"A big element of what they regard as conformity is simply a desire to have an audience"

Condemnations of conformity often skip a more ordinary motive: people want witnesses. To speak, to make art, to argue, to live publicly at all requires ears and eyes; recognition is the social oxygen that keeps expression alive. What gets labeled conformity is frequently the pragmatic work of becoming legible to others, adopting a vocabulary, a dress code, a genre, a tone, so that communication can begin. Legibility is the first concession any public voice makes.

That desire is not vanity alone. Attention opens doors to influence and solidarity. Makers and thinkers adopt familiar forms so their work is legible. From edits that suit festivals to prose that fits journals, these accommodations can resemble capitulation, yet they buy entry to the common stage. Even avant‑gardes soon settle into canons and uniforms, showing how “nonconformity” hardens into style once an audience coheres.

Reisz’s observation reframes the moral calculus. Instead of treating conformity as a character flaw, it becomes a communication strategy with risks. Seek an audience too eagerly and you begin mirroring its expectations, letting metrics hollow the message. Refuse an audience and you drift into purity, unheard and untested. The art lies in calibrating legibility without surrender: borrowing forms to be understood while keeping a margin of friction where something genuinely new can emerge. And every audience, in turn, is changed by what it agrees to hear.

Platforms now quantify applause, tempting us to equate worth with reach, but the need predates algorithms. Humans stage themselves to be seen because shared attention is how societies coordinate values. An honest pursuit of audience tests ideas against reality and invites accountability. The task is neither to scorn nor to worship the audience, but to cultivate audiences capable of attention beyond habit, so what looks like conformity becomes the opening through which difference enters the room.