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Introverts didn't 'win' lockdown

bbc.com

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Re: Introverts didn't 'win' lockdown

#101

Post by jdkdkfmdm »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #35
hirundo wrote: post #9

I'm a physically and socially isolated introvert in a rural county and have been working from home for a decade. About the only difference for me was the occasional need to put on a mask before walking in a store. My greatest inconvenience was very minor: I was turned away from a convenience store for not having a mask with me. Early in the lockdowns I made a trip to the closest big city for a dentist appointment and…

It seems like you "won" because you kept your job, living in a rural area and being introverted was just a side bonus.

Yeah it also seems like he didn't give in to the fear and went about his life as best as he could. He went to the dentist early in lockdowns. My social circle would've cast you out for that and it is for sure a smaller circle than it was in March 2020 because of media provided moral imperatives that if you didn't follow week to week, you were no better than a Republican

Actually, it eventually made me Republican.

Re: Introverts didn't 'win' lockdown

#102

Post by mason55 »

C-x_C-f wrote: post #90
tboyd47 wrote: post #20

There aren’t any measurable elements of personality that are fixed. Personality changes as you age. I’ve witnessed a reversal in each of the Myers-Briggs markers in the past 15 years (from INTJ to ESFP) — not intentionally, but that’s just the way my life played out. I’ve come to see the truth of the matter like this: every human being has a need for socializing, but it takes effort and is exhausting. The amount of e…

It's incredible to me how we see NLP models with billions of parameters struggling to act human even on paper, yet somehow many influential people still claim that the Myers-Briggs type indicator can give predictive value to a 4-bit model of human personality. I get that most people are likely unaware of the measures of complexity involved in these issues, but at the very least I would expect today's intellectual tre…

And if you are going to talk about personality traits then at LEAST talk about ones with some scientific backing (the Big 5)

Re: Introverts didn't 'win' lockdown

#103

Post by KronisLV »

johnchristopher wrote: post #52
hirundo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have daily human contact online at work. I've never met one of my coworkers in the flesh. In meatspace, I drive into a tiny village once a week to get mail at the post office, usually talking to nobody. Every other week I go to a more distant small town and hit the grocery and hardware store, and pass a few words with a clerk or three. It isn't unusual for a month to go by without speaking in the flesh with anyone…

> Then the loneliness becomes unbearable and I retreat. I don't understand how this goes. Could you describe your experience with more details ? > I built a desk a couple of years ago and I'm still waiting to show it off to somebody. Well, you could paste a picture here :).

> Well, you could paste a picture here :).

That does sound like a pretty nice thing to say! That said, i can't exactly recall seeing many "Show HN" posts about making furniture, though awesome stuff like that does occasionally appear in the comments.

I do feel like reaching out to some of the online communities for those particular interest groups could be pretty beneficial, though! For example:

  https://www.reddit.com/r/Carpentry/
  https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/
  https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/
(just using Reddit here as an example, because it's one of the better known sites)

Re: Introverts didn't 'win' lockdown

#104

Post by irrational »

I’m an introvert, but I’m also married with 7 children (5 still at home). Frankly I got too much human contact during the lockdown. When I would go into the office pre pandemic I could go to my cubicle, hunker down and not deal with anyone for many hours at a time. Not so easy when I don’t have an office at home and the kids are all doing school from home. However, I did find I was much happier and had much improved mental health by working from home. All things considered, the lockdown was fantastic for me. 10/10 would recommended again.

Re: Introverts didn't 'win' lockdown

#105

Post by erikerikson »

kristofferR wrote: post #83
erikerikson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels brutal and mean to read. It seems that you're telling me my feelings, preferences, and way of being are invalid. Not only that but that I deserve what I've experienced because I have not overlaid my sincere core with the model proposed to me. The world is often structured to heavily advantage highly social individuals. You're right that being less social or even asocial can bear a large accumulative cost.…

You seem overly attached to the label of being an introvert. The whole post is slightly confusing to me in fact. If you've concluded that other things than increasing social skills are more worthwhile pursuits for you in your life, then that's great. You do you. However, you can't then also complain in the next breath about what your lack of social skills, that you won't spend an effort acquiring, exclude you from. "…

I am not terribly attached to the term introvert but it seems the best available term that communicates a dynamic I experience. Maybe lean into that confusion?

Certainly, we would agree that to socialize one needs to try doing it and grow. Sometimes there will be failures and consequences.

I've done the work to acquire my social skills and would hazard a speculation that I might have more sophisticated social skills than many.

Having to learn a skill to use it is not the thing I am objecting to. That is unless by "skills" you mean willingness to meaninglessly spend my time and resources practicing the skill. To be more concrete, a normality in business is checking in with people about their children and other important aspects of their lives. I actually like that but find it annoying that very few people actually want to dig in to any depth and talk about the flows of their emotional journeys, their core intellectual advanced, the things that they've learned, or instructive errors that they've made so that we gain wisdom from the conversation. They're responding to incentives because having broad social capital has in many scopes become a gating function to prosperity. It is such that those who enjoy socializing voluminously have quite a bit of advantage. I would much rather build and create tools that solve problems, or use my socializing to really clearly identify the cores of problems so that they can be better solved. I completely appreciate the value of socialization and collaboration. It is simply that those who really enjoy socializing in and for itself will dilute conversations to make them less valuable and have created a norm of this that seems to me to carry a lot of opportunity cost.

We completely agree that sometimes we must experience and accept pain and struggle. There's a big difference between feeling our efforts and being self displacing.

Consider an engineer who gets positions because they are well connected and another who is an effective teammate and simply amazing at their job. Which one do you want to hire? You're more likely to hire the first. What if they're in the same team and the latter did most of the work? Often it's the former that gets the recognition.

Re: Introverts didn't 'win' lockdown

#106

Post by brailsafe »

GuB-42 wrote: post #91
tboyd47 wrote: post #20

There aren’t any measurable elements of personality that are fixed. Personality changes as you age. I’ve witnessed a reversal in each of the Myers-Briggs markers in the past 15 years (from INTJ to ESFP) — not intentionally, but that’s just the way my life played out. I’ve come to see the truth of the matter like this: every human being has a need for socializing, but it takes effort and is exhausting. The amount of e…

I don't think personality changes that much. People can get more social skills as they age, regardless of their personality, and it may appear as extraversion, but I don't think of it as a core change. You don't have to enjoy socializing to do it, just like you don't need to love your job to be good at it. Introverts with good social skills simply do the necessary amount of socialization to fulfill their needs the go…

I disagree, or at least would point to it being anecdotal. All the online game addicts I know that are still introverted, are less social then they've ever been regardless of whether they still play games. If anything they've become more so, either in games or with some other thing. These people don't have any problem with how much they spend gaming. However my online gaming addict friends, including myself, do have a problem with it, and deliberately choose not to on the basis that it encourages social isolation and destructive tendencies.

Re: Introverts didn't 'win' lockdown

#107

Post by sidlls »

kristofferR wrote: post #28
tboyd47 wrote: post #20

There aren’t any measurable elements of personality that are fixed. Personality changes as you age. I’ve witnessed a reversal in each of the Myers-Briggs markers in the past 15 years (from INTJ to ESFP) — not intentionally, but that’s just the way my life played out. I’ve come to see the truth of the matter like this: every human being has a need for socializing, but it takes effort and is exhausting. The amount of e…

Agree! One of the most harmful beliefs about the concept of intro-/extroversion is that it is something you are and not something you do. Many people limit themselves massively because of how they've labeled themselves. Especially in "strong introverts", the label is often used as a convenient excuse for not going through the often painful process of trying to improve their confidence skills and social skills. "I'm a…

Sorry if this is uncharitable, but your comment reads strongly like something an oblivious extrovert would write. Consider this statement: “she’s only a lesbian because she hasn’t been fucked the right way by a guy” and how horribly awful and wrong it is. It’s the same as your comment.

Re: Introverts didn't 'win' lockdown

#108

Post by iancmceachern »

3np wrote: post #64
ryandrake wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I was going to say, OP's living situation sounds like a paradise to me. Also saving up for the big piece of rural land in the middle of nowhere. It sure beats commuting hours from a cramped home or apartment stacked up in a city with thousands of others, to a cramped office building where you sit literally shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of others and try to do work all day.

Sounds like a case of “the grass is always greener”. There are things that only start to affect you after extended time in a lifestyle. Maybe it would actually be great for you, but it could also be that the downsides only become apparent after a year or two, at which point it can be hard to find a way to get to a good place. EDIT: Current situation doesn’t sound healthy, though. The sweet spot is probably somewhere…

Exactly. I read so many posts on HN about living alone in the middle of nowhere being better than driving 2 hours each way in terrible traffic to sit shoulder to shoulder in an open plan office. There are lots of downsides to living in the middle of nowhere, healthcare, access to other resources, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I've fallen into that trap of thinking.

My wife and I bought a small RV trailer that we tow to these kinds of "middle of nowhere places", we stay for a few weeks, or long enough to make us want to come back.

My point - so.many of these comments I read on HN focus on putting all eggs in one basket. Why does it have to be bumper to bumper traffic and open plan offices vs. Hermet life in the woods?

The reality is if one finds a good job I a semi-major urban center that often allows them to live both lives. Take a month or two off int he summer, live and work remotely in the boonies, then go back to "normal life". If you live full time in the boonies and align with that lifestyle that's all you get, it's hard to then go live for a few months in the city without blowing the budget.

Variety is the spice of life?

Re: Introverts didn't 'win' lockdown

#109

Post by Clubber »

jdkdkfmdm wrote: post #101
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you "won" because you kept your job, living in a rural area and being introverted was just a side bonus.

Yeah it also seems like he didn't give in to the fear and went about his life as best as he could. He went to the dentist early in lockdowns. My social circle would've cast you out for that and it is for sure a smaller circle than it was in March 2020 because of media provided moral imperatives that if you didn't follow week to week, you were no better than a Republican Actually, it eventually made me Republican.

Really it was a lose-lose situation. Ignore it and you stack bodies in a freezer truck like in NYC. Lock down and a lot of your businesses no longer exist. Hopefully we're done with it for the next 100 years.

Re: Introverts didn't 'win' lockdown

#110

Post by jdavis703 »

ineedasername wrote: post #53
hirundo wrote: post #9

I'm a physically and socially isolated introvert in a rural county and have been working from home for a decade. About the only difference for me was the occasional need to put on a mask before walking in a store. My greatest inconvenience was very minor: I was turned away from a convenience store for not having a mask with me. Early in the lockdowns I made a trip to the closest big city for a dentist appointment and…

So while I don't count myself as a winner in this, it does seem to be a substantial win to not be one of the Same. I was extremely fortunate that this disaster and my work, family, and financial setup meant things had little impact on me. It hit my kids harder socially, but educationally they ended up much better because they had a highly educated retired family member as a neighbor. They did and did their remote sch…

In the California lockdown, we weren’t allowed to visit with neighbors (we’re in a 34 floor apartment, and we weren’t even supposed to ride the elevator with other households). It sounds like your region may have had a softer lockdown since they allowed people to visit.
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