Non-conformity is only relative to the social and intellectual norms in your life. A sci-fi convention is essentially a huge collection of socially tone-deaf i

Non-conformity is only relative to the social and intellectual norms in your life. A sci-fi convention is essentially a huge collection of socially tone-deaf individuals, so of course they're going to be tolerant; there's no coherent metric for conformity in the first place. This is probably why intellectual movements form: they create a context in which new and unconventional ideas lack the stigma they would have elsewhere. This means that you can't measure the level of a person's non-conformity by some objective metric of how "strange" they are. A person who is well integrated into their social or intellectual milieu can do something less eye-catching than wearing a clown suit and still be much greater non-conformist. It depends entirely on your environment, your audience, and how well you understand both.