We copy the group, especially when we are unsure what to do.
More quotesThe rule-breaker looks important only when everyone believes they could have followed the rule. Otherwise the missing convention looks less like confidence and more like admin failure.
That is why the professor’s T-shirt can signal autonomy while the same informality elsewhere reads as somebody forgetting the dress code. Senior people get credited with deliberate nonconformity; juniors are more likely to be accused of not knowing better. The asymmetry is unfair, but commercially useful to understand. A brand can reject category conventions and look supremely confident—provided customers still recognise competence beneath the deviation. An expensive restaurant can omit prices from a menu because every other detail says control. A new one doing the same may merely make customers nervous. Random eccentricity signals random eccentricity.
Break one rule whose absence expresses the position. Keep enough familiar cues for the audience to see which rule went missing. A plain package can feel audacious when the product earns the restraint; vague instructions and a broken seal do not become premium minimalism. And never confuse imposing costs on other people with status: arriving late may demonstrate power, yet it also demonstrates that the meeting deserved a better guest. Autonomy is persuasive when it looks chosen, affordable and relevant. Otherwise rebellion is just poor execution enjoying its own press release.