When being a rebel is sanctioned by society, what is left to rebel against?

Hal Niedzviecki has a blunt message for the army of tattoo and piercing enthusiasts, bloggers, skateboard warriors, and anyone else walking around with the smug certainty that they are one of a kind: Individuality is the new conformity.

Niedzviecki?s meditations touch on everything from designer religions to webcasts, from reality TV to the endless Everybody Is A Star platitudes of global pop culture. He unearths the amateur underground and shines a spotlight on the self-help industry, Hollywood, and mainstream media. The result is a smart, witty, and impassioned argument that shatters the you-can-do-anything pop myth and exposes the paradox of individualism.

"When nonconformity has become not only cool but also consumable, and everyone is told they are special, what happens to our definitions of rebellion and individualism? Are our real rebels against 'conformist nonconformity' now the 'neo-traditionalists' who exchange their individualism for membership in a community that offers meaning in backward-looking ideologies? These questions are pertinent but hardly original, and Niedzviecki's approach doesn't refresh the cultural debate. Niedzviecki (We Want Some Too) details lively examples from pop, consumer and counterculture — e.g., backyard wrestlers who assert their uniqueness while participating in mass culture; the 'philosophy' brand of health and beauty products that sells its lotions with 'moral maxims.' But he molds these cases to fit his often predictable arguments: celebrity culture has been confused with individualism; the 'semi-collapse' of traditional culture has led some to rebel by embracing orthodoxy; marketers have exploited ideals of individuality; and political activism is often just a way for protestors to 'affirm their specialness.' Falling short of a richer, more contradictory and more provocative analysis of these cultural items, Niedzviecki only grazes the surface of many of the issues Christopher Lasch (The Culture of Narcissism) and Thomas Frank (The Conquest of Cool) have already explored with depth and complexity." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Drawing specific examples from many dimensions of life, novelist and short story writer Niedziecki charts the emergence of individuality as the new conformity. Most of his examples of indicators of pop-culture conformity come from the entertainment industry; some of his other topics include the Slow-Food movement, the shift to neotraditionalism, and the "increasingly virulent strain of extreme individuality that the new conformity is giving rise to."
Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Drawing specific examples from many dimensions of life, novelist and short story writer Niedziecki charts the emergence of individuality as the new conformity. Most of his examples of indicators of pop-culture conformity come from the entertainment industry; some of his other topics include the Slow-Food movement, the shift to neotraditionalism, and the "increasingly virulent strain of extreme individuality that the new conformity is giving rise to." Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

"Niedzviecki rightfully and painfully illustrates how the pull between competing interests creates bizarre contradictions between consumers and pop-culture-at-large. That's what makes Niedzviecki's groundbreaking new book so refreshing: he reminds us that pop culture itself isn't an absolute means to an end; it's the people who exchange it and want to be a part of it all that remain its most fascinating components." Zachary Houle, Popmatters

"I'm Special asks why we all seem to do the same damn thing in the name of individuality. It's about time somebody did." Kim Hughes, The Toronto Star

"[A] slightly rambling, albeit witty discussion of how being true to ourselves is not necessarily a good thing....Where [Malcolm] Gladwell is bemused, fellow Canadian Niedzviecki is curmudgeonly..." Library Journal

"Hal Niedzviecki is truly special, but not in the mass market way. He is one of the wisest, funniest and most acute cultural critics writing today. A sure-footed guide through a surreal landscape." Naomi Klein, author of No Logo

"By turns infuriating and illuminating, Hello, I'm Special does not seem likely to please Niedzviecki's peers....After all, who wants to be told, as Niedzviecki tells his readers, in no uncertain terms, that ours is 'a dying culture.'" San Francisco Chronicle

Hal Niedzviecki is the founder of Broken Pencil magazine and the author of We Want Some Too: Underground Desire and the Reinvention of Mass Culture.