[quote=Halo]
I fully agree that anti-conformity is a terrible and ridiculous thing, because it's just another type of conformity - your ideals are still dictated by society, just in a polar-opposite fashion. But non-conformity and anti-conformity are completely different things. Anti-conformity is deliberately adopting the opposite of societal norms. Non-conformity is simply not feeling pressured to conform - meaning that if your natural tendency is the same as that of those around you, you'll do the same as them, and if it isn't, you'll do something else. Your argument only works when you're discussing one specific aspect - for example, someone who anti-conforms and someone who non-conforms are indistinguishable if they both choose to dye their hair bright purple and neon green, even if their reasons for doing it are completely different. But when you look outside of a singular action or aspect like that, the difference becomes apparent - the non-conformist might have bright purple and neon green hair, but will probably act similarly to others in many other respects, because their natural tendency/desire happens to be similar to those of the people around them, whereas the anti-conformist will not act similarly to everyone else across things, indiscriminately.
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It's naive to believe that people are capable of not being influenced by their surroundings. Every decision that every person has ever made was weighed in based on what the reactions of their peers would be.