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Comment by tumdum_ | Hacker News Reader

We are living in a dictatorship of extroverts, who go out of their way (what a suprprise) to tell us that their ways are obviously better.

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I'm not an extrovert. Introversion itself was probably more of a euphemism that I used to rationalize something closer to social anxiety.

But I feel I'm better off now for doing what the article suggested, over the last 5-6 years. Doing so improved my knowledge, my empathy, grew my revenue, built larger professional networks, introduced me to hobby networks, and helped with better financial planning.

I even changed to the extent of actually looking forward to outreach activities that involve a lot of conversations. I find them very satisfying because they help me understand social realities and people better than social media and books and help me develop empathy.

I wouldn't say I'm now an extrovert. My personality still prefers a lot of alone time. There are times when I still don't feel like talking to anyone. But they're now for positive reasons like books to finish rather than negative reasons like social anxiety.

I now tend to see things like introversion and social anxiety as obstacles. One can rationalize them in many ways but they'll remain objective obstacles IMO.

Thank you for proving my point - for some reason you felt you have to explain how introversion is an „objective obstacle”.

Welcome, but your point hasn't been proved at all actually. Your point was that this sort of stuff is imposed upon you by a "dictatorship of extroverts."

But I'm not an extrovert and not supportive of a dictatorship of extroverts. For example, I'm not a fan of imposed socializing of office coworkers outside the office in order to fit in.

Regarding "for some reason," it's quite obvious - you made a mistaken assumption and that's the only reason I came here to gave a counter example and a counter view to your wrong assumption. I wouldn't have written any of this as a top comment.

A dictatorship? Are you being forced at gunpoint to talk to people?

Perhaps more unsurprisingly, at the mere suggestion that socializing is good for you (it demonstrably is https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11403199/), you went and wrote a comment that I can only imagine someone who is deeply unhappy would write.

That is not a kind judgment. While I hesitate at the word “dictatorship” it is fair to say that society puts more value on extrovert interaction than introvert contemplation, and it does this because extroverts dominate the social conversation.

the dictatorship is doing extremely badly then because in my experience roughly the last two decades have consisted of safety obsession, various 'cozy' aesthetics that don't involve leaving your house, the death of social drinking and an uptick of pills and psychological diagnoses and people staring into their phones on every occasion.

We've completely normalized being a shut-in to the point where your take, that it's authoritarian to push people out into the world and engage others, is quite common. What now passes for 'extroverted' used to be known as the human condition. Even extroverts today probably have fewer friends, smaller families and spend more time isolated and on screens than 99% of humanity.

I can't agree. I'm pretty sure that we're in dictatorship of introverts that convinced everyone that talking or even eye contact with strangers is creep.

"Reduce human contact to bare minimum" is standard now, at least in America.

It's really tiresome. I am happy to have to a conversation if approached, but don't tell me I "should" do the same to others

I had a recent encounter with a guy in a coffee shop who approached me and wanted to discuss recent sportsball games in great detail. I had no idea what he was talking about, I don't even know the local teams, after living here 30 years. He had no other topics.

I had a friend like that. Soccer soccer soccer. His soccer knowledge was impeccable. But he allowed almost no space in his life for anything else. A kind of addiction. He had no other interests, didn't read about anything else.

There's only so mach a person can take being on the other side of someone like that. We drifted apart...

Yeah, that's issue #2 or 3 with me. My life has pretty much been minmaxed to be the stereotypical nerd. I don't have much "small talk" topics to approach with.

I want to change that too, but that involves time for hobbies instead of job searching and worrying about debt.

I abhor small talk. It's physically painful. I've heard that's often true of some cultures, especially northern europeans.

I think the trick to converse on a more engaging level is to introduce conversation that invites deeper thought. Somehow you need to intrigue the other person. Compel them through curiosity to leave their comfort zone and join you where you'd prefer to be.

IMO, even disagreement can be agreeable if it's not confrontational, if you genuinely express curiosity to learn what they think, what they care about.

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