Here's an idea, we're in the midst of an introvert craze.
For as long as there have been distinctive groups
to look up to, we have been doing exactly that.
There has been a time and place for a great many people.
In the early history, it was the philosopher and the inventor.
Variously it has been the engineer, scientist,
and socialite.
In America in the 1920s, it was the young and independent.
In the '40s, it was the soldier.
In the '80s and '90s, it was the rock star
and the high powered stockbroker.
In her article hosted on "Cyborgology."
titled "The Introvert Fetish," Whitney Erin Boesel argues that
right here, right now, the type that we value
the most is, you guessed it, the introvert possibly
to the point of fetishization.
Source is in the description by the way, which is, it's great.
I mean the signs are all there.
The internet abounds with respect for the bookish loner,
the locked away programmer, and the creative toiler.
There have been countless articles written about how
awesome introverts are.
But before we get too much further,
let's talk about what it is we're
actually talking about when we talk about people who don't
want to talk about themselves.
The caricature of the introvert is pretty familiar,
quiet and reserved, smart, and not too interested
in social interaction.
They retreat from spectacle, and much like a unicorn
appear only briefly on the horizon before retreating
to their mythical, book-lined, intellectually stimulating home
which is built inside of a library, which is itself built
inside of CERN, underneath a mountain also made of books.
It's all rather beautifully summed up in this hilariously
irresponsibly reductive comic that
illustrates how Tumblr specifically views
introverts versus extroverts.
The simple and more true difference
is that while extroverts operate most comfortably in groups,
talking and socializing, introverts
find that stuff tiring or frustrating.
In those situations, they expend energy,
which they have to replenish with quality alone time
or in small specific groups, most likely
in their particle accelerator library house.
In its most common and practical institutionalization,
the introvert is the I at the beginning of the Myers Briggs
test.
Like ESNJ and INTP.
The Myers Briggs describes introvert
as orienting more inwards towards ideas and knowledge
than outwards towards people, objects, and interactions.
For instance the last time I took the Myers Briggs,
I tested INTP, for introvert, intuitive,
thinking, perceiving.
But tested just barely as introverted.
It's important to realize that intro and extroversion are not
a binary and also don't indicate whether someone is smart,
a good programmer, or more likely to shout conga line
and throw their arms in the air at a party while-- oh,
actually, it probably does indicate that last one.
But because the introvert is more happy
reflecting and focusing doesn't mean that they're shy.
And because the extrovert is happy
being the center of attention, doesn't
mean they hate books or deep conversation.
The introvert celebrated on certain internets
is simplified, or as Boesel says meme caricatured,
elevated to a kind of bookish, genius,
an enviable collector of thoughts and expertise.
What's interesting though is that this introvert caricature,
unfairly or not, could also stand
in for a commonly held idea of what it means to be a nerd.
There is a popular portrait, I think it's fair to say,
of the nerd.
And that portrait has recently reached and maybe
most recently jumped a shark over a certain level
of notoriety.
Within the last couple years, it's
become meaningful to self-identify as a nerd
and to nerd out about things that are not
considered classically a part that the nerd cannon, whatever
that is.
In other words, you can be a beer nerd, a football nerd,
or an engine nerd in the same way that you can be a history
or economics nerd.
I'm not saying you can't be a nerd for something that is not
classically considered nerdy.
You most certainly can.
Being excited about things is neat.
But nerddom has certainly made something of a leap right?
In my experience, when someone describes himself
as a nerd for something, they are
indicating that they either have or want
to spend a significant amount of time
learning about that thing, involved in it,
thinking about its concepts, and deeper meanings, probably
and most likely doing lots of reading and thinking
about that thing.
They want to communicate an authentic interest in it.
The suggestion, I think, is that the self-professed train
or photography or whatever nerd has foregone other activities
in order to immerse themselves in the minutia of trains
or whatever.
Based upon our widely held cultural understanding
of what the word nerd means, is it possible
that those foregone activities are of a social nature?
Big dramatic shrug with palms upturned.
This does assert some status doesn't it,
to say that you would rather and sometimes do
read a book about beer or cross stitching or playing
the electric guitar instead of going out with your pals
to drink beer or cross stitch or going to the open mic
to play electric guitar-- which now that I think about it
actually sounds like a great trio
of simultaneous activities.
Now with this speculative relationship
between self-proclaimed nerdiness
and stereotypical introversion in hand,
we might ask why someone would want to self-describe as a nerd
anyway.
Why not master, or maven, or maester--
no, not that kind of maester-- or any
of the dozens of other words, we have
to describe some laudable level of expertise?
Well, here we are again back asserting status.
It's because ironically enough, nerds are cool and popular
and in the limelight.
They are changing the world by building the internet,
pushing science forward, creating and starring
in all of that media that we love,
except for "Big Bang Theory" and making our lives so much better
with all of the apps and games that they know how to program.
But while my hypothesis might be that introversion is cool
because nerds are stereotypically introverts
and nerds also stereotypically have
an enviable technological prowess, Boesel says otherwise.
She says almost the opposite actually.
Remember in our original description
of the introvert there was that focus on ideas and concepts?
Boesel positions these opposite technology,
not alongside them and in doing so evokes Nathan Jurgenson's
digital dualism.
Jurgenson's theory describes an imagined rift
between online communication and meet space or real life
communication.
There's a fair amount of discourse
which privileges authentic, real life
communication over inauthentic, mediated communication.
Boesel says that introvert evoke a depth or authenticity
normally associated with being offline.
She writes that extroverts are denigrated digital interaction
personified.
Like your smartphone, they're always on.
Like Facebook, they have too many friends.
And those friendships aren't even real.
Like SMS and Twitter, their interactions
are too short and too superficial.
Introverts, she writes, on the other hand,
are meme caricatured as preferring quality
over quantity, and gravitating more towards what
is authentic and meaningful.
Either way you look at it that we position
the introvert caricature near technology, either as it's
powerful master or totally removed from it,
disinterested in its pace and lack of authenticity,
able to disconnect at will.
The very nature of the introvert encourages
a kind of reading in to their temperament.
Perhaps we read into this personality type the same way
that we read into the communication technology
itself.
If we want to idealize it, maybe we also
idealize the people we most closely associate with it.
And if we wanted to cry it, samesies.
The reality though is surely much more complex.
There is no one type of introversion
or one valuation for it.
There is no one internet or one way to communicate using it.
Though to be perfectly honest, I think
drawing a distinction between the internet
and real life is really silly.
Though you probably already knew that.
So but no matter how you feel about the introvert phenomenon,
it's hard to not give at least a passing nod
to the irony that introverts are finally getting
their moment in the spotlight.
What do you guys think?
How is the introvert caricature that we are celebrating related
to technology if at all?
Let us know in the comments.
And there is now a fifth Myers Briggs letter
which indicates whether you are an Idea Channel subscriber
or not.
Let's see what you guys had to say about Night
Vale and the unknown.
And now the comments.
So this week we're going to do something a little bit
different with the comments.
There were a bunch of themes of comments
that I want to address all kind of in a row.
So I'm just going to talk for a second
and we'll put all the related comments below me
while I kind of jabber for a little while.
A bunch of people pointed out two things
that we did not talk about.
The first one was that Lovecraft was a notorious racist
and that his relationship to the unknown
probably came from his fear of things
that he didn't know or understand,
like other and different people.
Relatedly, Joseph Fink, the creator of Night Vale,
has said that he doesn't like Lovecraft or his writing
for this very reason.
And I think that this is really interesting.
It's hard to be a horror writer in 2013 working
with the unknown and not have some kind of relationship
or conversation with Lovecraft's work.
And I can totally get down with Joseph Fink not wanting
to be related to Lovecraft's politics.
And I can even get down with the fact of Lovecraft
wasn't the greatest writer on planet Earth.
Though Graham Harmon, the philosopher
that we quoted in the last episode would disagree.
He would say that he was a very accomplished stylist
and wordsmith.
But the thing that I think is really interesting, is that he
seems to be seeking in his NPR interview-- which I hadn't
heard before people linked to it,
so thank you for linking that-- um,
is that seeking to sort of distance
himself, which reminds me of this
I think it's John Cage, a John Cage quote that said that you
are always "as a maker, you're always revolting
against your father's art."
And I think what better way to revolt against Lovecraft's work
than to use it to normalize things that he
would be so uncomfortable with.
I think that makes the relationship even stronger
and even more interesting.
There are a couple readings of Night Vale
that do exactly this.
You can say that in a world where everything is strange,
including the queer relationship between Carlos and Cecil,
that nothing is strange, and therefore everything is normal.
You can radicalize it a little bit and even say
that in a world full of all kinds of bizarre nonsense,
the only thing that is celebrated
is a queer relationship.
And you can go one step further and say
that we, like people in the world in reading,
Night Vale pay no mind to all that crazy stuff,
but we focus on the relationship between Cecil and Carlos,
the very human and important thing that they have.
Related to this is also the conversation surrounding
Cecil's race, because it's never actually mentioned,
so who knows.
I think saying that the fact that Cecil is depicted largely
as a blonde white guy is problematic
is, I don't know if it's problematic.
But it certainly, I think, says a lot about the Night Vale
fandom and what they expect a leading man
or what they imagine Cecil based upon his voice or surroundings
to look like.
I think it's really exciting and awesome that there are so
many depictions of Cecil where he is a person of color,
but also very interesting that the majority one is that,
like I said, the Tim Gunn looking guy.
Relatedly, I think that the challenges
to normality and maybe more importantly normal
practices within fan cultures are really important and really
interesting, and that this sort of provides a way for people
to cause play or celebrate not as a definitive depiction
of something, but as a kind of signifier for a character.
And I'm really excited to see whether or not
that practice coming from Night Vale
finds its way into other fandoms.
I don't know.
We'll see.
Al in all, very interesting.
And thank you for all of your amazing comments.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work of these faceless women
living in your house.
And instead of the tweet of the week,
you should go and listen to Joseph Fink's interview on NPR.
We'll put a link in the description.