By Katriel Soney-Ituen
Let’s be honest: personal style is kind of dead. Or at least, it’s on life support. If you scroll through TikTok or Instagram right now, you’ll probably notice the same rotation of outfits popping up again and again and again.
Wide-leg trousers, claw clips, slicked-back buns, goddess braids, maybe a blazer thrown over the top, and everything in neutral colours. Not to say that that’s not gorgeous, everyone looks great, sure. But it’s not everybody’s personal style; they all look the same.
Somewhere along the way, style stopped being about personal expression and turned into an endless game of creativity suppression and of copy-and-paste. The algorithm whispers, and suddenly everyone is sprinting to Zara to buy the same microtrend. By next week, the trend is over, and the whole cycle starts again. It’s exhausting, predictable, and honestly… boring.
Not too long ago, being “weird” with your clothes was actually cool. Think back to the 2000s’ Tumblr kids, the grunge kids of the 90s, and the punks of the 80s. Even if their outfits were chaotic, at least they were theirs. People thrifted, DIYed, and experimented. People wore colour and had colourful hair. Your style said something about who you were, what you liked, even what music you listened to.
Being “weird” didn’t mean you were embarrassing; it meant you were brave enough to stand out. Your outfit could be messy, mismatched, or plain odd, but it was yours. And more importantly, you weren’t dressing for likes, you were dressing for yourself (and maybe also your tiny subculture of equally weird friends).
Now, things are different. Social media has created what I like to call the aesthetic carousel. Every few months, a new trend arrives: coquette, old money, clean girl and suddenly everyone is on board. Within weeks, it’s everywhere: TikToks, Pinterest boards, fast fashion stores. By the time you’ve figured out how to style it, the internet has already moved on to the next one.
The scariest part? We don’t even realise how much we’re conforming. Social media makes it feel like you’re making a choice when in reality the algorithm made it for you. And if you don’t hop on the trend, you risk standing out in the worst possible way. Often, we don’t even like what is trending half the time. Nobody wants to be the person in the group photo who didn’t get the ‘clean girl memo’ or the ‘old money vibe’. Social media always craves to label everything it can. Coquette, balletcore, glamourcore. If it is not named, wearing it is a shame. Nobody wants to be “weird.”
It’s not just fashion, it’s psychology. Humans are hardwired to want to fit in, and social media magnifies that instinct. Likes, shares, comments… they’re little hits of approval that reward us for sameness. When everyone praises the trendy outfit, why risk wearing something “unique”?
But here’s the thing: sameness is safe, but it kills creativity. The more we stick to the shackles of social media’s uniform, the more we erase what makes fashion exciting. Personal style becomes just another performance for the algorithm instead of genuine self-expression. And let’s be real, if everyone’s dressing the same, are we really “stylish,” or are we just really good at online shopping?
When everyone looks the same, fashion loses its edge. Subcultures vanish. Individuality disappears. And style, the kind that makes you stop and stare because someone owned their look, becomes rare.
Think about it: every major fashion movement started with people who looked weird first. Punk was weird. Grunge was weird. Even minimalism was weird until it wasn’t. Every “trend” we now idolise started with someone who wasn’t afraid to look different.
Without weirdness, fashion flattens into a series of safe, algorithm-approved uniforms. And safe is just… fine.
So, how do we fix this? By embracing weirdness again. That doesn’t mean you have to show up in a meat dress à la Lady Gaga (though if that’s your vibe, power to you). It just means permitting yourself to experiment. Thrift something unusual. Wear the clashing colours. Style your clothes in a way that feels good, not just “approved.”
Stop dressing for the algorithm and start dressing for you. Sign your signature. Your style doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else; it just needs to make you feel like yourself. And honestly, being a little weird is a lot more memorable than blending into the background.The bottom line: Social media has, in a way, made us afraid of looking different, but it can also be used to share and encourage uniqueness, which is the birthplace of real style. If we want fashion to feel fun and alive again, we need to stop fearing weird and start wearing it proudly. Whether that’s wearing more colours, stripes with polka dots, or sticking with the clean girl look. Wear what you decide, not what your fyp decides. After all, being weird might just be the most stylish thing left.