They’re boring, but you can’t do without them: 5 traits of people called normies today

Clinical psychologist, business psychologist, forensic expert

“Norms are an important part of modern society. They shape social norms, maintain good relationships, and influence the well-being and development of people in general. However, their role and ability to be fully accepted depends on the particular social environment and individual preferences of each person.”

Who are normies?

Normies is a term used to describe people who have standard (socially accepted) thinking and behavior. Simply put, they are those who obey the rules and customs of a given social group. Those who always follow the norms.

5 traits of normies:

1. conformism;
2. the desire to be in harmony with others;
3. desire to conform to certain standards and expectations of society;
4. adherence to established role models;
5. lack of desire to stand out from the crowd.

They focus on common interests and topics that are accepted in their social group. Normies socialize, seeking support and approval in an effort to be accepted in the group. At the same time, such people usually avoid conflicts and disputes, trying to maintain harmonious relationships.

Their influence on society is significant. After all, it is they who form traditions, customs, which determine the expectations and standards of behavior in a particular social group. These individuals play the role of “guardians” of cultural values and traditions, allowing to maintain stability in society.

However, they are not always fully and unambiguously understood by others. Sometimes compliance with generally accepted norms can be perceived as disinterest and non-creativity.

Also, critics often accuse such people of lack of individuality and inability to think independently. Normies often face underestimation and stereotypes from those who seek to stand out from the crowd and break the rules.

Psychologist at Psidvanol

“Broadly speaking, normies are people who have “normal”, “generally accepted” preferences in dress, leisure, work, music, and movies.”

Normies and conforming people

In psychology, there is a similar type of person to normies. It is conformal (from Late Latin conformis – similar, similar).

This is a socio-psychological orientation of the personality. It is not manifested in an independent, deeply thought-out choice of life and social values, but only in a passive, adaptive attitude to the existing order of things. This type of character accentuation. That is, a person is purposefully ready to blindly follow someone else’s opinion and obey.

Norms are a common variant of the norm, that is, an “amorphous type” of character. These people are devoid of any individual traits. They “go with the flow”, obey their environment. Society thinks and acts for them, their perfection is limited to imitation. They are characterized by obedience to the voice of the majority, shabbiness, banality, a tendency to walking morality, complacency, conservatism.

What is the role of normies in the online community?

In the online space, the term is most often used within certain internal groups to denote and distinguish from external groups and people who do not belong to these communities.

On the internet, it is someone who has little involvement in a community, i.e. a layperson. For example, for users who are passionate and deeply knowledgeable about the web, normies would be those who browse their social networks sporadically, in their spare time. These may be people who do not know internet slang or popular internet memes.

That said, they play an important role here because they are participants and content generators, striving to conform to the expectations and norms of a given online environment.

These people create content, repost popular material and actively participate in discussions, following the established rules and preferences of the community.

For those who are into video games, a normie is someone who devotes a small amount of time to it. He may not understand some important nuances, plays simple games on his phone on the way to work.

For art house connoisseurs and movie lovers, such a person will watch Hollywood novelties on weekends in the theater. In other words, these are people who, for a variety of reasons, are not part of the “dedicated or knowledgeable” groups deep in any field.

How do normies build relationships with other people?

This category of people represents a wide and diverse range of personalities with completely different traits: from hobbies to character, awareness, intelligence, degree of integrity, etc.

As for the sphere of relationships, normies can be guided by certain patterns and stereotypes in behavior.

For example, they will strive to follow the generally accepted opinion, not to stand out with their life principles or hobbies. They tend to conform to some standards of behavior, relationships and appearance.

Skewness can occur when a person stops taking into account that there are people who may differ from him on the above parameters. They will “hang labels.”

In today’s society, people often follow a given set of behavioral patterns. For what purpose? To conform to the norms. Here are some examples of social spheres and how normies interact with them.

Education sets standards of knowledge, behavior, and appearance that students must adhere to. In this case, the norm is the student’s unconditional adherence to the established rules, based not on his or her own interests or ideas, but on obedience to the authority of teachers and public opinion.

In a corporate environment, company employees adhere to a set behavior, appearance, and mindset. In this case, normies are those who try to fit into the corporate culture, who do not stand out with their own ideas or non-standard methods of work, but follow general trends.

In general, they are aware of trends, tendencies and public opinion, do not stand out with their own hobbies or ideas, but try to conform to accepted standards.

However, it is important to remember that each person is valuable and unique in their own right. Therefore, one should strive for a balance between conformism and self-expression, keep an interest in new things, and respect the boundaries and individuality of others.