Where did the cool misfits go?

When socially awkward characters are presented on TV, even when shows or films are making an honest attempt to deal with them respectfully and in a three-dimensional way, to some extent they're treated as buffoons. We're supposed to feel for their plight as "misfits", while laughing (gently perhaps, but patronizingly) at them, at the same time. Barclay on Star Trek: The Next Generation is one example, and there's a character on Six Feet Under...

I miss the concept of the cool "misfit". We used to have the idea in the culture that the mainstream could sometimes be an unhealthy, self-alienating, even destructive place... and that perhaps it's not necessarily a bad thing not to "fit in" with all that, that such people might have an awareness of some things that others lack. I'm thinking of the late 60s and early 70s, mainly.

There's no real "fringe" message being presented in the culture now. The characters we're meant to identify with always are careful not to look, sound, or think differently, so as not to be seen as "freaks". Yet, with every year that goes by, I identify less with mainstream characters, and feel more ill at ease amongst people, and it's not just because my neurological condition makes communicating harder. Society and I are diverging.

I'm fine with not being a very typical sort of person; I just don't want society to push me so far beyond the fringe, by how it sees me, and by keeping its distance, that I'm made to feel as if I should not or can not exist. If you know what I mean...