Double Standards Are Perfectly Okay

Mr. George-

Just off the top of my head, I'd say the biggest ways authorities make life hard for rebels include:

• Career sanctions. "If you dress that way you can't work here." "If you hold these beliefs you can't work here." "If you have that lifestyle you can't work here." On top of "you can't work here" there's also "We're going to tell everyone in the industry about you and you won't work for any of us", which happens quite a lot in some industries. In small towns you can get "I've heard about you and I just can't hire you; we don't need the kind of reputation you'd bring."

• Legal harrassment. Suing you on shaky grounds, arresting you over minor infractions, singling you out for pat-downs, stop-and-frisk, random checks, etc.

• Romantic disapproval. Social authority figures may disapprove of you as a partner and put pressure on the women in your life not to stay with you. They may usher women away from you when you try to flirt with them / cockblock you strenuously. They may trash talk any woman who dares date you. Same goes for social approval: get other people to shun you. People shouldn't be your friend because "that guy is bad news" or "did you know what he said about [issue]?" or "do you know the types of things that guy's involved in?"

It's all different forms of the same theme: you don't play by the rules, which means you're an outsider. Any business or individual associating with you risks being tarred as an outsider by association. Authorities play on the fear of ostracism by cautioning people against association with you, lest they end up ostracized too. They can also use legal and financial means to bludgeon you into wanting to self-remove from their society (or at least stop being so difficult).

Who are the authorities besides police?

Leaders of social groups and friend groups, teachers, bosses, nightclub bouncers, judges, politicians, religious leaders, certain family members (there're always a few family members who are the unambiguous heads of the familial hierarchy).

Anyone who sits atop a hierarchy, however small or insiginificant, that the rebel may be a part of or be at the mercy of.

Does being a rebel cause him to be viewed as a social authority assuming that the rebel is also charismatic?

Quite possibly.

There's a phenomenon in psychology called 'stigma groups'. These are basically groups of rebels that exist outside the social mainstream. Stigma groups coalesce around charismatic leaders, who then directly confront the mainstream. With time, stigma groups often replace the mainstream, and become the new mainstream, headed up by their charismatic leaders. The charismatic leader goes through a process of being adored only by the stigma group, then by a larger group as that group grows, then a larger group, then at some point he's gone mainstream and everyone knows and likes him.

You can see this with various artists or media figures that start off marginal and disliked and eventually go mainstream. Usually they don't change themselves too much, but the stigma group they represent goes mainstream instead.

I want to agree the outsider is probably happier. But I'm biased as an outsider-type. I suspect the happy medium is best: plays the insider role well enough to succeed in life without being cast out, but holds some outsider views/hobbies/etc. that line up with true wants and thoughts. The hardcore outsider who's at war with everyone seems to have a tough time psychologically. And the hardcore insider who mirrors whatever the good thoughts and good actions and good behaviors of the day are tends to be more paranoid about losing his social position by failing to conform than he is worried about actually doing, saying, or feeling what he wants. So happy medium, probably best I think.

The clip with Jimmy and Sebastian, yeah. Humor is always at someone or something's expense. In this case Jimmy's humor was coming at Sebastian's expense. Sebastian used some self-deprecation (humor at his own expense), then went meta and gave some great life advice. So yeah, he comes out looking like the more authentic man, while Jimmy looks like the entertainer just doing a bit (which really is all Jimmy needs to be most of the time on his show).

I'm not completely sure how that ties into outsider vs. insider, except that the host of the show is always going to be the guy at the top of the hierarchy (whether that is an insider or outsider hierarchy). In general it seems like Jimmy and his show is less totally insider as some of the other talk shows, while still being mostly insider/mainstream. He was the one I recall that had Donald Trump on as a candidate and messed up his hair, and got all the other talk show hosts up in arms as doing an evil thing by humanizing Trump. For which I think he eventually apologized. So, pretty darn mainstream, but less rabidly so than some others. Don't know too much about Sebastian. He seemed a little nervous on the show but that might just be his demeanor (seemd that way in his standup clip too). Always hard to gauge someone's 'outsiderness' from a short clip. Though comedians in general often seem to be more on the outsider side of things (it's harder to be funny as an insider. You can only make fun of smaller targets. Outsiders get to make fun of the big fat mainstream target, which is always the juiciest target of all since everyone knows it and is at least a little bit sick of it).

Chase