Introversion

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 30, 2006

Filed under: Nerd Culture 3 comments

Mark has a post on introverts. He links to an article about introverts and the internet, where it makes the claim that, “…on the Internet, no one knows you’re an introvert.”

This is mostly true, I think. However, I do have a theory about how to spot an introvert-run blog: Check the blogroll. I’m betting short blogrolls (or none at all) are the mark of an introvert. I have no numbers to back this up, this is based on conjecture and a small number of observations.

The conventional wisdom is that introverts have a very limited list of very close friends, while extroverts have large numbers of people they might call friends, which is just about anyone with whom they’ve exchanged names and handshakes. An extroverted blogroll says, “There are the sites I’ve read at some point and exchanged links with”. An introvert blogroll says, “There are the few sites I admire and read on a regular basis.” For me, anyone in my blogroll is a site I check more than once a day*.

I also note that everyone on my own blogroll would be an introvert according to my test.

The typical blogroll seems to be one or two dozen, which is far more than I would ever have in my list. (Right now I have five, one of which is just a link back to my own website.) There are even blogs out there with hundreds of links to other sites. It’s quite amazing. I’m betting these are run by devout extroverts. I’m betting these people blog as a way of augmenting their social interactions, as opposed to us introverts, who often blog as a way to exchange information and ideas without enduring the complexities and inefficiencies of personal interaction.

Perhaps I’m all wrong and you need to straighten me out. Note that you can do so via the comments, which are asynchronous and thus do not threaten my introverted lifestyle.

* Ok, I don’t check Kaedrin twice daily, but he only updates on Sundays.

 


From The Archives:
 

3 thoughts on “Introversion

  1. Ermel says:

    I think you’re right on the mark there, FWIW.

  2. Ermel says:

    Me again, with some suggested reading on this topic:

    http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch “Caring for your introvert”, an article that does quite a good deal of explaining what introverts are and how to deal with them.

    Found via Neal Stephenson’s home page, http://www.well.com/~neal/ which contains a couple more related articles.

  3. sofawall says:

    I find it somewhat amusing that Shamus now has over a dozen links in his blogroll. I guess too much quality abounds.

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.