Against the Non-Normie

“Normie” is a volatile term. Depending on the context, it might refer to atheists, New Agers, people who watch Netflix, people who don’t do drugs, conservatives, liberals, people who care about politics, people who don’t care about politics, people who are optimistic about the future, people who are pessimistic about the future, people who read only fiction, people who don’t read at all, people who read Kant, people who enjoy dancing in the club, people who don’t enjoy dancing, or people who are monogamous. In the end, “normie” is a signifier that points to the outgroup.

If something is in, it means something is out. The outgroup plays a constitutive role for the ingroup identity. The ingroup stabilizes its identity through outgroup. In this sense, normies are needed for non-normies to be able to define themselves.

Does this sound like queer theory? If you define the queer as someone who can’t be confined in heteronormative terms, then non-normies are intellectual queers? On the surface level it seems like this claim has a point. Queers and non-normies really look alike from afar. They both define themselves against a center and use transgression as a tool. You need to look close to tell the difference.

The “normal” (heteronormative) subject only exists because it has successfully “cast out” (abjected) anything that threatens its boundaries. The queer person is the excess, the waste that is refused by the system. Reclaiming “Queer” is an act of strategic essentialism; it’s taking the site of your own exclusion and turning it into a fortress for survival.

Is it possible to say the same for the “non-normie”? Does that identity begin with the experience of being the object of the system’s disgust? No, non-normie doesn’t claim to be cast out. They claim to be superior to the system. In their case, the direction of abjection is flipped: by labelling others as “normies” or “NPCs,” they are the ones performing the act of abjection. They cast the “normal human” out as something less-than-human—mindless, soulless, rule-following automata.

Contrary to the bottom-up identity of “queer”, non-normie is a top-down and elitist exclusion. It follows the familiar script of right-wing hierarchies, where the world is divided into an enlightened ingroup and a mindless, discardable mass. “Non-normie” ideology believes in a natural and immutable hierarchy between people. Non-normie doesn’t want a more inclusive world; they want a world where NPCs recognize their own inferiority.