Anti-Clique

A big mental pattern that has shaped my life (for good or bad)

Welcome to Better Short - Ideas or stories expressed in 500 words or less.

I’ve always been allergic to cliques. I can’t trace it back to some pivotal moment when a clique wronged me. I’ve just always been this way. Whenever I feel the gravitational pull of a group forming around me—inside jokes, matching energy, unspoken rules—I instinctively pull away. Like a cat being called to sit in a lap.

It’s not just cliques, though. It’s a broader love for underdogs and outsiders. In sports, I’ve never rooted for the Schumachers, Tendulkars, or Federers of the world. I recognize the brilliance, the awe-inspiring once-in-a-generation talent, but I find the fandom suffocating.

Why root for someone who already has legions cheering their every move? I’ll happily spend three hours rooting for the scrappy player on the other side of the net, the one with zero chance. Maybe it’s the emotional entertainment that gets me.

Once, at an Iron Maiden concert in Bangalore, I wore an orange kurta in a sea of black t-shirts. Why did everyone wear black to rock concerts? It seemed counterintuitive that a music and movement born out of rebellion would inspire such conformity. For someone who hates being in the spotlight, I was propelled enough by the need to be anti-clique that I wore this.

[I used to have a photo of the above. I spent too much time searching for it and gave up]

When surrounded by high-energy alpha types, my energy drops. In contrast, I find a new energy source in a room full of quiet, slow-moving people. At corporate town halls, I’m always the person who would stand at the back with snide remarks or pepper someone on Slack with sarcastic messages.

I initially felt this on Substack, too. Writers were talking about the platform as if they’d found some utopia. While part of me understands that community is good, the other part cringes. It feels too tidy, too self-congratulatory, too cliquey. Writers exist in the realm where all readers exist, not in a protective bubble.

But this instinct, this compulsion to be an anti-clique, the anti-big guy, is double-edged.

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On the positive, it’s kept me from rooting my entire personality to a group I have associated myself with. I have had fewer moments of complete tribalism (although I do succumb to it occasionally). It has made me more open to different perspectives. Rooting for the underdog, after all, is a worldview built on empathy. And honestly, I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

On the downside, it’s also made me an outsider, perpetually peeking at communities from the circle's edge.

This anti-clique reflex has shaped how I navigate every group I’ve been a part of—school, college, work, and maybe even family circles. I always hang back, refusing to be absorbed. It’s not because I think I’m better; it’s just some deep, inexplicable need to maintain my distance. I want to keep a little space between myself and whatever invisible walls cliques always seem to build as if I would get absorbed in the whole.

It’s lonely sometimes.

Maybe this is something to work on.

Better Short,

Tyag