it's not illegal to be annoying (thank god)

When I visit my parents, I always come home with a new TV show to continue. It's a long-lived tradition that has carried me through full seasons of shows I would probably never watch of my own accord, and this time I visited them just in time for one of my dad's favourites: Big Brother Season 23.

I've always liked Big Brother, not for the reasons ITV want me to, but forcing random strangers to live together with 24/7 surveillance is always interesting to watch. There's a very conscious choice made during the housemate selection process that results in very different people who are bound to clash having to cohabitate. The housemates have to complete tasks and are often setup to fail, all in the name of entertainment, but the most interesting thing for me is how the small habits of others can grate on us to the point of a full-scale argument. After the rows about politics and the petty name-calling, the conflict starts to get truly personal. With no escape from another, they start to find intrinsic details in each other that they cannot stand; I'm talking chewing too loud, snoring through the night, and there is always at least one person who catches heat for just being themselves. That person this season is Rob.

Rob is gay and neurodivergent, and generally gets quite over excited about things. He has a relentlessly positive demeanour and also has the tendency to break into song at any moment. He has been asked to limit the consistent singing by several housemates who find it annoying, and while accepting the note, Rob insists that making fun little songs is his neurodivergent brain's way of expressing itself. Now let me be clear; non-stop singing every day would probably get on my nerves too. But watching the tension boil has raised a question in me that I must discuss: should people minimise themselves because others find it annoying? 

While we only see snippets of what actually happens in the house, I feel protective of Rob because there are people that actively make everyone else's day worse, but Rob is regularly disregarded as annoying and selfish because of his over-bearing optimism. And again, I'm sure I would find it annoying too. But does that mean Rob should change his personality? I'm not entirely convinced. As far as I'm concerned, annoyance is subjective; Rob's singing irritates a group of housemates, but there's another group who don't mind it, and even sing with him. Whether or not they find it annoying, they accept that it's part of Rob and choose to let it go. 

I've been called annoying more times than I can remember and I have the tendency to be louder than other people might want me to be. I've thought about whether I'm responsible for editing myself, but it just doesn't sit right with me. I know that there is a time and a place to be loud and annoying, but there should never be a time and a place that I am expected to be any less of myself. If you're not hurting anyone and you make an effort to be aware of yourself, most things can be overlooked. Ultimately, I'd rather be myself and live with the knowledge that people find me annoying, than be somebody different, and I think we should all feel like that.

In truth, I think Rob is just a weird little theatre kid and some people have probably never met someone quite as homosexual as him. Thankfully, I'm surrounded by annoying gay people so I'm naturally unbothered by him thinking he's on Season 23 of Glee. Being annoying isn't illegal, which I'm unbelievably thankful of, and we all deserve the right to be exactly who we are during our time on Earth. 

I'm reminded of a sticker I saw on a lamppost that read: People do not have to like you and you do not have to care.