[HN Gopher] The introverts are winning
___________________________________________________________________
The introverts are winning
Author : johntfella
Score : 144 points
Date : 2024-08-04 03:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (newhumanist.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (newhumanist.org.uk)
| carapace wrote:
| First of all the COVID pandemic is still going on, the idea that
| it's over is just wishful thinking backed by irresponsible media
| and governments.
|
| Even without the very real risk of contracting a dangerous
| disease that can cause long-term health problems, it's fine to
| prefer a slower, less frenetic phase of civilization. Science and
| capitalism have delivered technology and wealth, we won history,
| we just have to relax, take care of each other, and live happily
| ever after. "Where shall we have lunch?", eh?
|
| "The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass
| through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of
| Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How,
| Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is
| characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the
| question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where
| shall we have lunch?" -- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End
| of the Universe
| switch007 wrote:
| How would you define the end of the pandemic?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's the neat part, the powers that be have decided it's
| over because it's endemic and supposedly not as dangerous
| anymore (even though new cases of long covid are popping up,
| the silent long-term pandemic that nobody really wants to
| address even though there's millions of people affected by
| it.
| switch007 wrote:
| I don't think that answers my question at all. It wasn't
| rhetorical
|
| I'm very familiar with COVID having had it it at least 4
| times, and also long COVID - two instances about 6 months
| each
|
| There is no disagreement from me that post viral symptoms
| need more attention but I don't think it's necessary to
| downgrade the meaning of pandemic.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| How would you define the end of having your arm sawn off?
| Observing that your arm is still missing years later is not
| "downgrading the meaning" of missing a limb. The definition
| of the word "pandemic" has no connection to the duration of
| the phenomenon. Barring concerted international intervention
| or game-changing technological innovation- like the
| development of a sterilizing vaccine- COVID will remain a
| problem indefinitely, lowering quality and quantity of human
| life.
| carapace wrote:
| Fewer than ten thousand new cases a day (for the USA).
|
| > "I think if we can get well below 10,000, I think that
| would be a level that I think would be acceptable to us to
| get back to a degree of normality," Fauci said. "But again, I
| have to warn the listeners, these are not definitive
| statements -- these are just estimates."
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/16/dr-fauci-says-us-covid-
| cases...
|
| Stay safe out there.
| interroboink wrote:
| Must it be a war? Must there be a winner?
|
| I think it's good that the status quo got mixed up a bit. The
| introverts don't have to defend themselves or feel like outsiders
| quite so much.
|
| This article aligns stay-at-home-ness with "fear," "a fettered
| life," "hardly worth living" and says "retreating ... is an
| ultimately selfish choice." I believe that's a bit of a poor
| take. Plenty of people live rich, productive, fulfilling and
| engaged lives that don't especially involve a lot of interactions
| with other people.
|
| This author is clearly someone whose habits were impinged by the
| changes brought on by the pandemic ("... naturally outgoing
| people - this writer included - have found it that bit harder to
| get their friends out of the house."), but is that the end of the
| world?
|
| It almost feels like the author is eager to get back to what
| _they_ are comfortable with, at the expense of (by their numbers)
| 1 /3 of other people's lifestyles. It's almost like _they_ are
| the ones afraid of this change -- like _they_ are the selfish
| ones.
|
| But I don't really go for the whole us-vs-them approach at all.
| It has been a great (if forced) learning experience. Some people
| got to discover happiness they didn't know before. Other people
| felt the loss of something they took for granted. Perhaps we
| should share these lessons with each other and bring some balance
| and increased awareness, rather than pointing fingers and taking
| sides.
| mlinhares wrote:
| If I had to guess the author's friends are likely getting
| married and having kids, going through a different phase in
| life, the author isn't, and is thinking this must be the
| universe conspiring against his way of life, instead of the
| usual "nothing is forever".
|
| No one is entitled to the attention of others and the pandemic
| helped many of us to notice our time is finite and we should
| better spend it doing what we like and want. Be it being at
| home on a couch in slippers or otherwise.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >No one is entitled to the attention
|
| They aren't, but at the same time the world sure is feeling
| more lonely. Old friends will move on, but I did notive that
| Meetups never really recovered in my area post pandemic (and
| they weren't in great shape in 2017-9 to begin with). What
| does one do when it feels like there's nowhere to make
| friends?
|
| >helped many of us to notice our time is finite and we should
| better spend it doing what we like and want.
|
| It's not necessarily volunatry for everyone. Everything's
| more expensive and not everyone's gotten wages that keep up
| with inflation. Or they got laid off and are recovering from
| that. It just so happens the cheapest entertainment these
| days is in fact in your own house.
| mlinhares wrote:
| I haven't been back to meetup after the pandemic as I moved
| cities but most of the meetups I used to go didn't come
| back, which is unfortunate. I guess the main option is for
| you to start your own, not much else to be done. Before the
| pandemic me and a friend resurrected the Golang meetup in
| PHL and it was mostly a success, you won't know if it will
| work or not unless you try it.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Old friends will move on, but I did notive that Meetups
| never really recovered in my area post pandemic
|
| I think there is this setup period when parents do things
| for their kids and the rate of things decay as we get
| older, more lazy and less enthusiastic.
|
| Covid just made the middle age boring happen earlier, which
| people blame on their kids normally, for a generation and
| they didn't recover.
|
| Pubs have raised the price of a normal beer 2x where I live
| since pre-covid. The pub culture, which was allready weak,
| is not coming back any time soon.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > it just so happens the cheapest entertainment these days
| is in fact in your own house.
|
| These days? That is pretty much true since advent of home
| computers in 80s/90s.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Maybe late 90's. 80's Home computers were fairly
| expensive if you adjust for inflation and media was
| limited (and far from instant. Oh, the dial-up days where
| even saving a Gamefaqs guide could take minutes. Can only
| wonder how the early 90's went). In addition, it was much
| cheaper than today to go out on a bar crawl or even the
| arcades.
|
| But i think we both agree entertainment got cheaper while
| outside life more expensive. We can grab internet
| connected devices for barely $100 and a single
| entertainment subscription (Netflix, Gamepass, Spotify)
| is maybe $10/month for an entire catalog. I can't even go
| out for lunch for $10 unless I do Costco.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| In the 1980s, it was typically things away from the
| computer - renting videos or video games from Blockbuster
| and things like that. Not to mention all of the actually
| interesting things on cable.
|
| The local video store would run a deal over the summers
| when I was a kid where you paid $30 and got three, two
| night rentals (new releases excluded) a week for the
| summer school break. Being able to grab a new game or
| movie every other day (since you were already there to
| return the previous one on time) was great.
| ruszki wrote:
| Looking at Budapest, how it was 10-20 years ago, and how it
| is now: there is something in what the author tries to
| convey. I'm not saying that it's a problem, and it's
| definitely healthier how people in their 20s live now there,
| but before and after COVID young adult personal life in
| Budapest are wildly different. Night life is clearly dying in
| Budapest, and my friends under 25 go out waaaay more
| infrequently (and not just with me). Heck I'm in pubs in
| Budapest as much as them, and I don't even live in Hungary
| anymore. And not just pubs, but basically every shared public
| space which is good to gather with random friends. I met with
| my closest friends in person almost every day (not because of
| university, or work), they meet maybe every other week. So I
| think that there is really some change.
| strken wrote:
| I think it's honestly a good thing for hardcore introverts to
| stay home when they want to hibernate. Socialising with someone
| when they clearly don't want to be there is exhausting for me,
| let alone them, and nobody wins.
|
| At the same time, as someone who straddles the line between
| introversion and extraversion, it does feel like there's a
| higher activation energy for me now. I want to go out and do
| things, but it often seems to require more planning and more
| mental effort. I'm not happy with this change in myself, but
| there doesn't seem to be a quick way to fix it other than just
| putting more deliberate effort into being social and less into
| all the other stuff.
|
| I think the author is projecting her own feelings onto
| introverts in this piece. I feel the same way as she presumably
| does. Lockdown changed me in ways I don't like, albeit minor
| ones, and it's something of a struggle to manually keep doing
| the social things my old self did automatically.
| titanomachy wrote:
| I agree, I think this article is addressed more to the people
| on the fence rather than the hardcore introverts who feel
| certain that achieving their fullest lives doesn't require
| much social interaction.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Lockdown changed me in ways I don't like, albeit minor ones,
| and it's something of a struggle to manually keep doing the
| social things my old self did automatically.
|
| loosening friendships didn't help. People got busier or maybe
| they are fine with how the lockdown changed them. It already
| took some time to arrange even small hangouts, but these days
| it seems like I barely see my "best" friends if it's not some
| special occasion like a birthday or very big convention.
| taylorius wrote:
| I don't think the extent to which people feel comfortable
| socialising stays constant. I'm naturally introverted, and with
| a few exceptions I find being in other people's company
| exhausting - however I'm not a complete loner, and do enjoy it
| in smallish doses. It's as if I have a "level of fitness"
| socially. In my head, I consider that "forcing" myself to go to
| social events maintains this fitness.
|
| Now think of the pandemic lockdown. It could have caused
| introverts to have lost their social fitness entirely.
| gkhartman wrote:
| I've noticed this as well. I think it's a pretty good
| analogy. That realization came after being homeschooled for a
| few years as a teen. In my case, this meant less opportunity
| to socialize. After returning to public school, my "level of
| fitness" increased pretty quickly to way it's consider
| normal/healthy. The pandemic had similar effects that
| required a bit of effort to correct.
|
| Just like physical fitness, some need more/less exercise to
| stay fit. There will also be different preferences for were
| that exercise is done (at or outside the office).
| ike2792 wrote:
| This post resonated with me. I'm also naturally introverted
| but I've realized over the years (I'm in my 40s) that forcing
| myself to go out and be social regularly is ultimately good
| for me. I've noticed that my social skills have declined
| somewhat since COVID and now I feel a lot more mental
| "inertia" I have to push through if I want to go to a social
| event.
| parpfish wrote:
| fitness is a good analogy, but it goes both ways.
|
| introverts need a little push to work the muscles that let
| you socialize and interact.
|
| extroverts need a little push to work the muscles that let
| you sit quietly and contemplate.
|
| hopefully society doesn't succumb to one side dominating so
| half the people get to be lazy while the other half is
| constantly exercising. ideally everybody get a mix of
| exercise and rest.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| It's the usual "people not like me are wrong".
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| https://nypost.com/2012/02/05/extroverts-destroy-the-world/ ?
| SenHeng wrote:
| I was recently in a relationship with someone that worked as a
| recruiter and thus is very much a people person. One of the
| frequent complaints she brought up was how I could have lived
| to my 40s and still be so bad with people.
|
| I don't know where I'm going with this except maybe that
| extroverts simply do not understand introverts. They read about
| it and think they know our issue, but they don't understand it
| or don't believe it's a real thing.
| interroboink wrote:
| > but they don't understand it or don't believe it's a real
| thing.
|
| Yeah, this seems to underlie a lot of misunderstandings. I
| was reading on another recent HN thread about people's
| ability to form mental images[1] and it shows a similar
| struggle of people with different minds trying to understand
| each other.
|
| The older I get, the more I get the sense that people can be
| _quite_ different on the inside, yet live a lot of their
| lives being unaware or unbelieving of how much mental variety
| is out there.
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41138338
| bloqs wrote:
| This is purely due to the empathizer-systematizer dichotomy.
| Give her any sort of complex system and these tables turn
| quickly.
|
| Interestingly, her inability to empathise with your
| perspective despite being people orientated indicates shes
| probably not the sharpest. Sorry.
| consteval wrote:
| Au contraire, there's a difference between social skills
| and introversion.
|
| You can be introverted and have strong social skills. In
| fact, if you want to be successful, you will need strong
| social skills. Development is one of the few areas in which
| this is not the case, although the people who move up will
| have the strongest social skills.
|
| Some will view it as playing politics, being manipulative,
| what have you. But ultimately these aren't personality
| traits, they're skills.
|
| It's possible to be an extrovert with bad social skills,
| i.e. you're obnoxious. Or an introvert with fantastic
| social skills, i.e. you're the next CTO. Some, maybe even
| most, introverts don't know this. So they don't develop
| their skills and wonder why they don't succeed.
|
| All to say, the recruiter is 100% right. How CAN you be 40
| with such poor social skills? Well, you're an introvert and
| everyone has told you your whole life that's not for you.
| So you purposefully ignore those skills.
| charlie0 wrote:
| As you alluded to, it's also easy to forgo chasing these
| skills when we can make decent money just solving puzzles
| while only requiring the most basic of emotional
| intelligence.
| charlie0 wrote:
| This is funny because I generally have something similar for
| extraverts. I agree with your take that extraverts don't
| understand introverts and it's because our true skills lie
| way beyond a shallow five minute conversation.
| vertis wrote:
| The ability to live our lives online well predates the
| pandemic. Remote work hasn't prevented experiences (except
| perhaps being tied to a commute), it's enabled us to live more
| flexible lives.
|
| My partner (extreme introvert), and myself (somewhat an
| ambivert) have travelled the world for 6 years as digital
| nomads and rarely if ever do extroverted things. But introvert
| is not the same as not leaving the house.
|
| We've done ~50 countries, quietly, patiently and without
| broadcasting our lives for all to see. We've learned to sail
| and lived on a sailboat for a while without starting a youtube
| channel so the world can follow us doing it.
|
| I find the article mostly to be flawed and ridiculous. Calling
| introverts selfish is obnoxious. This reads like a (fake)
| column from "Sex and the City".
|
| Carrie: "I found myself wondering if humans would go extinct if
| they didn't go to bars every night".
| nahnahno wrote:
| This article makes it sound like introversion is a personality
| disorder and maladaptive for society, which is frankly insulting.
|
| Extroverts have enough advantages in modern society, they don't
| need to try to erode ours.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| I haven't read the article, but I think the question of whether
| or not aspects of one's personality are disordered or
| maladaptive are valid, and can be managed with reason, without
| resorting to a question of insult.
| bawolff wrote:
| Sure, but "introvert" would be the incorrect terminology for
| such things. Introvert is not the same thing as depression or
| social anxiety. Its not even really right to consider it a
| mild form of those things as extroverts can also be those
| things.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > makes it sound like introversion is a personality disorder
| and maladaptive for society
|
| With the pardon of the joke [This is what extroverts actually
| believe]
|
| While sure, too much introversion is pathological, I think a
| lot of people in that category just doesn't go into mindless
| yapping
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I strongly suspect that there's a non-trivial number of people
| who self-identify as introverts who really just suffer from a
| lack of social skills. Especially among those who consider
| introversion to be an especially important or interesting
| personality trait.
|
| That said, this author just seems like somebody who's social
| skills aren't keeping up with their social ambitions. Anybody
| who can't find people to socialise with the way they want to
| needs to look at themselves to find the problem, not everybody
| else.
| kstenerud wrote:
| The article is unfortunately disingenuous and cannot be trusted
| to make an honest argument.
|
| > In late 2023, campaign group More In Common polled British
| people on their attitudes towards pandemic life ... a third of 25
| to 40-year-olds backed closing nightclubs again, 29 per cent were
| keen to bring back "the rule of six" and 28 per cent would have
| been comfortable with "only allowing people to leave their homes
| for essential shopping, 60 minutes of exercise, or work".
|
| They're mixing two polls and making it sound like these people
| CURRENTLY support these measures. Those numbers were from a poll
| taken BEFORE any COVID restrictions had been put in place at all
| (i.e. what SAFETY measures should we enact to slow the
| pandemic?): https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/media/31kfnjxi/mic-
| covid-res...
|
| It took a lot of digging for me to find it, and I can see why
| they didn't want to link to it. And just in case one wants to
| give the authors the benefit of the doubt, they finish off with
| this flourish: "This was more than a year after the last legal
| restrictions were lifted in the UK, in line with global health
| policy."
|
| So yeah, a baldfaced lie.
|
| > Still, French philosopher Pascal Bruckner argues, "life means
| excess and profligacy or it ceases to be life."
|
| Uhh... WTF??? That's precisely the mentality that has led to the
| ecological disaster we're entering today!
|
| > Who will win the war?
|
| WHAT war??? Who's fighting a war over this?
|
| > As Bruckner puts it, "a new anthropological type is emerging:
| the shrivelled, hyperconnected being who no longer needs others
| or the outside world. All of today's technologies encourage
| incarceration under the guise of openness."
|
| Jeez... Is this guy high?
|
| I've stopped reading at this point.
| thackerhacker wrote:
| The poll you link to says December 2023, like the article.
| rini17 wrote:
| Pervasive loneliness is unhealthy, though. And I fully agree
| the article is doing same disservice to it as "just stop
| eating" obesity advice.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > Uhh... WTF??? That's precisely the mentality that has led to
| the ecological disaster we're entering today!
|
| I've found out that extrovert crowd is often also the crowd who
| will say things like:
|
| - I am sure we'll figure it out later
|
| - Well, this might be problematic in the future, but will give
| us such big gains in the short term (by which time they already
| happily moved their show to another company, leaving the quiet
| ones to deal with what they left behind)
|
| - Great job, team, we managed to fix the problem/disaster/oil
| spill (who caused it in the first place).
|
| - I am healthy, I can take the risk of not having a mask (and
| not thinking of the immunocompromised and the old)
|
| We should, imo, treat people like that not only with unease
| that one reserves for charlatans, mystics and mime performers.
| We should actively show them that their loud, rude, obnoxious
| and overbearing ways deserve a bit of our scorn as well. Let's
| stop not only following loud fools, but even listening to them.
| They crave our attention, let's stop giving it to them.
|
| > Still, French philosopher Pascal Bruckner argues, "life means
| excess and profligacy or it ceases to be life."
|
| The same way cancer cells are life. They excess and
| proliferate.
| wolfendin wrote:
| The way this article is written feels very selfish with a
| distinct lack of empathy for how so called introverts might have
| felt in a similar position
|
| Thing like this feel especially disingenuous
|
| > Living a real, physical life outside the home is good because
| humans need friction. Convenience is alluring but it is
| dangerous, because getting used to it means forgetting that being
| alive isn't meant to always be easy. We should run our errands in
| person and queue at the Post Office and eat in restaurants
| because it is good to remember that sometimes we have to wait
| around, or go to several shops because the first one didn't have
| what we needed.
|
| These are things I was able and am able to do without have to go
| to the office five days a week
| getnormality wrote:
| Technology is giving introverts access to a deep, meaningful,
| beautiful social life. In real life, I can be a fish out of water
| in my interests, but on X I am a social butterfly with dozens of
| friends and several very dear friends.
| rexpop wrote:
| Hacker News is, of course, a scurrilous bastion of introversion.
| card_zero wrote:
| A wretched hive of shut-in pedantry?
| amarcheschi wrote:
| I mean, the stereotype of the nerd staying at home coding with
| blinds shut down(which is what I did yesterday) doesn't come
| out of the blue, even if not representative of the population
| per se and a bit cliche it has its roots in something that
| probably happened more than once
| hagbard_c wrote:
| > the stereotype of the nerd staying at home coding with
| blinds shut down
|
| Real nerds don't need blinds, the occasional full moon
| notwithstanding.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Everyone knew there were introverts and extroverts, homebodies
| and socialites, but it had never really mattered. The two groups
| complemented each other and managed to peacefully cohabit.
|
| What a very extroverted perspective. "Everything was fine when
| the world was structured around an extroverted lifestyle. Then
| the pandemic hit and everything was miserable for a bit, but
| what's even worse is that those darn introverts aren't happy
| resuming their natural place in society!"
|
| The pandemic gave us a taste of what life could be like if the
| world were structured around our preferred way of existing
| instead of yours. It turns out we liked it, and now that we've
| had that taste we're not comfortable resuming the old status quo
| where we just tag along for the ride in an extroverted world.
|
| It boggles my mind that someone can write an article like this
| and not realize that what they're saying is they wish a group of
| people would go back to being an underclass.
| plasma_beam wrote:
| Amen. Thank you. Not sure if the author intended to sound so
| crass, but I shared your immediate reaction to those two
| sentences.
| Animats wrote:
| > "Everything was fine when the world was structured around an
| extroverted lifestyle. Then the pandemic hit and everything was
| miserable for a bit, but what's even worse is that those darn
| introverts aren't (happy) resuming their natural place in
| society!"
|
| Hence "Return to Office", and the failure thereof.
| thanksgiving wrote:
| At a place I worked, they kept trying to use the phrase
| "return to work" as if we were not working the whole time. :/
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Wow. That's pretty offensive. Pretty sure I worked much
| more during WFH. Hybrid makes Mondays and Fridays feel more
| like they're part of the weekend, and then all the social
| events are packed into Tu-Th now so... Jokes on them I
| guess?
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I have no doubt RTO appeals to extroverts socially, but the
| sudden and seemingly coordinated push to RTO is about tax
| breaks:
|
| >New Jersey and Texas are states that stand out for spelling
| out exactly how often employees must work from the office to
| qualify for tax breaks. Before the pandemic, several New
| Jersey tax programs required workers to show up at least 80%
| of the time, and one Texas program set the threshold at 50%.
|
| >Provisions like these were designed to ensure that the jobs
| boosted local revenue from income, sales and property taxes,
| and bolstered downtown economies.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-t.
| ..
| Spivak wrote:
| Yes but no one was ever going to check for each individual
| employee which is why it's so frustrating that some people
| were forced in. $Dayjob always gets the innovation tax
| credit and it's literally just "hey did you innovate? Y/n."
| RTO but if you're someone who _really_ cares then stay home
| is a system that makes everyone happy-- or at least nobody
| mad. After months of hand-wringing my work relented to this
| by having a medical exception that was broad enough that in
| practice anyone could get it.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| As an extrovert, I can safely assure you that the world was
| never structured in a way favouring extroverts. I still had to
| go out of my way to get the amount of contacts and activity I
| wanted.
|
| It really was a middle ground which was quite unbalanced by the
| pandemic and has pretty much come back to a middle ground now
| (we do 3 days in office - 2 days off but no one here is stupid
| enough to get a typical American commute thankfully).
|
| The fact that so many in software are _extreme_ introverts will
| be a surprise to no one however.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I suppose it depends on your perspectives. The overton window
| shamed introversion as being weird while glamorizing
| extroversion. I can't say how hard/easy it has been to be
| extroverted, but there was no shame factor (which an
| introverted person would say is a favor).
| lolinder wrote:
| Unfortunately your assurances don't mean much because neither
| one of us has experienced the other's struggles and so
| neither of us is equipped to make an objective comparison.
|
| I can tell you that up through high school I watched my
| fellow introverts get shamed and bullied for being quiet and
| awkward, but I never saw someone get bullied for being too
| outgoing.
|
| I can tell you that all my life (including in this very
| comment section) I've had people explicitly tell me that if I
| just tried harder I'd learn to like social activities because
| humans are just wired that way, but I never heard anyone say
| that if a highly social person just tried harder they'd learn
| to like a quiet weekend at home.
|
| I can tell you that I've only started receiving promotions
| and recognition at work to the extent that I've been able to
| feign extroversion, and my more introverted colleagues who
| aren't as good at faking it don't do as well.
|
| None of that--being bullied and belittled and passed over for
| not being social enough--has ever felt like a middle ground
| to me, and there's not a lot that you could say that would
| persuade me to view it that way. It's easy to think of the
| status quo as the middle ground when it's comfortably on your
| side of the line, so I'll need more than your assurances to
| doubt my own experience.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| Everyone like a quiet weekend at home from time to time. My
| experience from a non American background is that people
| get introverts fairly well (also as a very awkward and to
| himself teenager I missed the memo where it said
| introversion was supposed to be shameful) but social
| interaction is essential.
|
| Obviously you only get promoted when you can promote your
| work. No one is going to magically guess it exists.
|
| Anyway HN is funny sometimes in its refusal to face that
| they are the odd ones. I fear that any person who would
| have a contrarian opinion as pretty much moved on from ever
| discussing WFH here I the same way it was a complete waste
| of time to argue with the anti-systemd crowd.
|
| I remain convinced that all the people who say WFH should
| be an evidence are actually petitioning for their job to
| offshored in the midterm but that's me.
| a-french-anon wrote:
| European and pretty hardcore introvert here: you're not
| mentioning the important fact that introverts are
| basically invisible to 99% of the fairer sex.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > Obviously you only get promoted when you can promote
| your work. No one is going to magically guess it exists.
|
| There are managers, like me, who will judge your work by
| your work, not by how loud you are, nor by how much you
| drank with me at the company party. If you are a
| developer, I don't need to magically guess about your
| work, I can see it in your commits, I can review them, I
| can see how much, how often and how well you contribute.
|
| As a matter of fact, no matter the amount of talk and
| "promoting" your work, I will still judge you ONLY based
| on the actual work. Maybe I am slightly biased against
| "talkers", but I've found out that doers' work often
| needs no "promotion" and it speaks for itself. As for
| talkers, well, they are probably still talking. Maybe
| it's better if they go to a big company, so they can mix
| up with doers who actually do work.
|
| The less we talk about the work, and more actually doing
| it, the faster we can do the work, and get on with our
| lives, wouldn't you agree?
|
| > I remain convinced that all the people who say WFH
| should be an evidence are actually petitioning for their
| job to offshored in the midterm but that's me.
|
| People who think the only differentiating factor between
| them and a lower paid worker in a different country, is
| not their work, but their physical presence and self-
| marketing tend to work for bosses who enjoy seeing their
| workers as a form of control. I think it's a match made
| in heaven.
|
| Luckily, there are also people who are confident in the
| quality of their work without having to "market it", and
| bosses who judge a person's skill by the results. Which,
| I hope you agree, is also a match made in heaven.
| kagakuninja wrote:
| I don't plan to work in an office ever again, and it is not
| because I am an introvert. I am saving 2-3 hours of my life
| by not commuting.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| See my point about American having stupid commute because
| they refuse/can't live close to their job.
|
| Every discussion about WFH seems to me as a discussion
| about how US office culture is garbage and not about WFH.
| freilanzer wrote:
| This is not specific to Americans, in Germany a lot of
| people have the same problem.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| I question the life choice of anyone that chose to have a
| 3h commute and apparently they do to because they would
| like to WFH. I think a lot of people are blaming their
| companies for situation they put themselves in but that's
| on trend with the spirit of the time.
| drdo wrote:
| Typically real estate is extremely expensive near the
| places where company offices are. So it's a little unfair
| to call this a "choice".
| majewsky wrote:
| Since Germany was mentioned, I will say that there is a
| policy debate in Germany right now about taking away
| unemployment benefits [1] from anyone who refuses a job
| with up to 3h commuting time. So a 3h commute is not
| necessarily something that people choose, unless the
| other choice is to not have any household income.
|
| [1] This denomination is slightly oversimplified to avoid
| giving a lecture on how social welfare works in Germany.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| No jobs near my home and can't afford a decent housing
| near my office with my salary. But yeah, right, it's my
| fault. Luckily my employer is more clever than your post
| and will happily let us work from home for 3 days since
| he values our work.
| ath3nd wrote:
| If I can live and work in a comfortable spacious house
| with a garden and no traffic nearby, why would I subject
| myself to renting a 1 square meter flat in an overly busy
| overly pricey city, just so I can slave my hours in an
| office?
|
| We now have the ability to get big bucks and pay little
| rent for good housing, and not be stuck like sardines in
| traffic, and not having to listen to extroverts'
| incessant yapping.
|
| Why does it make you mad? We nerds don't have the rights
| to happiness?
| sensanaty wrote:
| I am the furthest thing from an introvert imaginable. I've
| just spent my weekend surrounded by about 40 of my friends at
| a festival, and if it were up to me I'd be there for another
| week minimum.
|
| I'd rather be locked up in a padded room alone than suffer
| through the office.
|
| Coworkers are not my friends, and the fake socialization I'm
| forced to put up with there is exhausting, because I just
| don't care about them. I have actual friends whom I see a lot
| more often these days thanks to WFH, and nothing on this
| planet is going to convince me rotting away in an open air
| office is better than the alternative.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| You are blaming US culture more than having to go to the
| office. Our experience will never overlap.
|
| That: "Coworkers are not my friends, and the fake
| socialization I'm forced to put up with there is
| exhausting" doesn't exist where I live.
| sensanaty wrote:
| I'm not a Yank, and referencing your other comment in
| this thread about the commute, I'm a ~10 minute bike ride
| from my office.
|
| I just don't care about my colleagues in a friendship
| context. I only interact with them because I have to
| professionally, but from my last 4 companies I haven't
| made a _single_ lasting friendship. Because, again, I
| have a lot of actual friends who I 'd _much_ rather see
| than the random people from my office.
| ProZsolt wrote:
| I lived in multiple places in Europe and it was the same.
| cainxinth wrote:
| > Coworkers are not my friends, and the fake socialization
| I'm forced to put up with there is exhausting, because I
| just don't care about them.
|
| When Google and Facebook were getting headlines for their
| gourmet cafeterias and fancy game rooms and encouraging
| their employees to work and socialize at the office, I
| remember saying "I'd rather drink piss beer at a dive with
| my real friends than a fancy cocktail at work.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| If the world has some zero sum decisions to make, are you
| shocked someone wishes it worked out for them?
|
| Extroverts wish they could go back to socializing and excelling
| at work in person, and introverts wish they can stay at home at
| the expense of extroverts. One or the other loses in the
| workplace.
| lolinder wrote:
| The difference is that we generally do not recognize a right
| to coerce someone else into meeting our needs, but we do
| generally recognize a right to meet our own needs.
|
| This is why articles like this rarely come out and say "I
| need the introverts to come back to social events to meet my
| needs", they always try to frame it as about productivity or
| (as very condescendingly demonstrated here) about the mental
| health of the introverts themselves.
|
| I think the balance we need to get to has to be one where
| extroverts are meeting each other's needs by working in teams
| that choose to be in person and hanging out with each other
| socially rather than moping online about how everything is so
| much less fun. You don't need to drag us along for the ride
| to have a good time.
| bleakenthusiasm wrote:
| I agree with the author a little bit but overall I think she's
| mainly being selfish and ego-centric.
|
| What I agree with: We have built ourselves a society where it is
| far too easy to fall into a secluded lifestyle. That's not a
| problem for everyone but it does supercharge depression and
| anxiety. Both of these lead to you thinking that being left alone
| is good for you when actually looking at any research about them
| is not the case in the absolute majority of cases. Both get worse
| with lower amount of social contact and extrusion structure in
| your life. In the past the pressure to go outside and have some
| structure was much higher and thus depression and anxiety
| probably had more of a grave period where people around you had a
| chance of realizing you were getting worse and you had a chance
| of still pulling yourself out of it enough to get help early.
| Today the behavior of someone who is just really happy alone and
| somebody who is spiralling into depression becomes ever harder
| for me to tell apart.
|
| The rest of the article to me just reads like "but I'm an
| extrovert and I liked it better the way it was before". Yeah,
| sorry not sorry? If your friends take more effort to get them to
| do a pub tour these days maybe they just weren't as much into pub
| tours as you are? Yes, the pandemic changed our society from
| catering mainly to extroverts to one that now makes it much
| easier to be not cut off entirely while taking time for yourself
| as an introvert. If you don't want your introvert friends to be
| able to have that, you're the problem in that picture.
| sublinear wrote:
| > If your friends take more effort to get them to do a pub tour
| these days maybe they just weren't as much into pub tours as
| you are
|
| I got the strong impression that the author wasn't always as
| much of an extrovert as they believe. Tons of people go out all
| the time and it sounds like they need to get new friends after
| outgrowing the old ones.
| poisonborz wrote:
| > We have built ourselves a society where it is far too easy to
| fall into a secluded lifestyle
|
| This should be one of the the prime problem of every
| government. It's a hard thing to solve, but is the root cause
| of a lot of other, more better recognised societal issues.
| sublinear wrote:
| My eyes were tantalizingly close to rolling out of my head
| throughout reading this, but I had to stop altogether at this
| point:
|
| > We should run our errands in person and queue at the Post
| Office and eat in restaurants because it is good to remember that
| sometimes we have to wait around, or go to several shops because
| the first one didn't have what we needed. Resilience is one of
| the most important traits a person can and should develop, and it
| works like a muscle. Glide effortlessly through life and, when
| something bad does happen, because it always will, you won't know
| how to react.
|
| Waiting around is pointless. The most resilient people find ways
| to avoid it and have actual hobbies and lives to live. This
| entire article just sounds like weird propaganda promoting a very
| confused perspective.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| I think there's something to be said for being bored once in
| awhile though. Helps you reset. I think a nice long vacation
| once a year will cure that better though
| ghusto wrote:
| > Waiting around is pointless. The most resilient people find
| ways to avoid it and have actual hobbies and lives to live.
| This entire article just sounds like weird propaganda promoting
| a very confused perspective.
|
| Removing everything you don't like from life is not good for
| you. Having everything you want is not good for you.
| trealira wrote:
| No one gets everything they want in life, though, even with
| less waiting around. That seems like a strange line of
| reasoning.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Max Stirner tried to warn the world about people like you,
| but no one listened then and they still don't listen today.
| consteval wrote:
| Well, why not?
|
| I don't understand this prevailing perspective in highly
| individualistic societies that pain is good. If you can
| achieve the same result without the pain why is that so bad?
| When does it become progress?
|
| If I can be healthy just by taking a pill a day as opposed to
| dying, what's the harm? Lives are saved and that's... bad...
| somehow?
|
| If I can get my nick nacks without going to the store what's
| the harm?
|
| Sometimes things are too good to be true. But most of the
| time, things really are just good. They are just better. You
| do just progress forward. That's why I can write you this
| comment instead of writing a letter and waiting weeks for a
| response. Why did we give that up? Isn't waiting painful, and
| therefore good? I don't think so.
| alphager wrote:
| It really reminds me of the Calvin and Hobbes comic where
| Calvin imitates his dad and says "Calvin, go do something you
| hate. Being miserable builds character!".
| ceravis wrote:
| The comic in question:
| https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1990/12/07 --
| Calvin's mom's reaction is priceless.
| shiandow wrote:
| First time I've seen someone claim you have to go out to eat in
| restaurants for a bit to build resilience.
|
| Here I thought you were supposed to enjoy the food.
| grraaaaahhh wrote:
| It's also a weird assertion because you also have to wait
| around for takeout/delivery. You could also just cook at
| home, which usually ends up taking just as long and takes
| actual effort instead of just sitting around which, in
| theory, would build even more resilience.
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| This, and most writing on introverts/extroverts, go out vs. stay
| home, office vs home office, etc. leaves me feeling unrepresented
| and oversimplified. I, and I really assume most people, see the
| good in both approaches. I am an introvert, in the sense that I
| need time alone to recharge, but I am also (like almost everyone,
| I assert) desperately in need of in person social contact. It's
| tiring, but so are work, and sex, and sports, all also things I
| need. Is it so hard, in so many areas, to write a n engaging
| article that people will read that says "hybrid is better than
| either extreme?". (In terms of clicks, I'm assuming "yes")
| fcatalan wrote:
| He's confused, he thinks he should be always winning because he's
| better.
|
| And sometimes he does, for example he can talk himself into a
| promotion while I silently do all the work.
|
| But I always win in the end, because he needs me more than I need
| him.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Who is "he"?
| dev1ycan wrote:
| I am more and more comfortable but I as an introvert... am
| starting to somewhat regret it on certain cases, health wise,
| getting to know new people, etc.
|
| I feel like if you're a 40+ year old adult with a life already
| made you definitely love remote work, learning new technologies
| being unable to be shamed at opening a youtube video next to your
| coworker is also nice, _but_ I do miss the ability to meet new
| people naturally.
| card_zero wrote:
| > health wise
|
| Like in _The Lobster,_ where it 's explained that the
| importance of sharing your life is to have somebody on hand to
| perform the Heimlich maneuver?
| plasticchris wrote:
| That's what table corners are for.
| hollandheese wrote:
| Being an introvert and not meeting lots of people is a massive
| health advantage these days.
| matrix87 wrote:
| The whole introversion vs extroversion thing doesn't capture the
| essence of how people actually are. People have different levels
| of energy depending on who they're around. They can feel drained
| or recharged depending on who they're interacting with
| anonzzzies wrote:
| For me it's the type of interaction ; in social / comedic / etc
| settings, I love meatspace interaction, as well as audio and
| video. In professional settings, I prefer text chat or email or
| docs; it fully tires me out having to wait for the ultra slow
| human speak that I have to focus on nonetheless to convey a
| thought I could've read in less than 1 sec if it were written
| down. And when it's written, I can skip the drivel; irl you
| have to be polite about it too.
|
| All my friends/family consider me an extrovert, my colleagues
| are sure i'm an introvert. I like both.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| yeah -- for me intro/extroverted tendencies are also pretty
| seriously dependent on my general mood and physical fitness
| level.
| akira2501 wrote:
| I'd say the "rent seeking middle men" are winning. So extroverts
| are seeing less of each other and misplacing the blame for it.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Can we stop the misuse of "rent seeking"? It just confuses
| things.
| akira2501 wrote:
| How was it "misused" here?
| Quothling wrote:
| > Everyone knew there were introverts and extroverts
|
| Except there are no such things. Intro/Extro are used in the
| ocean of questionable personality science to describe character
| traits. Even within some of the "worst" culprits of it, character
| traits are never considered to be set in stone. Contrary to what
| you may now think, I'm actually a fan of personality tests like
| DISC for professional teams. For their actual purpose, however,
| which is as tools which lets team members talk about their
| strengths and challenges in a much more open and focused way than
| simply sitting them down and talking about how to do team work.
| Especially with introvert/extrovert the whole thing becomes a
| little silly though, a lot of people will be more introverted one
| week and then more extroverted another, depending on a multitude
| factors in their lives. To be fair to the author, she does seem
| to mostly use it as a way of getting their point across, I just
| don't like it when people think you can ever describe people as
| either introverts or extroverts because it's frankly just plain
| bullshit.
|
| Anyway, when I read the authors complaint about it getting harder
| to get friends out of their homes I looked up the author's age,
| and she's 33. Guess what happens in your early thirties? It gets
| harder to get your friends together, not because they've become
| introverted but because adult life takes a lot of energy and
| effort. The last to get children in a social circle are going to
| feel this the hard way. I'd argue that there are also facts like
| cost, which the author doesn't go into. I like going to the
| cinema, but where I live it'll quickly end up being $120 for a
| ticket and popcorn + soda. Back in 2018 it was maybe $50 and
| basically nothing of the experience has changed. It's not that I
| can't afford it, it's more a question of me being a scrooge.
|
| One thing we have done in my friend circle is to get together "at
| home" more. We'll meet up to cook dinner and play board games
| while the children play. We still schedule Dungeon and Dragons
| but the frequency is like 4-8 times a year where it may have been
| every week before. It also has to happen during the day because
| evenings aren't a good time to be out with small children in the
| house. I have a season pass to a themepark where I go with one my
| friends and our eldest children, we don't actually do a lot of
| rides we just hang out while the children have fun. Basically
| post 30 social events will often need to become things where you
| can bring children or be out from 10-16. Which is very different
| from your late 20ies, but not necessarily less social.
| danybittel wrote:
| This is absolutely not what I'm seeing. Travel is at an all time
| high with crazy amount of traffic jams, every weekend.
| Restaurants are full, parks, museums.. full. It is almost eerie
| just how everybody is going out and about like there is no
| tomorrow. I reduced my friend circle willingly, otherwise they
| would keep nagging me about doing stuff together, but I currently
| want to spend time on my own projects.
| baxtr wrote:
| I second that. Much of it, and probably even that article,
| feels like it's part of a great readjustment after Covid.
|
| The 2-3 years were really hard for most of us and entire
| societies are trying to get back to where we were before.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I'm personally tired of how everything worth doing is already
| mobbed by others.
|
| I blame the death of video games and media during and post
| Covid. The games and movie and TV industries are shells of
| their former selves, and are actively in decline right now. Why
| should I stay home to replay games from the 2010s (since
| nothing in 2024 is worth playing) when I can simply be part of
| the problem by going to the national parks or hot springs every
| weekend?
|
| Plus, we all know that most people who are on the fence tend to
| regret introverted activities since they are "nerdy" and the
| opposite of glamorous. Going out to a national park is a chad
| move, staying home and doing introverted stuff literally keeps
| you a virgin (and this bears out in sociological data)
| Novosell wrote:
| Murders on the Yangtze River, Animal Well, Nine Sols,
| Snufkin, Chants of Sennaar, Slay the Princess... I could go
| on for a while. How are there no games to play? Those are all
| recent and fantastic.
| CM30 wrote:
| Yeah, this seems to match up with my observations more. Online
| spaces seem far less active, while real life tourist
| destinations and hospitality businesses are absolutely mobbed.
| Definitely feels like a high percentage of people are trying to
| 'make up for lost time' after being locked in during the
| pandemic.
| freehorse wrote:
| I see the author is born in 1991, so they got from ~29 before the
| pandemic to ~33 now. This is an age where ime such changes are
| very probable to happen in our generations anyway when the age
| groups one associates oneself with are around that, pandemic or
| not. The author probably connected them with the pandemic because
| maybe there was not continuous time of them happening as it
| normally would, due to the lockdowns, and it would seem like one
| just woke up to a new reality after. But some of what the author
| describes (eg less spontaneity in going out) would probably have
| happened in some way.
|
| It seems to me that if one is in such a position, they may need
| to find new friends whose lifestyle align more with theirs
| instead of being condescending that they know what people should
| do better than them, or seeing the world through binaries that do
| not exist (introversion-extroversion is a normally distributed
| trait, not bimodal).
| card_zero wrote:
| So, what are the salient points in this article? It's on a
| humanist website, and I kind of like humanists, and, in
| principle, humans, so I read it carefully.
|
| * Habits change. This insight is the bulk of the article.
| Restaurants are mentioned three times, but restaurants are a
| relic of class divisions from around 1900, where a patron is
| pampered by servants, while leaking money in all directions. So
| their continued existence is surprising, and maintained by
| habits, and the pandemic was a shakedown for habits.
|
| * Something about resilience. Should I mention preppers? They
| tend to be introverts, I think, and they're all about resilience,
| so that confuses matters. But the general idea here is that soft
| pudgy cybernauts would be bewildered in an emergency that could
| not be dealt with by ordering deliveries. Could they go out and,
| like, ask for help, or patiently hunt for food in a crisis? I
| think the answer is actually mostly yes, and those who were
| conspicuously helpless would be helped, and this is really a non-
| issue. _Go out for a pointless walk as non-specific training
| against divers emergencies_ is not great advice.
|
| * Something about surprises (stimulation), and serendipity. This
| is a fair point _but_ it 's expensive, at least in terms of time,
| and the payoffs aren't so great. In return for losing an hour of
| coding, you might see a squirrel. I endorse this in moderation.
| Of course here I'm ignoring the main thrust which is about human
| interaction: as well as the squirrel, you might speak to an old
| lady (they constantly prowl the streets, waiting for scraps of
| conversation). And that's true, and adds variety, I suppose.
| There's a point in the article where this whole thesis of _a
| massive crisis of shut-ins_ is watered down to advice to merely
| go out _once in a while._ In that light, the situation looks like
| less of a big deal. People still leave the house, a lot. It 's
| only a change of emphasis, not, I think, a real problem.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >Restaurants are mentioned three times, but restaurants are a
| relic of class divisions from around 1900, where a patron is
| pampered by servants, while leaking money in all directions. So
| their continued existence is surprising,
|
| Huh? Restaurants have been around since ancient times, in
| societies across the globe. Here's a Wikipedia link for you:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restaurant#History
|
| Modern-format restaurants have been around since the late
| 1700s, but there's plenty of records of people eating in food-
| serving establishments in ancient Greek and Roman societies.
| I'm sure other, even more ancient societies had similar things,
| which are now lost to history.
| card_zero wrote:
| 1900 because that was when "the servant problem" arose, the
| problem being that nobody wanted to be a servant any more.
| But in some contexts the dynamic is maintained.
|
| I may be off by plus or minus three decades. Maybe 1930.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| What are you talking about? Restaurants don't have any
| trouble hiring people to work there, as long as they pay
| enough. No one minds being a servant if they're getting
| paid enough. Of course, it's not a terribly glamorous
| profession, and you can get more pay doing something
| higher-skill, but that usually requires much more education
| and training, so working as a server appeals to people
| without that.
|
| I'm sorry, I just don't understand the point you're trying
| to make here.
| kkfx wrote:
| It's not much about tech, it's about a collapsing society where
| people start to separate in isolated cohorts, sometimes even
| alone if missing others with similar views around.
|
| Tech itself allow for much more interaction, it's a neutral tool
| alone, of course as a neutral knife you can use it to cut a steak
| or your neighbor throat but what's happening are civil
| polarization NOT due to technology but to mere social collapse.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| The author assumes introverts like always staying in their homes.
| I don't think that is true for all introverts.
| pqkejfjcosp wrote:
| I listen to a few podcasts where Marie la Conte is a regular.
| She's not anti lockdown in a conspiracy way, but she very clearly
| has unaddressed PTSD from the whole episode. She tries to present
| it as some kind of reasoned position, but I think she's just
| afraid to be alone with her thoughts.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Nothing, that I'm aware of, is stopping extroverts from going out
| and meeting other people. They just won't run across as many
| introverts to feel superior to. Introverts can finally get the
| peace and quiet they desire. Unfortunately, they still have to
| hear about how they should get out more, smile and "just deal".
| But, it's a little easier to ignore now.
| ghusto wrote:
| > today's world isn't especially welcoming, but retreating from
| it is an ultimately selfish choice
|
| A thousand times this.
|
| The crowd here are not going to like hearing the things
| highlighted in this article, but hive-mind-consensus doesn't make
| something any less true.
|
| Wondering how people have the audacity to try to talk to you in
| public when you _clearly have your headphones on!_ (just one of
| the things I've heard here) is not okay. Not for society, and not
| for you as an individual.
|
| Just because society normalises this attitude, it doesn't make it
| right. We've also normalised buying things that last a couple of
| years, and not owning media we pay for. The frog boils slowly.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Just because society normalises this attitude, it doesn't
| make it right.
|
| Fully agreed--society normalizing something doesn't make it
| right.
|
| By TFA's numbers, 1/3 of UK adults were happier during the
| pandemic than before. That's a lot of people who were unhappy
| with the extrovert-centric norms that were dominant pre-
| pandemic. Those people went along with it because they hadn't
| ever realized there was something better. Now they have
| realized it and they're not giving up their effort to change
| the norms to better accommodate them. As you say, society
| normalizing something doesn't make it right, and when we're
| faced with an unjust society it's time to change it.
|
| Your comment makes it sound like the introverts are suddenly in
| charge and dictating what is normal. That's not the case at
| all. The 1/3 just finally found a voice to express our opinions
| at all, and the 2/3 who used to run the world unopposed are
| unhappy about that.
| xnyan wrote:
| >but hive-mind-consensus doesn't make something any less true.
|
| Correct. Likewise, being a contrarian does not make an untruth
| any more true. If someone has headphones on, it's a clear
| signal they don't want to talk to you. What is the problem with
| respecting that person?
| kbelder wrote:
| Perhaps they are listening to music, but would still be
| willing to pause that to converse? It's not that crazy of an
| idea.
| hollandheese wrote:
| >Wondering how people have the audacity to try to talk to you
| in public when you _clearly have your headphones on!_ (just one
| of the things I've heard here) is not okay. Not for society,
| and not for you as an individual.
|
| So you're saying it's okay for people to walk in when you're
| going to the bathroom and bother you? Or that it's okay for
| people to wake you up when they want to talk to you?
| throwawayaw4 wrote:
| Before I start my rant, my position is that the ideal is some
| days where everyone agrees to attend in person, _optionally_. I
| am aware that this also has its downsides. Not looking for
| comments on that.
|
| Here's my experience as someone who has had both, and much
| prefers 100% work from home:
|
| I used to loathe going to work in the morning. Sometimes I sleep
| 11pm, 12am, and having to wake up 7:30am at the latest to groom
| myself, get dressed, make breakfast, so that around 8-8:30am I
| can hop on to a crowded, unreliable, unhygienic Subway train
| worrying about making it to work on time, every week day is not a
| good life experience.
|
| After I started WFH due to the pandemic, I realized work in
| person was not more productive. I remember when I first started
| working in an office, how many distractions there were. So much
| chatting. Working on crappy equipment, not suited to my needs.
|
| The (open) office was noisy, if I really needed to focus, that
| only happened after the shift to laptops and when there was an
| empty area in the office I could fuck off to, usually the cafe
| area. Listening to music? Only on headphones, and people might
| judge you for that (it was a 50+ year old company). Or interrupt
| you, forcing you to take headphones off.
|
| Taking a break? People might think you're lazy or disengaged. My
| coworker once proposed a nap room (like Google), and the CEO was
| visibly irritated. I had another co-worker, who saw me
| reformatting and commenting my code accuse me of slacking off.
|
| My manager chastised me for studying Neural Networks on work time
| (I had no other work to do). Perhaps most egregious of all, in
| this 50+ year old company, it was considered unsporting to leave
| at 6pm. I also got called out by that same boss for doing that
| consistently: _" don't you feel sorry for your teammates who are
| working late?"_, or _" the director walked in here at 7pm and saw
| the department empty... 'nice to see you guys have solved all the
| company's problems', he said (ironically)"_.
|
| Long live work from home.
| nzealand wrote:
| The article confuses extroversion with resilience and living
| outside.
|
| Hermits, who live alone, in the wild, are some of the most
| introverted yet resilient people alive.
|
| The article also confuses living on a couch with introversion.
|
| Who is less of a couch potato, the introvert mountain biking by
| themselves, or those dudes pictured sitting at a pub?
|
| I am a huge proponent of pushing yourself outside your comfort
| zone, but this article does a poor job of articulating what and
| why.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Frankly I think the author doesn't go far enough. The internet
| isolated cocoon lifestyle isn't just harmful to individual
| flourishing for all the correct reasons listed, it's simply self
| destructive which is only touched on tangentially.
|
| If you take the pandemic digital hermit lifestyle to its logical
| conclusion you get a place roughly like South Korea which was a
| few years ahead of the curve. Practically no family formation or
| not even sex life with a birth rate < 1, widespread social
| isolation and so on. Introversion is almost a euphemism for
| what's happening because for a lot of young people it seems like
| something more akin to complete isolation is the norm with entire
| stages of proper adult development completely delayed or missing.
|
| This isn't just bad for individuals who obviously don't develop
| if they don't take risks and leave their comfort zones and live
| permanent Peter Pan like lives, it's gonna come crashing down
| when there's nobody left to deliver packages to their homes
| (Hideo Kojima as a sidenote, weirdly prescient again with Death
| Stranding essentially anticipating this entire discussion). Just
| calling it introversion is deeply underselling how much of a
| problem that is in developed countries.
| lolinder wrote:
| You, like the author, are confusing introversion with failure
| to launch. I have yet to see _any_ evidence that the two are
| correlated.
|
| I know plenty of highly extroverted adults who still live in
| their mothers' basements, have no dating prospects, and are
| generally miserable. I know plenty of highly introverts adults
| who are happily married, have successful careers, and are
| generally happy.
|
| Indeed, the very post-pandemic changes that the author bemoans
| have been an enormous boon for those of us in the latter
| category, allowing _greater_ success and _greater_ happiness
| for the truly introverted. I can now work from home and spend
| my limited social energy and limited capacity to deal with
| noise on the small circle of people who I _want_ to spend my
| energy on--my wife and kids.
|
| My life and my family's life has _dramatically_ improved as a
| result of that change, and your condemning me and those like me
| for participating in a "digital hermit lifestyle" and claiming
| this is a slippery slope to a world with no sex and no children
| is laughable at best.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| It's not a slippery slope, it's an already occurring
| statistical reality, which of course doesn't mean it applies
| to literally every single individual, so it's odd to put so
| much emphasis on your personal background, it's not like I
| was attacking you in particular.
|
| But you should note one thing, it's no coincidence that your
| story involves having a family, social life, and I assume
| professional work _before_ this became ubiquitous. It is
| quite a different story to be a young adult trying to build
| relationships when everyone already lives in a digital
| bubble. In a sense pulling the ladder up behind you and
| saying, it 's been a huge boon for my family to now live in
| the comfort of home and online life, which in the past
| depended on someone being out there in the physical world to
| begin with. That's a general story of the post pandemic
| social and workplace changes, they're largely beneficial for
| people with already developed careers and social networks.
| lolinder wrote:
| > so it's odd to put so much emphasis on your personal
| background
|
| Not at all! Mine is but one story of millions. I see no
| statistical evidence of a correlation between failure to
| launch and introversion and you have not demonstrated any.
| And all my anecdotal experience would suggest that there is
| no correlation.
|
| I'm not disputing that the modern world sucks in some ways
| and that that suck is particularly felt by (extroverted)
| young adults, but TFA and your own comment strongly imply
| that introversion is created by the post-pandemic
| environment and that's simply not the case.
|
| What we have isn't introverts "winning" causing everyone
| else to suffer, what we have is a bunch of sad extroverts
| sucked into addictive digital media who can't figure out
| how to get out of the cycle. That is a real problem that
| should be addressed but is not the fault of introverts
| wanting to live their best lives, nor do I see evidence
| that young people who are truly introverted are struggling
| worse than I did.
| lincon127 wrote:
| I don't think they are
| supertofu wrote:
| > Living a real, physical life outside the home is good because
| humans need friction. Convenience is alluring but it is
| dangerous, because getting used to it means forgetting that being
| alive isn't meant to always be easy. We should run our errands in
| person and queue at the Post Office and eat in restaurants
| because it is good to remember that sometimes we have to wait
| around, or go to several shops because the first one didn't have
| what we needed. Resilience is one of the most important traits a
| person can and should develop, and it works like a muscle.
|
| I really don't like the author's argument. We should force
| ourselves to do things in person because it's uncomfortable?
|
| Life is already uncomfortable enough! The world is melting down,
| societies are unhappy and restless, economies are failing, the
| climate is worsening, people are hateful and full of extremist
| thought. Life is hard enough.
|
| Let me do as much as I can from home (which I rent, btw, because
| owning a home is an impossible dream for many), the single
| respite I have from the painful world!
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Does it not occur to any of you to question the terms of this
| engagement? Introvert and extrovert are categories that Jung just
| _made_ up in 1913, they are not scientific fact! Just because
| sometimes you want to curl up in the fetal position under a
| blanket for 3 hours and listen to a podcast doesn't mean that
| you're naturally inclined to an internal world, it means that you
| derive comfort from being alone like a child in their blanket
| being read a bed time story.
|
| Even _if_ the arbitrary division is bullshit, still Jung had a
| more compelling concept of the "introvert" than any of you: it
| was someone who was so deeply in touch with their inner world
| that they contacted horrors of their inner psyche, someone who
| was able to steel themselves and reconcile with the unknown in
| the _deepest part_ of their unconscious: and since the
| unconscious was collective, therefore also the unconscious of the
| world and society. There is a movement both inward and outward.
| What people today call "introversion" is just another name for
| infantalization, of being fearful of exactly what Jung would've
| tried to drive us to experience. All this while the climate ticks
| up every day; how can I be convinced this is not just a retreat
| to safety in uncertain times?
| lolinder wrote:
| > What people today call "introversion" is just another name
| for infantalization, of being fearful of exactly what Jung
| would've tried to drive us to experience.
|
| This is the nonsense that TFA spouts, but it's still nonsense.
|
| What people call "introversion" today is the reality that some
| people legitimately leave most social interactions more
| exhausted than they started, that they therefore have to budget
| their social interactions for the things that matter most to
| them, and that until recently they have had to do that quietly
| by themselves because the majority of the population doesn't
| believe that people like that really existed.
|
| The pandemic started to change that, and people who have always
| had to live like that have now realized that they're _not_
| alone and _don 't_ need to just pretend they don't have a real
| need to budget social energy.
|
| It doesn't matter to me if we call it introversion or use a new
| word to get away from the pseudo-science and confusion about
| definitions, but people like me exist and we're not going away
| just because you and those like you don't understand us.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| > What people call "introversion" today is the reality that
| some people legitimately leave most social interactions more
| exhausted than they started
|
| "Some"? How about all! Of course being outside, physically
| interacting with others is exhausting: of all the social
| interactions which one can have, the most exhausting and at
| the same time the most ecstatic is sex, and that often puts
| people to sleep!
|
| There is a push and pull, everybody wants to be left alone
| sometimes. To strictly delineate between introverts and non-
| introverts (since you've seemingly thrown out the other
| dichotomy as "pseudoscience") just invents an identity around
| a behavior that is actually shared amongst everybody: and
| then calling yourself special for doing it. _That_ is the
| most infantalizing part: identifying with a social imaginary,
| thinking of yourself as part of some greater whole! What an
| irony that its a whole of people who think they want to be
| alone all the time! Go ahead, try to be truly "by yourself."
| Stop reading Hacker News, stop going grocery shopping, stop
| leaving your house: move to a cabin in the middle of the
| woods--see how long you make it.
|
| You are always already social, almost everything you do
| involves social interaction, you would not have been brought
| on this earth without your family or whatever social
| arrangement raised you. What you're really doing is, as the
| article said, isolating yourself from the dangerous part of
| sociality: meeting new people, talking to someone who is
| standing in front of you, throwing off your insecurities and
| not worrying about what others think.
|
| I say, if introvert is arbritrary, then we'll start calling
| it infantalism. Since you said it doesn't matter! At least
| that word is closer to the truth.
| skeledrew wrote:
| I burned a bit as I read the article, esp the Bruckner quotes, as
| it's touching something I've been thinking on more frequently
| recently. These extroverted persons keep taking issue with
| introvertedness, as if it's a problem to be solved. They demand
| us to gain soft skills, to ditch WFH, to engage in small talk.
| And in a way, these things aren't that bad. Sure we can get out
| there and be fairly good at it, though it's usually a huge energy
| suck.
|
| But, on the other hand... what about them? Should this always be
| a one-sided affair? How about some of the more extroverted taking
| a genuine stab at doing the kind of thing introverts tend to
| excel at, such as technical skills, engaging in topics in a deep
| way, and working alone? Without looking up any statistics I think
| I'm pretty correct when I say the vast majority of innovative
| effort has been performed by introverts, and mostly in their
| alone-time. Then extroverts cone along, take the results and
| market it, mostly for their own gain. So it's a threat when the
| status quo looks like it's changing, and rules need to be
| invented and enforced to prevent the works from falling apart. I
| feel like it's pushing me toward this - potentially radical -
| conclusion that society and the economy itself is designed to
| enslave the truly productive forces of introverts in service of
| extroverts who for the most part can really only do "make work".
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Some of the extroverts get offended when we choose elsewhere
| egberts1 wrote:
| Those same extroverts who rally against introverts are also
| rallying against the folks who are on the autistic spectrum.
|
| Having austism of varied degree is not a disorder but an innate
| skillset that extroverts could only wish they could have ...
| selectively.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| ASD sucks big time. I'd trade all of my tech bro knowledge and
| "superpowers" that it leads to just for the social grace that
| simply looking folks in the eyes gives. Sure, I'd make half as
| much money, but in doing so, I'm sure I'd be more than twice as
| happy.
|
| This tendency from ASD folks to try to see it as not
| debilitating seems really bizarre. The reality is that America
| deeply internalized the John Hughes film, and that folks with
| ASD will forever be the unwarranted punching bags of society. I
| want a cure and I wanted it yesterday.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Not disagreeing with you there. The key to quality of life
| largely rest with a society being able to work with them at
| varied degree of the spectrum as well as adequate coping
| mechanisms.
| thefz wrote:
| So basically diversity is good thus introverts are good but
| please for the love of extroverts, don't be an introvert.
| heisnotanalien wrote:
| We need more third spaces beyond the gym or things based around
| alcohol. I like the idea of members clubs where people have
| similar values/interests and you can go there and chat to people.
| Laptops/phones banned.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This plays out in natural selection though. Recluse culture has
| lost the evolutionary lottery and is unlikely to be very
| prevalent in a couple hundred years (assuming winning means it's
| a positive survival trait).
| nextworddev wrote:
| Lol, no.
| zajio1am wrote:
| I think it is kind of misconception by connecting introvertness
| vs. extrovertness to preference for remote communication vs IRL
| communication.
|
| I am quite introvert, IRL talk is exhausting for me, but online
| chat or writing e-mails is even more so. If i wanted to discuss
| nontrivial things with work colleagues, i prefer to do it IRL in
| office than using online chat.
|
| My friend is very extrovert, spends plenty of time socializing
| IRL and chatting online or writing e-mails. But for work
| communication, he definitely prefers WFH with online chat.
| graypegg wrote:
| I just got back from a furry convention. Guess what? There was
| tons of people. People who mostly know each other online made the
| expensive and tedious choice to book a room at a hotel and a
| train/flight and get to Ottawa to go and see people they talk to
| online ALL the time. There was even the option of a VR
| experience. We /could've/ just stayed at home. We didn't.
|
| I don't think there's a retreat from "friction" as the author
| puts it. I think the author is conflating their ideal activities
| as the only ones worth measuring. I think the thing that the
| pandemic actually changed was people's attitudes about letting
| other people dictate what they have to do.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| There are no introverts. The introversion/extroversion trait is
| normally distributed, so unless you want to draw an arbitrary
| line somewhere on the spectrum, you're stuck with almost
| everybody being a mix of traits and most people being somewhere
| in the middle.
|
| Framing these kinds of big social upheavals in terms of flimsy
| personality science is a bad move. If you want to argue that
| we're moving towards some kind of dystopian hyper-isolated
| society, you can just say that. If we were to imagine that
| society, it would pacify everybody by a mix of providing false
| social stimuli via increasingly shallow social media to fulfill
| extroverted needs and other kinds of stimuli to fulfill
| introverted needs. What a strange society that would be.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Introvert/extrovert and the associated pop psychology surrounding
| these terms has so diluted them they have become essentially
| meaningless.
|
| "Introverted" != "shutin" and it definitely doesn't mean people
| who are averse to socialization, which is often how it is
| presented and dripping throughout articles like this.
|
| I am introverted and quite enjoy socialization. The fact that
| people see this as a contradiction is why articles like this get
| written.
|
| As for the rest of it:
|
| > In any case, in 2024 it is possible to eat delicious food you
| didn't make yourself, watch movies that have recently come out in
| the cinema, buy all manner of clothes, tools and fripperies, do
| the food shopping, speak to friends and family and earn a wage -
| all without ever leaving the house. Why should we, then? What's
| in it for us?
|
| This was the case LONG before the pandemic.
|
| > Living a real, physical life outside the home is good because
| humans need friction. Convenience is alluring but it is
| dangerous, because getting used to it means forgetting that being
| alive isn't meant to always be easy. We should run our errands in
| person and queue at the Post Office and eat in restaurants
| because it is good to remember that sometimes we have to wait
| around, or go to several shops because the first one didn't have
| what we needed. Resilience is one of the most important traits a
| person can and should develop, and it works like a muscle. Glide
| effortlessly through life and, when something bad does happen,
| because it always will, you won't know how to react.
|
| Oh please. Not everyone has a car, not everyone is able bodied,
| not everyone has the luxury of not working 3 jobs to make ends
| meet AND take care of the kids. Don't blame people for taking
| time saving measures in a society that demands more time than we
| possess.
| beryilma wrote:
| Without the societal/technological contributions of the so-called
| introverts, the extroverts would still be writing paper letters
| instead of being able to bully each other from the convenience of
| their mobile phones. These borderline narcissistic people are
| exhausting...
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