulation, and you’re just a guy trying to get his mail.
How to Navigate a World Full of Outliers
It's easy to get cynical. It's easy to look at the state of public discourse and the sheer strangeness of modern life and want to retreat. But there’s a better way to handle the fact that the world has so many freaks.
First, realize that "normal" was always a bit of a lie. People have always been weird; they were just better at hiding it because the stakes of being caught were higher.
Second, distinguish between "harmless weird" and "harmful chaos." The guy wearing a dinosaur suit to the grocery store? Harmless. Maybe even a net positive for the world's joy levels. The person screaming at service workers or endangering others for "clout"? That's not being a freak; that's being a jerk.
Actionable Ways to Stay Sane
- Audit your feed. If you feel like the world is descending into madness, look at what you're consuming. If your entire digital diet is "People Freak Out in Public" videos, your brain will believe that's the only thing happening.
- Practice "Radical Curiosity." Instead of immediate judgment when you see someone acting "freakish," ask yourself why. What subculture are they from? What are they trying to communicate?
- Find your own center. In a world of extreme outliers, knowing who you are becomes more important. You don't have to be a "freak" to be interesting, and you don't have to be "normal" to be accepted.
- Touch grass. Seriously. Go to a park. Sit there for an hour without a phone. You’ll notice that most people are actually just... sitting there. They are walking dogs, reading books, and talking to friends. The "freaks" are a tiny percentage of the population, but they take up 90% of our mental bandwidth.
The world hasn't necessarily produced more "freaks" in a biological sense. We’ve just built a world that rewards eccentricity, documents every lapse in judgment, and removes the social cost of being "different." It’s a louder, messier, and much more colorful reality than the one our ancestors lived in.
You can either be frustrated by the lack of order, or you can enjoy the show. Just remember: to someone else out there, you’re probably the freak.
What You Should Do Next
Start by identifying your own "weird" traits that you’ve been suppressing to fit in. Don’t go screaming at people in airports, but maybe wear that shirt you think is "too much" or talk about that niche hobby you’re usually quiet about. Once you embrace your own outliers, the rest of the world starts to look a lot less threatening and a lot more like a giant, messy, fascinating experiment.
Also, take a 24-hour break from "outrage" content. Unfollow the accounts that only post videos of people behaving badly. Notice how your perception of the world shifts when you stop looking for the "freaks" and start looking for the humans.