“Looking good. Mind if I keep looking?” Is a weird way to start a conversation, also a weird way to start an article.

So why did I write that? And why are you still reading? I know why. Because as creeped out and disgusted as you may be, you’re interested to find out more. In fact, your favorite artists, performers, writers, actors, drunks, eccentrics, bohemians, hippies, beats and everything in between, drew you in the same way: By weirding you out.

So now in a move to escape all social norms, I present to you: A brief history of being weird.

Salvador Dali was one weird dude.

Most famously known for his piece “The Persistence of Memory,” Dali depicted surrealist images with his mesmerizing paintings that captured an eras imagination. Besides being one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Dali was also known for being quite a character — once being quoted as saying, “I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.” That of course is a slightly false statement due to the copious amounts of opium Señor Dali ingested — but that’s besides the point. Dali taught us that being strange and flamboyant made him stand out, and if he wasn’t so weird he would never have been a successful artist.

Master of the beats and controller of the road trip, Jack Kerouac was so weird he couldn’t even sleep.

Love him or hate him, Kerouac’s free spirit and anything goes mentality brought a wave of new thinking to an America which was happy living a quiet life in suburbia. Kerouac and his pals would set out on cross-country trips from East to West coast, inspiring Kerouac’s most famous novel “On the Road” which documents the insanity of these drug infused all night coast to coast explorations. Being unsettled in the 50’s, when a man was supposed to be at home after the war making babies, made Kerouac stand-out; he wasn’t happy living in a cookie-cutter house with a white picket fence.

Here’s Johnny! In other words here’s Jack Nicholson breaking through a door with an axe. Was it weird? You bet. Was it memorable? Yep.

Acting crazy, whether it’s in a movie or on the red carpet, is kind of Mr. Nicholson’s thing. He’s done it starring as the Joker in “Batman,” being the clinically insane leader of a mental institution gang in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and of course playing a psychotic killer in “The Shining.” Of course, these are just movies right? Mr. Nicholson isn’t actually strange, he just plays strange characters. Wrong. Nicholson grew up thinking his mother was his sister…weird right? This however doesn’t change the fact that Mr. Nicholson has been one of the most influential and dynamic actors of his generation.

Now, this leaves us with our modern-day, strange, overtop, unconventionally weird character who defines our generation…which, of course… is Fred Durst. Sir Durst is in a class of his own, bringing us the modern day pinnacle of music “Limp-Bizkit.”

Actually being weird was strangely difficult for Sir Durst and his merry henchmen, being so cool and all.

Being weird is important to our society, and our culture. It helps us expand our knowledge of who we are, makes us evolve to look past racist ideas or ethnocentric ideologies, and allows us to be who we want to be. So please, go out and do something different. Be weird.