I think not feeling the need to shout about one's personality or tastes is sometimes part of "growing up"
Perhaps, although I think (if I can remember my younger self correctly) that I would not have seen it in terms of 'feeling the need to shout' at the time. (In fact I was generally suspicious of any sentence fragment including the phrase 'feel the need', since it seemed to me that it was most often used as a means of pre-emptively framing a debate in a way that made it hard to argue in favour of what might in fact be a perfectly sensible thing to want to do.)
I don't think I ever thought in terms of wanting to tell the world what sort of person I was. I wore things I thought were funny or cool because I enjoyed seeing the same sorts of thing on other people – I'd laugh at the jokes on other people's T-shirts, or admire the artwork – and so it seemed natural to give back in the same way, to wear things that would make other people smile or laugh. The point wasn't, at least consciously, to identify me as "someone who likes that set of things"; it was to inspire pleasure in other people who liked the same things as I did.
Which suggests that maybe what's put me off the practice now is precisely the fact that I've started to care more about the fact that by wearing decorated T-shirts I (whether I was particularly trying to or not) communicate a profile of my personality and tastes to people who may not share them. In other words, I care more about how I'm perceived by people in general, rather than just wearing things for the pleasure of people like me and not worrying about what anyone else might think.
But then ... I still admire the artwork, and laugh at the jokes, on other people's T-shirts, and now I'm not giving back any more – I'm a freeloader in the funny-T-shirt economy. And I'm still communicating something about myself by eschewing those T-shirts, in that I communicate that I'm the kind of person who wears a totally boring black outfit every day and doesn't seem to mind that very much. So I'm not sure I actually won there, even though my subconscious feels more comfortable this way!
Or, maybe you say funny things that make people happy, and believe in your ability to reliably do this such that you don't need subtitles just in case it doesn't work one day in speech.
Ohhh - maybe it's because you don't go to the Calling and other such loud events anymore, so that you can go up to a friend and say something random and funny and they don't say "what? I didn't catch that, can you speak up?" so often - like literally not needing subtitles anymore?
Nice theory about the Calling :-) Now you mention it, I wonder if I would be more willing to wear some of my old decorated T-shirts if I were to go back there – on the grounds that if I wasn't gothing up properly like I could never be bothered to do anyway, it would at least constitute making more of an effort clothes-wise than turning up in black jeans and T-shirt...
It hadn't occurred to me to think of funny T-shirts as subtitles for my spoken wit :-) (Though, if so, they'd have to be subtitles of the sort that give up on a totally untranslatable pun and try to retain the spirit of the line by writing a completely different pun in the target language...)
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Perhaps, although I think (if I can remember my younger self correctly) that I would not have seen it in terms of 'feeling the need to shout' at the time. (In fact I was generally suspicious of any sentence fragment including the phrase 'feel the need', since it seemed to me that it was most often used as a means of pre-emptively framing a debate in a way that made it hard to argue in favour of what might in fact be a perfectly sensible thing to want to do.)
I don't think I ever thought in terms of wanting to tell the world what sort of person I was. I wore things I thought were funny or cool because I enjoyed seeing the same sorts of thing on other people – I'd laugh at the jokes on other people's T-shirts, or admire the artwork – and so it seemed natural to give back in the same way, to wear things that would make other people smile or laugh. The point wasn't, at least consciously, to identify me as "someone who likes that set of things"; it was to inspire pleasure in other people who liked the same things as I did.
Which suggests that maybe what's put me off the practice now is precisely the fact that I've started to care more about the fact that by wearing decorated T-shirts I (whether I was particularly trying to or not) communicate a profile of my personality and tastes to people who may not share them. In other words, I care more about how I'm perceived by people in general, rather than just wearing things for the pleasure of people like me and not worrying about what anyone else might think.
But then ... I still admire the artwork, and laugh at the jokes, on other people's T-shirts, and now I'm not giving back any more – I'm a freeloader in the funny-T-shirt economy. And I'm still communicating something about myself by eschewing those T-shirts, in that I communicate that I'm the kind of person who wears a totally boring black outfit every day and doesn't seem to mind that very much. So I'm not sure I actually won there, even though my subconscious feels more comfortable this way!
Ohhh - maybe it's because you don't go to the Calling and other such loud events anymore, so that you can go up to a friend and say something random and funny and they don't say "what? I didn't catch that, can you speak up?" so often - like literally not needing subtitles anymore?
It hadn't occurred to me to think of funny T-shirts as subtitles for my spoken wit :-) (Though, if so, they'd have to be subtitles of the sort that give up on a totally untranslatable pun and try to retain the spirit of the line by writing a completely different pun in the target language...)