Weirdwashing is when people and especially corporations trade on surface indicators of strangeness, difference or rebellion, without making space for the real thing.
Weirdwashing. Capitalism & Non-Conformity; Co-option… | by Fergus Murray | Mar, 2025 | Medium
As well as reducing political movements to little more than marketable images, this can lead to signifiers of real, important differences between people — which have often been targets for othering and stigma — catching on among people with the social power to bear them without getting any trouble for it. As well as heavily diluting the meaning they held for the people they came from, this usually does little to prevent those people stillbeing stigmatised for the same things.
Weirdwashing. Capitalism & Non-Conformity; Co-option… | by Fergus Murray | Mar, 2025 | Medium
