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The trap of "I am not an extrovert"

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Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"

#62
post #37
post #13

It’s quite treacherous to identify yourself with labels: introvert, extrovert, conscientious, conservative, liberal, empathetic, neurodivergent, etc. The act of putting a name on some traits that you have can seem liberating: I finally know what I am, and why I’m different from others, and that’s fine. On the flipside, once you commit to a label, you lock yourself inside it, and instead of describing, it begins shapi…

I was diagnosed with dyslexia in my 40s. It's helped me understand why I struggle with certain tasks. Overall having a label has been a net positive. I'm hesitant to share my diagnosis with colleagues. I've been able to develop coping mechanisms and I feel like it doesn't impact my day-to-day. I don't want to cause disruption for those around me. I do have a friend with much more severe dyslexia and she does get the…

Regarding labels: https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2015-05-23>

Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"

#63

One thing to me is fairly obvious: people who are introverts can be social, but only for limited amounts of time. For example, I like talking a lot, but I can only do it for limited amounts of time. Maybe only a few hours a week. If I'm pushed past that point, I just don't want to chat any more. It's like I'm full of food, but with socialization. After that I find socialization immensely distasteful and irritating. T…

Yes, extroverts do understand this limited capacity. It's like when you live an ultra sedentary lifestyle, and one day you realize you can't catch your breath after walking up four flights of stairs. Like any capacity, socializing requires exercise. We are all descended from a long line of people who lived extremely social lives. It's only in the last decade or two that it became possible to live a productive live by…

Or maybe "I'm introverted" i just the nice form for "You are annoying and i don't enjoy being around you".

Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"

#64

Like so many things, introversion can now be both medicalized as a disorder and celebrated as a lifestyle choice. This allows some people to pick whichever is psychologically soothing to them at the moment and use it to justify a lack of effort, as if socializing were not a skill that many people actually have to work on.

How about "shutting up and leaving people alone" as a skill that many people should have to work on? Let's distribute the effort.

Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"

#66
post #13

It’s quite treacherous to identify yourself with labels: introvert, extrovert, conscientious, conservative, liberal, empathetic, neurodivergent, etc. The act of putting a name on some traits that you have can seem liberating: I finally know what I am, and why I’m different from others, and that’s fine. On the flipside, once you commit to a label, you lock yourself inside it, and instead of describing, it begins shapi…

I think that one of the major issues is that people will use certain labels to help justifying behaving in a certain way, or avoid specific tasks and situations. E.g. a ton of people hate talking on the phone, for reasons that are beyond me, and they will justify this is being introvert or having some sort of social anxiety, while at the same time being outgoing and extroverted in pretty much every other situation.

As I grow old I've stopped trying to put labels on my behavior. They rarely fit and society expects that I act or believe in certain ways depending on how those labels are generally perceived.

Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"

#67

One thing to me is fairly obvious: people who are introverts can be social, but only for limited amounts of time. For example, I like talking a lot, but I can only do it for limited amounts of time. Maybe only a few hours a week. If I'm pushed past that point, I just don't want to chat any more. It's like I'm full of food, but with socialization. After that I find socialization immensely distasteful and irritating. T…

Yes, extroverts do understand this limited capacity. It's like when you live an ultra sedentary lifestyle, and one day you realize you can't catch your breath after walking up four flights of stairs. Like any capacity, socializing requires exercise. We are all descended from a long line of people who lived extremely social lives. It's only in the last decade or two that it became possible to live a productive live by…

>We are all descended from a long line of people who lived extremely social lives.

Just because something was a necessity for a greater cause in ye olde days does not mean that it is also a good thing in itself. Now that it's not a strict necessity, a not insignificant number of people are admitting they don't like it.

Personally I consider myself more intro- than extrovert. I find people dishonest (even the most honest ones) and dealing with that reality is extremely tiring.

Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"

#68
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have good points in your middle paragraph, but I disagree with your first sentence. I can see a growing trend of dismissive "this reads like it's AI-generated" when I frankly think it has been written like that. Author has a similar tone to me. That's my writing style. > Not everyone can achieve this level of communication in a productive manner. Correct, and it sucks. I feel like it's ableist at times to…

I held back a similar comment about AI-generated. I think the "AI-generated" accusation is overused. This article was incoherent nonsense, but not all incoherent nonsense hallucinations are AI-generated.

People underestimate how old incoherent writing is. For that matter they underestimate how hard it is to write coherently.

Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"

#69

One thing to me is fairly obvious: people who are introverts can be social, but only for limited amounts of time. For example, I like talking a lot, but I can only do it for limited amounts of time. Maybe only a few hours a week. If I'm pushed past that point, I just don't want to chat any more. It's like I'm full of food, but with socialization. After that I find socialization immensely distasteful and irritating. T…

Yes, extroverts do understand this limited capacity. It's like when you live an ultra sedentary lifestyle, and one day you realize you can't catch your breath after walking up four flights of stairs. Like any capacity, socializing requires exercise. We are all descended from a long line of people who lived extremely social lives. It's only in the last decade or two that it became possible to live a productive live by…

> We are all descended from a long line of people who lived extremely social lives. It's only in the last decade or two that it became possible to live a productive live by text, alone, without the intense realtime, full mind and full body experience of being with other people.

Most of us are descended from people who lived in small communities and rarely interacted with people who lived outside of them. It's only in the last 200 years (an instant on evolutionary timescales) that the majority of humanity ended up in a position where we have to constantly deal with more than ~30 people on a regular basis.

Sure, we spent a lot of time with those 30 people in the past, but calling that "extremely social" is pretty misleading in the modern context—today that kind of wording evokes a very different image than the small-scale village life that dominated our ancestors' lives.

I'm a hardcore introvert by modern standards, but for me that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy spending time with my small circle of friends and family, it means that when I branch out beyond that small circle socialization is actively draining. I'd have done just fine in village life, it's the completely unnatural modern world that is overwhelming to my social limits, and I get rather tired of extroverts telling me that it's just because I don't try hard enough to "exercise".

Re: The trap of "I am not an extrovert"

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, extroverts do understand this limited capacity. It's like when you live an ultra sedentary lifestyle, and one day you realize you can't catch your breath after walking up four flights of stairs. Like any capacity, socializing requires exercise. We are all descended from a long line of people who lived extremely social lives. It's only in the last decade or two that it became possible to live a productive live by…

Or maybe "I'm introverted" i just the nice form for "You are annoying and i don't enjoy being around you".

Yes. I always thought this captured it well:

”I used to think I was introverted because I really liked being alone but it turns out I just like being at peace and I am very extroverted when I’m around people who bring me peace.”

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