The fear of seeming ordinary can make a person’s choices remarkably predictable.

Fear of the ordinary produces conformity of a particular kind. The choices get made against the average rather than toward anything, and everyone doing that ends up in the same small set of unusual options, arriving from the same motive. Distinctiveness pursued directly is one of the more reliable routes to sameness.

When you are choosing something, ask whether you want it or whether you want it to say something. The second is not shameful, only worth knowing about. Choices made toward an actual preference are the ones that turn out to be particular.