Fractally misfit
Some people ("socially well-adjusted people") fit into the default/mainstream society and are popular/charismatic/well-liked to some degree. Of the remaining people ("the misfits"), some of them form fields/communities/subcultures such as the broader STEM community, and are popular/charismatic/well-liked to some degree within this community. Within this community there are also misfits, and some of them form a sub-community, such as the rationalist community or the math nerds community (these groups then have their own sub-communities of misfits, like heterodox EA or whatever). Of course, reality isn't as simple as this (e.g. there are people in the sub-community who are also well-liked in some broader community), but I hope this makes sense to some extent. Now, I think one of the distinct properties of what it's like to be me is that as we keep narrowing down the communities into misfits of misfits of misfits, I am still a misfit among the sub-sub-sub-...-community; or in any case, what is how it feels.
Interests are fractal, so being a misfit is also fractal. But also: there's a fine line between "too popular that there's a bunch of people I don't like" (like math in general) vs "too rare that nobody but me cares about it" (like my specific way of writing about math). So I need to find some balance that includes some people but not others, that compromises some of my originality but keeps others...?
