Why Do Things Seem So Anti-Introvert These Days?

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I used to that in order to get stimulation, video games would allow you to be introverted and have some enjoyment away from everyone. Now it is a social endeavor. Software development was somewhat like this as well, or at the very least the people you worked with were as eccentric as you. No longer. Same for the internet, although you might blame Eternal September for that. Further computing in general became more of a chore than an exercise in creating new social paradigms. The only thing that seems to give me the same return is travelling, reading, and piracy. It seems like the total paradigm for introverts has changed and they have no safe space if you will. What can we do?

i'm not so sure.

what is "eternal september"?

you can still play old video games, single player ones are coming out all the time...you can sink hundreds of hours into "breath of the wild" without interacting with a single human.

where do you like traveling? i do most travel by myself and it is great cause i have nobody telling me where to go or to come back early

I think all the old introvert stuff is still there available for you to do, there are just more options for extroverts in the digital world now. There's nothing stopping you from playing single player games that are not networked. More people I know in IT actually work from home instead of going to the office where the brogrammers make the real geeks miserable. The last time I had an interview, I brought up the book _Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking_ to show how I would be valuable to their team, and I got the job.

I played 200 games of Solitaire the other day, although most days it's only around 100. No internet involved, and the only person who sees me playing is my dog, who doesn't understand what I'm doing anyway!

What do you mean, "these days"?  Even back when I was a kid (c.1960s), introverts and shy people were mercilessly teased and bullied.Create our own "safe spaces" and retreat to them.  Mine is a spare bedroom converted to a "geek-man cave".

According to Wikipedia:

You talk about this like it's a problem. The pathos in this post seems more like the yearning for "the good ol' days" that neoreactionaries are known for. I don't know what universe you think you live in, but the Internet and other things you mentioned are still plenty accommodating for introverts. Why do you care so much about how other people use them? It seems to me like you're just anti-extrovert and are projecting this hostility to the external world. (shrugs)

Absolutely!

If you want an introvert space, buy a Victrola & some records (or other audio system of your choice. You might be more of an Edison man.)

I do that and enjoy my music but still find social sides in that by going out to phonograph shows & swap meets to find some cool stuff.

Because it seems to me that maybe pre-2010s the internet seemed like a force for social change and to exchange ideas. Now it seems like Facebook and co. have swallowed the web and there is less interesting content on the net. There are still forums like this and other sites, but post Penguin (Google algo update), bigco has been able to dominate while the little guy has suffered.

Even torrenting has been soso on main sites, but with a little work I have been able to recover and find better sites, so download wise it is still great. However unique sites like Asta La Vista, many personal political sites I personally liked, and surfing in general has gone by the wayside in the name of things like Instagram, which is peacocking at it's finest. Further things like Sim City and MVP Baseball died, which again singularly would be crap, but things that expand your mind seemed to gone by the wayside. Again part of this is Google, thus why I have switched engines.


As for programming, it seems like there are less and less breakthroughs and more and more of crud apps. I was hoping the blockchain could push towards decentralization, but so far that has been abysmal. So no I am not reactionary, I just think corporate bs has silenced any innovation that could be a game changer.

Fair enough

Not to beat a dead horse, but it isn't that people can't have multi player or this or that, but it just seems like pop cultures has taken a nose dive IMO and focuses on the highest margin things (safest ideas) and does not deviate from them. That is all.

I think the way I might express this sense - we're in a system that's in the throws of what looks to be the establishment of a monoculture and that establishment seems to be by sheer competition. That means that the victors are those who can socially organize themselves to grab more power, which in this case would be extroverts.

If we're running fast away from building a culture where everything has it's place then we're headed toward a place where extroverts will run the institutions that they manage off a cliff in the same way that political monocultures degrade into purity spirals and run their institutions (especially if they're involved with fact finding - eg. Jonathan Haidt's concerns about the universities) into the ground.

I am genuinely curious, once a particular group wins in a winner take all competition but shows that they can't manage it all, do they just double-down and claim that they're all that matters and that the world deserves to share their fate because it's impossible to imagine that someone else - ie. who wouldn't win in social Darwinian competition - would have solutions? If we're that utterly deaf to the situations we find ourselves in as a species we're in a bad way and in that case we may very well be headed toward a new dark age of sorts.

Yeah, this is def something I have noticed as well, and I hate how it seems to permeate every game now. If I wanted to waste my time being social I wouldn't be playing video games. Stop trying to ruin the fun, devs. Stop trying to force interactions for those of us who just wanna play the game!

I'm just waiting for them to make reading social too

Very astute observation. Seems like an interesting game theory question. Will need to look into this.

I feel like there are a few things that have gone unnoticed so far:

-travel
-reading
-crypto programming
-investing
-systems theory

And so far that is where I will take refuge. If it gets to that point I feel I will be screwed.