Wise words and an admission... : comments [purplecthulhu]

I'm not sure.

One of those silly oversimplified personality tests I did as kid has a characteristic of introversion and extroversion as the number of friends you had.

An extrovert would have a large number of friends, but know a lot about them. Whereas an introvert would have a small number of friends but be closer to them.

Now-a-days I don't have any issues with talking to people I don't know well, so at something like Plokta.con, I would ask sit down to eat with people who I often didn't know the badge name of, but recognised from around. This meant I got to spend a little time with a lot of people. But contrarywise I didn't spend a lot of time getting to know any individuals. Thinking back on it now I can't recall having any one to one conversations, they were always part of groups.

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This is what's wrong wih every discussion on this meme I've seen and I've seen a lot.
Introversion and extroversion are not genetic characteristics. They are characteristics of how we are brought up and how we respond to differing environments. I was a very quiet , pretty friendless teenager ; I met fandom when i was 18 and suddenly became known as a giggly social buterfly. However despite this I was eg too shy to wear a mini skirt when asked to appear in a Star Trek musical - and too shy to tell people why.

People think I'm highly extrovert because i act confident and gregarious. Am I am extrovert or the introvert I was wearing a mask? Does it matter? These are all constructions. I am however a little tired of people who are "shy" or "introvert" being given special privilege , as if they were somehow more fragile than clodhopping extroverts.

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I don't think anything here asks for special privilege, just recognition, which is why I made the original post. Now people might understand when I slope off to my room at a Con in just the same way I understand my extrovert friends when they barge into an ongoing conversation.

Not privilege, understanding.

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Extroverts might also like some understanding eg that when we talk a lot and perhaps a little loudly , we are not intending to invade personal space, trample on people's personalities, or think we are always right? It does cut both ways.

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ps sorry I replied too quickly and I see you do mention that. But if you do, I think you are pretty rare in fandom. (And indeed I think of you as a very easy and pOlite person to talk to:)

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:-) There you go - being all extrovert and not reading to the end :-))))))

I try to take people as they are and not as I might like them to be, warts and all. Part of this is not ascribing malice to what I might take as inconvenient or impolite behaviour - after all I've been on the other side of that equation many times!

Of course this can create problems when I don't get past the 'masks' or when something is going on under the surface that I am completely oblivious to, even though it might be obvious to others. This means I often need to be hit with a very large clue stick when it's time for something outside the accepted social norms of a given situation.

It's also true that others might not get past my 'mask', and think I'm actually extrovert a lot of the time, which i think gets us back to where this thread started...

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The not reading to end may have something to do with fact I am this second sending most a finshed book to publisher so maybe I get an exeat just this time? :))

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Maybe even a plenary indulgence!

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