Before I say anything else, I'd like to say that Whit Stillman's new movie Damsels in Distress is a wonderful movie with an affectionate but nuanced take on weirdness. Check it out.

By self-analyzing the weirdness, you can break it down into its components and decide which elements are useful, which are harmful, which are productive, which are counterproductive. "Weird" or "different" can be reduced to more elementary traits, rather than seen as broad, blanket terms.

This is wonderfully expressed. I wish somebody with that perspective had been around to help me when I was a kid. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether the things I liked about myself and the things I hated about myself were two sides of the same coin. Everyone else assumed they were -- some people (like my parents) assuming my social difficulties were good and nothing to worry about, because a kid as smart and well-read as me couldn't help having social difficulties with normal kids my age, and some people assuming (and saying out loud, behind my back) that I was only smart because there was something wrong with me. All the adults (and other kids) who liked me or cared about me at all were of the opinion that I had no real problems, that I was just fine. So... then I could basically just drop my difficulties start enjoying an awesome and unconstrained life anytime I wanted to? I only tried that a thousand times; maybe the thousand and first would have been the charm. The only people who acknowledged I had problems were people who disliked me and wanted to drag me down. That was the worst part; the only people who saw the problems I was struggling with were the people who wanted to use them against me. I appreciate your advocacy of a nuanced analysis and hope that attitude becomes more widely accepted.

we should keep in mind that being "weird" (or even being "different") isn't always a choice, or at least not a conscious one

Not having a choice about it is a big deal. I liked being weird sometimes and certainly embraced it, sometimes perversely, but I always wished I could turn it on and off so I could take part in some of the normal social relations that other people enjoyed. (I was never an introvert. Just alone.) But you can't turn it on and off. Being weird means no practice at socializing, no confidence, and becoming accustomed to people reacting negatively to you -- an expectation that eventually handicaps your relationships with everyone you meet, even people you should be able to get along with. You can't act normal with someone even by your own standards until you get over the hump of anxiety and negative expectations that have become your default mode for relating to people.

Even if you meet someone who might be a good friend or girlfriend, you have no idea how to relate to somebody who doesn't think you're weird. By the time you've figured it out, the moment has passed. That happens a bunch of times before you've kind of figured out, through imagination and through study of other people's behavior, how to act with someone when you expect the encounter to be mutually pleasant. And later you realize it isn't a bad idea to act that way with most of the people you meet.

It becomes easier and easier, but now that I'm in my thirties and still have to make a little bit of an effort at the best of times, and I can regress ten years under the influence of stress, fatigue, or unfamiliar scenarios, I tend to forget there was ever a time when I enjoyed being weird and enjoyed being able to follow my own path on everything. Now I just take it for granted, and I catch myself assuming that everyone was always as free as I was. But I did benefit from embracing my weirdness.