"You shouldn't care what other people think about you."

DonZabu

Yeah, I think I'll just stop showering. Then I'll go outside wearing only a mesh negligee and pink baby shoes on my ears, extolling the virtues of tentacle hentai and eating shrimp cocktail on the bus.  So what if no one goes near me or if all my friends stop talking to me, I don't care what other people think about me.

MillerCross

The idea is to not care about what people who you don't know and who you're not related to in any way think about you. Which is still dumb as any of those could be future acquaintances, to say the least, but yeah. 

LouieW

DonZabu,

Well, I think the showering thing is related to your health too, but I probably agree in principle. I feel like it is kind of weird how kids are often told the name of this thread and "be yourself" these days when for a good number of people, a lot of life is related to pleasing other people, whether they be your bosses, coworkers, customers, or teachers.

That is not say that kind of attitude is completely bad. On the contrary, one problem I see with the "you shouldn't care what other people think about you" mantra is that it can lead to not caring for other people by ignoring one's responsibility to be considerate of others (i.e., that motto can justify not helping other people who need your help). Still, I think that conformity/peer pressure can lead to some pretty bad stuff (e.g., doing drugs, treating unpopular groups unfairly), especially when people do those kinds of things for fairly vain reasons.

Wicked223

there's inevitably a double standard with things like this, where people give this sort of advice to people whose attitudes/lifestyle/wardrobe/whatever is most in line with theirs, but then tell people who aren't as closely in line to change themselves, that makes me mostly unable to take things like seriously.