The Craving of Being Different - but not too different because then you're just weird

Person 1: What does craze even mean?

Person 2: It's a word you use when something's ultra popular.

Person 1: But isn't it 'cool' to be 'different' and 'alternative'.

Person 2: Yes, exactly.

Person 1: Well then isn't being 'different' a craze.

Person 2: Of course.

I have to physically restrain my eyes from doing a full 360°C whenever I see a photo on instagram or a status on facebook that depicts a teenage girl so obviously trying to be as different as she can without tripping and face-planting over the line of coolness drawn out by the unknown. This whole alternative craze right now is so painstakingly contradictory that alternative has lost it's meaning completely.

The unwritten rule book of what is 'cool' states that; 'to be alternative is to follow all the trends first and to find music that will inevitably become popular in a few months first - not to have your own ideas and opinions and express them in the way you live your life.' Therefore to be alternative, the cool way is to not be different at all, but it's to be MAINSTREAM, completely and utterly MAINSTREAM (are your eyes stinging yet try-hards?). 

But alternative can be interpreted in so many different ways. My definition is that to be alternative you must have your own opinions and feelings about things, no matter if they're popular or, on the other side of the spectrum,  seen as complete trash. To be alternative is to be original. And to be original is to be yourself, not some edited and controlled version of it.

*I'm sorry if you didn't catch the sarcasm of this entire post, but it was there.