Latest news with #weird
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Yahoo
'I Felt Like I Was Being Watched': 31 US Towns That Totally Freaked People Out
Do you love all things weird, dark, and creepy? Subscribe to the That Got Dark newsletter to get your weekly dopamine fix of the macabre delivered RIGHT to your inbox! We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about the mysterious, cult-like, bad-vibes towns they came across in the United States. And I'm not exaggerating when I say there were A LOT of responses. Here are the sketchiest ones: Note: Apologies if your hometown is on this everyone's experience is personal, and who knows, maybe you agree with what these people experienced? of Refuge/Miracle Village, Florida — "It's a community for registered sex offenders. Tucked away in the vast, quiet stretches of South Florida, Miracle Village stands out for reasons that make you blink twice. Built in the 1960s for people who worked on sugar cane fields, it now houses a population you won't find gathered anywhere else. Florida's hardline laws push people convicted of sexual offenses to the margins, and these margins lead straight to Miracle Village. It's a place where they're allowed to exist, one of the very few places that'll have them. Here's where it gets sticky, though. The town offers a shot at redemption, but at what cost? Some folks think cramming everyone with the same past into one place is a ticking time bomb. But life there? It's quiet. Almost too quiet. The village's isolation serves two purposes: keeping the residents out of sight and giving them some peace, a sanctuary of sorts. It's eerie and leery." —smellycowboy28 New Mexico — "Took a wrong turn going to Albuquerque on Christmas Eve. Google Maps said it was a straight line to the connecting highway, and it and through a mountain. The road had sharp turns and steep dropoffs with no rails. It was getting dark, and fog started to settle in — puddles on the road would soon be ice. We were very low on gas, and the hairpin roads were too small to turn around. Cell phone reception dropped off. Thank God we rolled into not. Nothing was open. Not a soul in sight. We found a cop car sitting under a lamp in the tiny town square. I got out of the car to approach him, and when I got close, I saw the cop was a mannequin! Oh, hell no. I ran to the car, and right then, two teenagers walked out of the fog. Out of desperation, we asked how to get to the main highway. They showed us a road and we coasted on empty away from that creepy town and down the mountain. The Hillsboro has eyes!" —Anonymous Related: Texas — "I was born in Beaumont, near Vidor, as was my father. Vidor has always been a sundown town, and we avoided it if at all possible. When we lived there (mid-1970s), they still had signs posted saying, 'N-word, don't let the sun set on your head in Vidor.' I'm sure they are still there." —mindymegasloucks A sundown town refers to a community in the United States that historically excluded nonwhite people — especially Black Americans — through formal laws, unofficial policies, intimidation, or violence. The term comes from signs that were often posted at town or city limits telling non-white people to leave by sundown. Oregon — "Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He started a cult, tried to take over a town, poisoned the city (not the entire city), and had armed guards. Just Google the name. Too much BS to remember all the things he tried to get away with." —evilminion33 Popularized by the Netflix docuseries Wild Wild Country, the Rajneeshees (followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) founded a commune called Rajneeshpuram in central Oregon during the '80s. They fought with locals for many years, and there was even an internal assassination attempt on Bhagwan's personal doctor. Michigan — "It's a (not-so-former) Klan town. Not so much creepy in the background vibes, but blatant white supremacy and racist cult vibes for sure." —Anonymous Washington — "It's where the Ramtha School of Enlightenment 'cult' is headquartered. I visited a bookstore that was all new age and had Ramtha-related items, and I bought a bookmark with just a picture of the eyes of the leader, J. Z. Knight. Weird place. " —Anonymous, 43, Maine City, Iowa — "Everyone is Dutch and Christian, they don't accept you into the community unless you join the church. Main Street has fake fronts on all the buildings to make them look Dutch. When I lived there, I was in middle school, and they pumped canned music through the town on loudspeakers. You could be arrested for mowing your lawn on Sunday. It was freaky." —Anonymous Vermont — "A friend and I stopped at the Yellow Deli in Rutland before we had any idea who it was run by. We dealt with several people who were so ridiculously polite and friendly that it was actually kind of creepy; my friend and I joked that they must be in a cult. I got the 'Deli Rose' sandwich. I don't support the Twelve Tribes cult that runs the place, but that was hands-down the best sandwich I've ever had. I don't know what kind of secret ingredient they put in it, but I've tried over and over, and I can't replicate it. Now that I know who they are, I can't go back, but that was roughly fifteen years ago, and I STILL think about that delicious bastard two or three times a month." —srandlett25 Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona — "They're sister cities and Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints strongholds. Thirty years ago, it was like stepping into The Twilight Zone. People would watch you as you drove down the street by peeking out their windows, but as soon as you looked back, they would close the drapes. The police would come up and drive slowly behind you until you left town. Those who were out and about would look at you like you were the spawn of Satan himself. Children were never riding bikes, playing ball, or doing kid stuff. They looked like mini adults with worried looks on their faces." —Anonymous California — "I was there on a cloudy April day, and the vibe alone scared me despite being with a large group of people. When we went to a coffee shop, the people inside stared us down like we didn't belong. They were all pretty quiet and shady. There was unfinished construction on every block, and overall, the town had a ghost town feel, and strangers looked at you from what felt like every angle. I've never had such strong feelings about a place before, but I know I'm not going back there ever again." —sleepingtruck497 Related: USA — "The theme park founded by televangelist Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye. Also, it was not me, but my younger brother (no longer with us). In the mid-'80s, my brother returned to school as a journalism major at the University of South Carolina. One of his assignments was to write a story about the newly opened theme park. So, one weekend, off he went. He later told me that the whole time he was there, he felt like he had to keep looking over his shoulder because he felt like a couple of guys were going to come up behind him, grab him, and say, 'You don't belong here.' Wish he was still here to tell you himself.' —Anonymous Vernon, Washington — "Walked into a Christian bookstore in the early 1980s. In the back they had Nazi books and, being Hispanic, I got a very creepy feeling." —fancyghost473 Missouri — "Look up Ken Rex McElroy, read about his murder, and then go visit the town." —boringgamer763 Ken McElroy was known for "terrorizing" the town of Skidmore, Missouri, in the 1950s. Over many years, he was accused of several crimes, including assault, theft, rape, and others. He gained notoriety as the "town bully." He was eventually convicted of attempted murder in 1981 but released on bond not long after. It was reported that residents got so "fed up" with his crimes that they organized an "extrajudicial killing," shooting him to death as he exited a bar in July 1981. Washington — "My ex-boyfriend and I went camping at Hood Park, which is just right outside of Burbank. We went into town to get some beer and went to the only bar they had in town. There was not a soul out in the looked totally abandoned! We walked into the bar, and all three of the patrons turned around to stare at us. We felt so out of place. It was soooo creepy. We left a bit earlier than we had planned." —amariem_88 Salton Sea, California — "It's an inland lake in Imperial County that was formed when an irrigation canal burst in the 1920s, letting the Colorado River flow into the below sea level desert. It's smelly, fly-ridden, and slowly dying due to poor environmental management and farm irrigation regulations. It is so polluted that the area has the highest rates of asthma in the US. In the 1950s and '60s, there were resorts and casinos built, and it was full of fish, swimming, boating, and life. All the resorts and casinos are abandoned and crumbling now. Everything is salt crusted and the meth labs have taken over the area. In the winter, there are modern-day hippies and RVs camping on the abandoned concrete slabs in 'slab city,' left over from a World War 2 military training ground. If you drive through, people stop to look at you like you're an alien. The surrounding desert is filled with trash and coyotes. It's the weirdest area in Southern California." —purpletortoise186 Pennsylvania — "Racist. Racist! RACIST!!! Look up Worthington billboards and you'll see what I mean. The most racist guy owns a gas station that has cheaper gas than anyone else, so everyone goes to him, and he uses his profits to display the most vile things. He got in trouble for displaying Swastikas, but after a half-ass apology, went back to displaying them. The whole town excuses his antics." —Anonymous Related: Minnesota — "I grew up in a previously abandoned house in Wasioja. It is a tiny unincorporated town that fizzled out after the Civil War. The house I lived in was a boarding house for seminary students, who lived there for three years before they went off and were killed almost immediately in the war. All around the town were rings of trees planted in yards in honor of those men who had died. The railroad bypassed the little town, and with all the men gone, everyone moved away. All that was left in the '80s when I was a kid were a few old bristly pioneer types and a bunch of old buildings that were built in the 1860s. It was kind of like a time capsule that never wanted to be one. The whole village felt 'off.' I always felt like someone was watching me wherever I went. My parents ended up flattening the house I grew up in, and got out of there. I moved a few hours away." —sportypony353 18."Rhyolite, Nevada — Pulled into this ghost town in the early '90s with a friend to check it out. Someone who apparently had taken up residence immediately started shooting at us. We left as fast as we could." —Anonymous Texas — "It's the town that weed built. It has a river running through town, and you could see weed growing on the riverbanks as you float by. The community is just now starting to integrate. Fifteen years ago, you did not catch a person of color living in the town proper. It is common to see a man beating his wife or kids at the Dollar General or the gas station. People pick up and eat roadkill. The mayor of the town is rumored to be a Branch Davidian, and he brags about attending Trump events when he is not fighting on the internet with misspelled words and handmade memes." —Anonymous Iowa — "Super conservative, religious culty vibes. People here live in a bubble where they think their views are the same everywhere. They are stunned when opposing views are expressed. So much so that those who don't agree are afraid to speak out. Plus, there is a small 'members-only' church with guards at the door to prevent non-members from entering." —susans4176e6f6a Georgia — "I've been there twice (4 nights total) while on a drive to Disney, and it looks so creepy. Shit ton of gun stores, smoke shops, and strip clubs. And the highest rated hotel? Paint literally peeling off the walls." —Anonymous Mississippi — "Dated a girl from there, and aside from the inbreeding that went on, the whole town seemed 'too happy.' I can't describe it. False cheeriness, like the townspeople had something to hide. It felt very surreal. Years later I learned it was near where they had The Valley Of The Kings cult, where the leader and his son were sexually abusing minor-age members of the congregation." —thesettledpirate Francisville, Louisiana — "It has the honor of being named at least at one time, the most haunted place in America. I grew up there, and there are definitely creepy places there. There's Myrtle plantation, where I myself have seen some stuff. From apparitions in the windows to voices within walls and hallways, this place is definitely haunted. Also, the battle of Port Hudson, the longest battle of the Civil War, was fought nearby, and most of the current town served as a cemetery for the battle." —michaelcarlson New York — "I visited for work once. It's a legit decent-sized city, but the downtown area was completely devoid of life. No cars, no people on the streets. It had apocalypse vibes. Weird." —Anonymous Washington — "Stayed there a couple times, just a very odd movie set kinda vibe. You feel like you're being watched every minute." —Anonymous Related: St. Louis, Illinois — "This city has the worst vibes in the Midwest. You cross the Mississippi River over a bridge from the beautiful, modern metropolis of St. Louis, with its Gateway Arch welcoming all, to the lawless, burnt-down, post-apocalyptic remains of East St. Louis. It feels like the only businesses in town are strip clubs, maybe a few gas stations. The whole area feels like the US headquarters for human trafficking and drug/arms dealers to meet and exchange best practices. Not very 'cult like' but extremely sketchy nonetheless. It always felt like we were taking our lives into our hands when we crossed over that bridge to the East side. Apparently, it was a nice place to live until a little after WW2. " —Anonymous Wisconsin — "They provide you with all the amenities, but they own your soul. Plus, all the leaders there are swingers. You will love all the secrets you stumble upon there!" —Anonymous Kansas — "People have cult-like rituals. For example, there was a high school graduation involving people taking mushrooms and basically worshiping of oak leaves. Weird stuff. They also have a fear of outsiders, and many homes are proclaimed to be haunted." —Anonymous Palms, California — "It would be a great location for a David Lynch-esque vampire film if you catch my drift." —happybee333 Vermont — "My son and I were there for a college interview and tour. We went to dinner at a local restaurant. When we walked in, the whole place stopped talking and looked at us. I didn't want to seem nervous about it, so I said nothing. Halfway through dinner, my son said, 'Is it me, or is everyone staring at us?' They continued to stare throughout dinner. I don't know if it's because we were dressed up, brown, or outsiders. He ended up going to that college, and a woman who owned a B&B told me that it was like that for her for years when she first moved there. She was from Brazil." —Anonymous Maine (in general) — "'Town' is too broad a word, but if you ever drive through Maine at night, you suddenly understand why Stephen King sets all of his novels there. Maine is mostly dense evergreen forests dotted with farmland, even on the coast, and outside of the interstate, most major roads/highways have no streetlights. The darkness is all-consuming. It's a tangible, oppressive feeling that is just so unsettling. If you're lucky, you'll have the moon. If not, it's just you, the trees, an endless highway with maybe a house every 10 miles and another car every 20, and the beams of your headlights." —lobster_lemon_lime Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity. Is there a creepy US town you'd add to the list? Tell us about it in the comment or via the totally anonymous form below, and who knows, maybe there'll be a part two! Love this kind of content? Subscribe to the That Got Dark newsletter to get a weekly post just like this delivered directly to your inbox. It's a scary good time you won't want to miss. Also in BuzzFeed: Also in BuzzFeed: Also in BuzzFeed:
The Guardian
05-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Can you see circles or rectangles? And does the answer depend on where you grew up?
Do people from different cultures and environments see the world differently? Two recent studies have different takes on this decades-long controversy. The answer might be more complicated, and more interesting, than either study suggests. One study, led by Ivan Kroupin at the London School of Economics, asked how people from different cultures perceived a visual illusion known as the Coffer illusion. They discovered that people in the UK and US saw it mainly in one way, as comprising rectangles – while people from rural communities in Namibia typically saw it another way: as containing circles. To explain these differences, Kroupin and colleagues appeal to a hypothesis raised more than 60 years ago and argued about ever since. The idea is that people in western industrialised countries (these days known by the acronym 'weird' – for western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic – a summary that is increasingly questionable) see things in a specific way because they are generally exposed to highly 'carpentered' environments, with lots of straight lines, right angles – visual features common in western architecture. By contrast, people from non-'weird' societies – like those in rural Namibia – inhabit environments with fewer sharp lines and angular geometric forms, so their visual abilities will be tuned differently. The study argues that the tendency of rural Namibians to see circles rather than rectangles in the Coffer illusion is due to their environments being dominated by structures such as round huts instead of angular environments. They back up this conclusion with similar results from several other visual illusions, all supposedly tapping into basic brain mechanisms involved in visual perception. So far, so good for the cross-cultural perceptual psychologists, and for the 'carpentered world' hypothesis. The second study, by Dorsa Amir and Chaz Firestone, takes a sledgehammer to this hypothesis, but for the much better-known illusion: the Müller-Lyer illusion. Two lines of equal length seem to be different lengths because of the context provided by inward-pointing, compared with outward-pointing, arrowheads. It's a very powerful illusion. I've seen it on thousands of occasions and it works every time for me. There are many explanations for why the Müller-Lyer illusion is so effective. One of the more popular is that the arrowheads are interpreted by the brain as cues about three-dimensional depth, so our brains implicitly interpret the illusion as representing an object of some kind, with right angles and straight lines. This explanation fits neatly with the 'carpentered world' hypothesis – and indeed a lot of early support for this hypothesis relied on apparent cultural variability in how the Müller-Lyer illusion is perceived. In their study, Amir and Firestone carefully and convincingly dismantle this explanation. They point out that non-human animals experience the illusion, as shown in a range of studies in which animals (including guppies, pigeons and bearded dragons) are trained to prefer the longer of two lines, and then presented with the Müller-Lyer image. They show that it works without straight lines, and for touch as well as vision. They note that it even works for people who until recently have been blind, referencing an astonishing experiment in which nine children, blind from birth because of dense cataracts, were shown the illusion immediately after the cataracts were surgically removed. Not only had these children not seen highly carpentered environments – they hadn't seen anything at all. After you absorb their analysis, it's pretty clear that the Müller-Lyer illusion is not due to culturally specific exposure to carpentry. Why the discrepancy? There are several possibilities. Perhaps there are reasons why cross-cultural variability should be expected for the Coffer but not the Müller-Lyer illusion (one possibility here is that the Coffer illusion is based on how people pay attention to things, rather than on some more basic aspect of perception). It could also be that there are systematic differences in perception between cultures, but that the 'carpentered world' hypothesis is not the correct explanation. It's also worth noting that the Kroupin study has some potential weaknesses. For example, the UK/US and Namibian participants were exposed to the illusions using very different methods. All in all, the jury remains out and – favourite scientist punt coming up – 'more research is needed'. The notion that people from different cultures vary in how they experience things is certainly plausible. There's a wealth of evidence that as we grow up our brains are shaped, at least to some extent, by features of our environments. And just as we all differ in our externally visible characteristics – height, body shape and so on – we will all differ on the inside too. As the author Anaïs Nin put it in quoting the Talmud: 'We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.' For me, an important implication of this line of thought is that there are likely to be substantial differences in perception within 'groups' as well as between them. This will probably hold however these 'groups' are defined, whether as different cultures or as a contrast between 'neurotypical' and 'neurodivergent' people. I believe that paying more attention to within-group perceptual diversity will help us to better interpret the differences we do find between groups, and equip us with the tools needed to resist relying on simple cultural stereotypes as explanations. More research is needed here too. But it's on the way. In the Perception Census, a project led by my research group at the University of Sussex together with professor Fiona Macpherson at the University of Glasgow, we are studying how perception differs in a large sample of about 40,000 people from more than 100 countries. Our experiment includes not just one or two visual illusions but more than 50 different experiments probing many different aspects of perception. When we're done analysing the data, we hope to deliver a uniquely detailed picture of how people experience their world, both within and between cultures. We'll also make the data openly available for other researchers to explore new ideas in this important area. One critical insight lies behind all these questions. How things seem is not how they are. For each of us, it might seem as though we see the world exactly as it is; as if our senses are transparent windows through with the world pours itself directly into our mind. But how things are is very different. The objective world no doubt exists, but the world we experience is always an active construction, a kind of 'controlled hallucination' in which the brain uses sensory signals to update and calibrate its best interpretation of what's going on. What we experience is this interpretation, not a 'readout' of the sensory information. For me, this is the key insight that underlies any claim about perceptual diversity. When we take it fully on board, it encourages a much-needed humility about our own ways of seeing. We live in perceptual echo chambers, just as we do in those of social media, and the first step to escaping any echo chamber is to realise that you're in one. Anil Seth is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex, and author of the Sunday Times bestseller Being You: A New Science of Consciousness
The Guardian
05-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Can you see circles or rectangles? And does the answer depend on where you grew up?
Do people from different cultures and environments see the world differently? Two recent studies have different takes on this decades-long controversy. The answer might be more complicated, and more interesting, than either study suggests. One study, led by Ivan Kroupin at the London School of Economics, asked how people from different cultures perceived a visual illusion known as the Coffer illusion. They discovered that people in the UK and US saw it mainly in one way, as comprising rectangles – while people from rural communities in Namibia typically saw it another way: as containing circles. To explain these differences, Kroupin and colleagues appeal to a hypothesis raised more than 60 years ago and argued about ever since. The idea is that people in western industrialised countries (these days known by the acronym 'weird' – for western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic – a summary that is increasingly questionable) see things in a specific way because they are generally exposed to highly 'carpentered' environments, with lots of straight lines, right angles – visual features common in western architecture. By contrast, people from non-'weird' societies – like those in rural Namibia – inhabit environments with fewer sharp lines and angular geometric forms, so their visual abilities will be tuned differently. The study argues that the tendency of rural Namibians to see circles rather than rectangles in the Coffer illusion is due to their environments being dominated by structures such as round huts instead of angular environments. They back up this conclusion with similar results from several other visual illusions, all supposedly tapping into basic brain mechanisms involved in visual perception. So far, so good for the cross-cultural perceptual psychologists, and for the 'carpentered world' hypothesis. The second study, by Dorsa Amir and Chaz Firestone, takes a sledgehammer to this hypothesis, but for the much better-known illusion: the Müller-Lyer illusion. Two lines of equal length seem to be different lengths because of the context provided by inward-pointing, compared with outward-pointing, arrowheads. It's a very powerful illusion. I've seen it on thousands of occasions and it works every time for me. There are many explanations for why the Müller-Lyer illusion is so effective. One of the more popular is that the arrowheads are interpreted by the brain as cues about three-dimensional depth, so our brains implicitly interpret the illusion as representing an object of some kind, with right angles and straight lines. This explanation fits neatly with the 'carpentered world' hypothesis – and indeed a lot of early support for this hypothesis relied on apparent cultural variability in how the Müller-Lyer illusion is perceived. In their study, Amir and Firestone carefully and convincingly dismantle this explanation. They point out that non-human animals experience the illusion, as shown in a range of studies in which animals (including guppies, pigeons and bearded dragons) are trained to prefer the longer of two lines, and then presented with the Müller-Lyer image. They show that it works without straight lines, and for touch as well as vision. They note that it even works for people who until recently have been blind, referencing an astonishing experiment in which nine children, blind from birth because of dense cataracts, were shown the illusion immediately after the cataracts were surgically removed. Not only had these children not seen highly carpentered environments – they hadn't seen anything at all. After you absorb their analysis, it's pretty clear that the Müller-Lyer illusion is not due to culturally specific exposure to carpentry. Why the discrepancy? There are several possibilities. Perhaps there are reasons why cross-cultural variability should be expected for the Coffer but not the Müller-Lyer illusion (one possibility here is that the Coffer illusion is based on how people pay attention to things, rather than on some more basic aspect of perception). It could also be that there are systematic differences in perception between cultures, but that the 'carpentered world' hypothesis is not the correct explanation. It's also worth noting that the Kroupin study has some potential weaknesses. For example, the UK/US and Namibian participants were exposed to the illusions using very different methods. All in all, the jury remains out and – favourite scientist punt coming up – 'more research is needed'. The notion that people from different cultures vary in how they experience things is certainly plausible. There's a wealth of evidence that as we grow up our brains are shaped, at least to some extent, by features of our environments. And just as we all differ in our externally visible characteristics – height, body shape and so on – we will all differ on the inside too. As the author Anaïs Nin put it in quoting the Talmud: 'We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.' For me, an important implication of this line of thought is that there are likely to be substantial differences in perception within 'groups' as well as between them. This will probably hold however these 'groups' are defined, whether as different cultures or as a contrast between 'neurotypical' and 'neurodivergent' people. I believe that paying more attention to within-group perceptual diversity will help us to better interpret the differences we do find between groups, and equip us with the tools needed to resist relying on simple cultural stereotypes as explanations. More research is needed here too. But it's on the way. In the Perception Census, a project led by my research group at the University of Sussex together with professor Fiona Macpherson at the University of Glasgow, we are studying how perception differs in a large sample of about 40,000 people from more than 100 countries. Our experiment includes not just one or two visual illusions but more than 50 different experiments probing many different aspects of perception. When we're done analysing the data, we hope to deliver a uniquely detailed picture of how people experience their world, both within and between cultures. We'll also make the data openly available for other researchers to explore new ideas in this important area. One critical insight lies behind all these questions. How things seem is not how they are. For each of us, it might seem as though we see the world exactly as it is; as if our senses are transparent windows through with the world pours itself directly into our mind. But how things are is very different. The objective world no doubt exists, but the world we experience is always an active construction, a kind of 'controlled hallucination' in which the brain uses sensory signals to update and calibrate its best interpretation of what's going on. What we experience is this interpretation, not a 'readout' of the sensory information. For me, this is the key insight that underlies any claim about perceptual diversity. When we take it fully on board, it encourages a much-needed humility about our own ways of seeing. We live in perceptual echo chambers, just as we do in those of social media, and the first step to escaping any echo chamber is to realise that you're in one. Anil Seth is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex, and author of the Sunday Times bestseller Being You: A New Science of Consciousness
Forbes
09-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Grow On LinkedIn By Breaking Rules And Getting Weird
Grow on LinkedIn by breaking rules and getting weird LinkedIn is overrun with terrible AI-generated content and people are getting tired of it. You probably are too. All that title case, sensationalist hooks that aren't backed up in the post, not to mention the comments. With robots running the show, LinkedIn users are craving realness. And realness means weird. 'Be more weird on LinkedIn' is the instruction from the people actually building relationships on the platform. Forget polished. Stop hiding. Let your true colours come out and connect with others who feel the same. Your quirks are your competitive advantage. You can't be a different person at work, home and the gym. That's exhausting. There's only one you. Tiptoe into areas you don't think are relevant, because you might be surprised. People are craving your realness and they want to see what's behind the gloss. Start getting more personal in the DMs and the comments on your posts before you do it in your posts. Run an experiment of seeing how much you have in common with your connections. But not the regular stuff like where you're based or what you studied at college. The weird stuff. The unconventional stuff. The stuff that's not strictly business. How much you can deadlift, your favourite flavour of protein powder, and the flowers you're growing in your garden. Your weird hobbies hold business lessons others can't teach. Stop keeping them a secret. Map the connections between what fascinates you and what you sell. The founder obsessed with vintage typewriters has skills in mechanical precision. The CEO who collects hot sauces understands variety and market positioning. Combine different aspects of your world for posts people remember. Next Monday, post about the strangest connection or biggest crossover between your hobby and your business. Watch engagement spike when people finally see something unexpected in their feed. Your potential clients remember the consultant who explains strategy through beekeeping, not the one sharing another list of productivity tips. Find your unique angle and double down on it. Become unforgettable. The LinkedIn feed is full of tidy success stories. So give your followers the opposite. Share the project that succeeded by accident. Write about the worst advice that somehow worked. Tell stories that don't follow the formula, and people lean in. They can't predict the ending. Pick your messiest business moment and find the lesson hiding inside. Maybe your biggest client came from a cancelled meeting. Perhaps your core product emerged from a complete pivot. Show you see opportunity where others see chaos. No one needs another manufactured case study. If I covered up your name and picture, would I know who wrote your post? Your LinkedIn voice should sound like you. Forget professional if that's not your vibe. If you explain everything through food metaphors, go for it. When movie quotes naturally pop into your explanations, use them. Your sentence structure and word choices are a signature. This rare communication style attracts clients who get your references and appreciate your approach. Write your next post exactly how you'd explain it to a friend at coffee. Include the tangents, the random analogies, the specific phrases only you use. Watch how the comments change. Your human content gets more humanized responses. The AI-generated comments don't know what to do. They glitch and go elsewhere. But real people with real opinions will share theirs. Like the good old days of LinkedIn. Every industry has unspoken truths people dance around. Name them. Challenge the morning routine obsession if you do your best work at midnight. Question networking events if you've built your business through deep one-on-one connections. Your unpopular opinions attract clients tired of the same advice. List three things in your industry everyone accepts but you don't. Pick the most controversial and explain why common wisdom fails. Start your post with a proven hook and share your truth. Back it with your experience, not theory. When half your audience disagrees and the other half messages to say "finally someone said it," you've found your people. Your niche preferences do the qualifying for you. When you post about running your business from different countries each month, digital nomads reach out. Share your refusal to do calls before midday and attract clients who respect boundaries. Your weird becomes your client filter. Define three non-negotiable quirks about how you work. Make them prominent in your content. The consultant who only works with clients they'd vacation with attracts better relationships. The coach who swears in sessions connects with people tired of corporate speak. Think of your posts as selection criteria before the first conversation. Your unusual background creates solutions others miss. The bad job, the relaxing sabbatical, the useless degree. The lawyer turned baker brings precision to creative fields. The engineer who became a therapist sees systems in human behavior. Combine unexpected elements. Create approaches competitors can't copy. They haven't lived your specific path. Map how your weird journey influences your current methods. Which insights come from your unusual combination of experiences? Build these into your signature framework. Clients pay premium prices for perspectives they can't get elsewhere. Your weird becomes intellectual property. LinkedIn rewards those willing to stand out by standing firm in who they are. Your quirks, obsessions, and unconventional views are shortcuts to finding clients who value exactly what makes you different. Stop smoothing your edges. Share the thoughts that feel too strange. Tell the stories without clean endings. Build genuine connection on LinkedIn by being the person who makes others feel empowered to be themselves.
