Petite Etoile, Habermas, response to WoolyBully

This is somewhat of a continuation of WoolyBully's post, or a commentary at least. I have always struggled with the idea of the avant-garde and the non-conformists because generally from what I have seen it is a form of conformity all on its own. Yes those who truly break out of the norm and think outside of the box and create new and beautiful things because they were inspired to do so are avant-garde and non-conformists. But for the most part, at least in my experiences, people tend to strive for non-conformity simply to be known as non-conformist. The 'non-conformist' group of people at my school all seemed to look the same to me. They were all different and 'weird', not in a derogatory sense but in the fact that they dressed and did things that were different from the mainstream people, but they all did it in the same way. They all wear the same type of 'edgy' clothes and have the same 'edgy' haircuts and listen to the same 'underground' music. They don't allow themselves to wear what everyone else is wearing, which to me is a limitation not a freedom. I see myself as non-conformist because I wear whatever I want regardless of whether or not everyone else is too. So that style of jeans is very popular, but if I like how they look and fit I'm going to wear them because of that, not because everyone else is or isn't. There are also the artists who push themselves to be avant-garde because they know we live in a society now where a large portion of people will like it simply because it is different. They're not inspired to do what they do, they just create crazy random things because they know people will like it or it will be profitable. And maybe I'm going too deep into this, but I think that the best way to be avant-garde is to really just be who you want to be, not trying to be different on purpose or trying to be like everyone else either.