I think this is one of the biggest things that separates introverts and extroverts. Extroverts expend the energy to maintain these weaker relationships, and more willingly participate in the social cues/situations/events that keep them going. The willingness to small talk and sometimes feign interest which can actually jump start a meaningful longterm relationship -- for example let's say someone's child is doing some sport and being busy running them around comes up in small talk -- I find extroverts remember facts like these and use them to deepen or at least keep distanced but mindful relationships whereas introverts wouldn't to start with.
The word "friend" itself takes on different meanings to different groups of people -- especially after the rise of FB -- 1000s of "friends" on a social network is very different from 100s of "friends" you've only met once which is also very different from the ~5 "friends" you see on a daily basis, and much different from 0/1/2 "best" friends who you think you'd do anything for.
I also think it's weird that everyone has to learn these (and other lesson) themselves in their 20s/30s/40s/whenever -- why is there not a compendium of reasonable/decent ways to approach intrapersonal relationships and society in society today? Like a farmer's almanac for human interaction.
[EDIT] - I also think that this is the key difference between sales and engineering orgs. Not that all engineers are introverts or all sales people are extroverts but this choice of expenditure of energy feels crucial to me.
"I also think it's weird that everyone has to learn these (and other lesson) themselves in their 20s/30s/40s/whenever "
I have also wondered about this. And recently was surprised that my kid's school has a multi-year program in which things like this are covered. They call it PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education). It includes age-approriate learnings about relationships, starting in early years with friends and family relationships, what they mean, differences, feelings, etc. It gets repeated each year and expands earlier learnings. Seems very good. I guess it's a UK thing as my kid's school is an international school following the British curriculum.
It's funny how entertaining it is to read seemingly obvious, common sense advice on things I learned "intuitively" (i.e. trial and error as an awkward adolescent) but never heard articulated out loud.
I like your overall point, but disagree here. I actually find a lot of introverts (such as myself) remember MORE minutiae than extroverts because we are more prone to listen than to speak.
We just won't bring it up out of nowhere because we already know how the conversation will go or are not piqued enough by the subject matter to think it warrants a conversation.
"Oh, hows your son doing in soccer?
So great. he won/lost x/y/z games. He's such a n/m/o player and feels r/s/t about it.
I think people are refusing to use the word that perfectly describes the wast majority of modern "friends" - they are acquaintance - people with whom one is friendly but they aren't friends.
Friends help you move.[0]
---
[0] And of course there's "real friends help you move bodies" if we want to look at the hierarchy of "friendships"
> I also think it's weird that everyone has to learn these (and other lesson) themselves in their 20s/30s/40s/whenever -- why is there not a compendium of reasonable/decent ways to approach interpersonal relationships and society in society today? Like a farmer's almanac for human interaction.
The college I went to had a great comm course called "Sex, Relationships, and Communication" and it covered many things in this area. Really should have been a required high school course.
> The word "friend" itself takes on different meanings to different groups of people -- especially after the rise of FB -- 1000s of "friends" on a social network is very different from 100s of "friends" you've only met once which is also very different from the ~5 "friends" you see on a daily basis, and much different from 0/1/2 "best" friends who you think you'd do anything for.
Wait a minute.
Has anyone really consider their 10,100 or 1000 facebook friends as IRL friends ? Do some people really confuse both kinds ?
I think this is more tied to how much people like socializing, not their intro/extroversion.
From my understanding, intro/extroversion is how people like to process information. Introverts like to think through things. Extroverts like to talk it out. These are correlated with other behaviors, but those behaviors aren't the definition of intro/extroversion itself.
I only say this because I know plenty of introverts that do exactly what the parent comment is saying and love it.
"A study from 2018 found that people formed a “casual” friendship after spending 30 hours together."
Of note, when you click on that "study", it's actually a paper on two studies. The first study's methodology relies on participants using Amazon's Mechanical Turk via survey collection, and these participants "were given $.65 for survey completion". Then, the second study's methodology relies on "a Midwest public university, [where] participants were recruited from public speaking courses. To be eligible, participants had to have enrolled in their first semester of school that fall (i.e., freshman, transfer) and have moved to the city within 2 weeks prior to the start of class." There's no mention of incentives for the second study.
I wish the NYT article talked more about the details of these studies and their possible limitations, for instance, with generalizing. Still, I think this is an interesting question. I wonder if there's meta-analysis research done in this area.
well said. I feel like doing an overnight trip with someone (like a camping trip or a roadtrip) generates strong bonds with people you would otherwise not know that well. But it only takes a few months to a year of little to no contact for friendships to disintegrate.
Often times introverted people are brimming (if not full) of empathy, and compassion. The joy they give is the joy they receive. That reward system is personal, internal, and can even be sullied by outside observance.
These people (whom you might have known, or know now) really don't need compliments. In fact, compliments border on uncomfortable. They probably give anonymously.
They put themselves in peoples shoes and embody their difficulty.
Their reward is to help because that effort returns to them in an unspoken and even unnoticed joy.
Having friends, or a social network is definitely a way to create opportunities. But for some people, that isn't necessarily worth the engagement.
A very empathetic person might not want to loosely couple themselves in a social network with anyone else if they feel like they won't be able to offer their finest. It'd be unfair.
They don't need those connections to find joy. They generate their own in compassion.
I eat dinner at the same restaurant almost every Sunday night. I know the waitstaff, the maître d', and the people at the bar. They know about my life and I know about theirs. I have a similar relationship with people at a wine bar near my house.
We don't see each other outside this context, except for the occasional serendipitous run-ins. They are nice, casual friendships that tie me closer to my community.
That kind of community feels less and less common with our AirPods in, heads in our phones, taking Lyft instead of public transit, etc.
This is exactly how I feel about the different coffee shops I frequent. I think it's also the sort of relationships that churches, social clubs, etc. provide. These all fit under the broad umbrella of Third Places [1].
Third Places are critical to the social fabric of a community, and I think they are largely overlooks and underappreciated by people.
Interesting article - all of the referenced studies are about the real world, and the benefits of those interactions I definitely agree with - and yet the author leads with an anecdote about a tweet leading to a job.
I'm less convinced that the claimed benefits of casual networks (feeling connected, for example) accrue to purely online casual relationships.
I would say that just because it's online, doesn't make it any different than someone you only talk to at the "water cooler" or friends of friends you only see at parties.
"We don't use the expression IRL. We say AFK. [...]
We don't like that expression. We say AFK - Away From Keyboard. We think that the internet is for real." - Peter Sunde
Casey Neistat had an interesting take on this in one of his recent videos. He described it as completely fulfilling in all of the components of friendship and community, but without the intimacy, which I think is quite apt. I do believe wholly that casual friendships are almost indistinguishable online as they are in person; however close friendships and relationships on the other hand require an element of intimacy that cannot be fulfilled.
As a millennial I really hate this trend. For instance, most housing groups on facebook now are mostly filled with people just posting about themselves and expect others to come to them with housing options that work. Instead of actually just going through listings to find something that would work for them... It's the most bizarre entitled way to try to flip a sellers market into a buyers market...
You're witnessing long-overdue movements in the direction of the Intention Economy [1] (a riff on the Attention Economy). In fact, the base concepts are not new - it's how companies do their buying, using RFPs. Now that we have computers, why should people have to schlep over listings filled with irrelevant stuff?
But the real problem seems this tendency to use Facebook for everything, when it's really not the best option for anything. Better platforms can provide filtered options automatically, reducing the work for both parties. I really hope FB starts losing its grasp on the web.
I big reason that housing groups are filled with people posting looking for a room, rather than vice verse, is because Facebook offers a terrible search UI for actually finding suitable houses.
I can't filter by location, rent, rooms, etc. etc. I have to instead scroll through dozens of irrelevant posts, then send a message to relevant ones and hope that I'm a suitable housemate and they reply back.
Meanwhile, on websites specifically designed for finding roommates, I can usually search by location, price, rooms, gender requirement (if any), building type (e.g. apartment, house), etc. etc.
...it sounds like you're complaining about the people who are trying to make money from a relationship being the ones to put the work in. If you're renting or selling, it's up to you to put in the legwork.
The smart thing to do is to approach it from both sides. Of course, only people's postings are visible to you. You wouldn't know if they read 100 listings and reached out to several of them.
Back in the day, we called this "networking". Back before Eternal September, so mainly via telephone. I used to spend hours at a time on the phone, seeking information. Basically cycles of cold calling people, getting referrals, and cold calling them.
I found jobs that way. Also preprints. And copies of EPA documents that were under review, or buried for political reasons. I tracked down authors, and got background.
[+] [-] hardwaresofton|7 years ago|reply
The word "friend" itself takes on different meanings to different groups of people -- especially after the rise of FB -- 1000s of "friends" on a social network is very different from 100s of "friends" you've only met once which is also very different from the ~5 "friends" you see on a daily basis, and much different from 0/1/2 "best" friends who you think you'd do anything for.
I also think it's weird that everyone has to learn these (and other lesson) themselves in their 20s/30s/40s/whenever -- why is there not a compendium of reasonable/decent ways to approach intrapersonal relationships and society in society today? Like a farmer's almanac for human interaction.
[EDIT] - I also think that this is the key difference between sales and engineering orgs. Not that all engineers are introverts or all sales people are extroverts but this choice of expenditure of energy feels crucial to me.
[+] [-] geomark|7 years ago|reply
I have also wondered about this. And recently was surprised that my kid's school has a multi-year program in which things like this are covered. They call it PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education). It includes age-approriate learnings about relationships, starting in early years with friends and family relationships, what they mean, differences, feelings, etc. It gets repeated each year and expands earlier learnings. Seems very good. I guess it's a UK thing as my kid's school is an international school following the British curriculum.
[+] [-] laughinghan|7 years ago|reply
Have you seen this? https://www.succeedsocially.com/
It's funny how entertaining it is to read seemingly obvious, common sense advice on things I learned "intuitively" (i.e. trial and error as an awkward adolescent) but never heard articulated out loud.
[+] [-] firstplacelast|7 years ago|reply
I like your overall point, but disagree here. I actually find a lot of introverts (such as myself) remember MORE minutiae than extroverts because we are more prone to listen than to speak.
We just won't bring it up out of nowhere because we already know how the conversation will go or are not piqued enough by the subject matter to think it warrants a conversation.
"Oh, hows your son doing in soccer?
So great. he won/lost x/y/z games. He's such a n/m/o player and feels r/s/t about it.
Ohhh, that's great." End scene.
[+] [-] notyourday|7 years ago|reply
Friends help you move.[0]
---
[0] And of course there's "real friends help you move bodies" if we want to look at the hierarchy of "friendships"
[+] [-] adjkant|7 years ago|reply
The college I went to had a great comm course called "Sex, Relationships, and Communication" and it covered many things in this area. Really should have been a required high school course.
[+] [-] johnchristopher|7 years ago|reply
Wait a minute.
Has anyone really consider their 10,100 or 1000 facebook friends as IRL friends ? Do some people really confuse both kinds ?
[+] [-] cubecul|7 years ago|reply
From my understanding, intro/extroversion is how people like to process information. Introverts like to think through things. Extroverts like to talk it out. These are correlated with other behaviors, but those behaviors aren't the definition of intro/extroversion itself.
I only say this because I know plenty of introverts that do exactly what the parent comment is saying and love it.
[+] [-] hhs|7 years ago|reply
"A study from 2018 found that people formed a “casual” friendship after spending 30 hours together."
Of note, when you click on that "study", it's actually a paper on two studies. The first study's methodology relies on participants using Amazon's Mechanical Turk via survey collection, and these participants "were given $.65 for survey completion". Then, the second study's methodology relies on "a Midwest public university, [where] participants were recruited from public speaking courses. To be eligible, participants had to have enrolled in their first semester of school that fall (i.e., freshman, transfer) and have moved to the city within 2 weeks prior to the start of class." There's no mention of incentives for the second study.
I wish the NYT article talked more about the details of these studies and their possible limitations, for instance, with generalizing. Still, I think this is an interesting question. I wonder if there's meta-analysis research done in this area.
[+] [-] hammock|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chocolatebunny|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quailandquasar|7 years ago|reply
Often times introverted people are brimming (if not full) of empathy, and compassion. The joy they give is the joy they receive. That reward system is personal, internal, and can even be sullied by outside observance.
These people (whom you might have known, or know now) really don't need compliments. In fact, compliments border on uncomfortable. They probably give anonymously.
They put themselves in peoples shoes and embody their difficulty.
Their reward is to help because that effort returns to them in an unspoken and even unnoticed joy.
Having friends, or a social network is definitely a way to create opportunities. But for some people, that isn't necessarily worth the engagement.
A very empathetic person might not want to loosely couple themselves in a social network with anyone else if they feel like they won't be able to offer their finest. It'd be unfair.
They don't need those connections to find joy. They generate their own in compassion.
[+] [-] tyre|7 years ago|reply
We don't see each other outside this context, except for the occasional serendipitous run-ins. They are nice, casual friendships that tie me closer to my community.
That kind of community feels less and less common with our AirPods in, heads in our phones, taking Lyft instead of public transit, etc.
[+] [-] war1025|7 years ago|reply
Third Places are critical to the social fabric of a community, and I think they are largely overlooks and underappreciated by people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
[+] [-] askafriend|7 years ago|reply
This is more important to me personally than becoming friends with waitstaff at the restaurants I go to.
I'm curious what you think of this take.
[+] [-] matwood|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] finnh|7 years ago|reply
I'm less convinced that the claimed benefits of casual networks (feeling connected, for example) accrue to purely online casual relationships.
[+] [-] _emacsomancer_|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hateful|7 years ago|reply
"We don't use the expression IRL. We say AFK. [...] We don't like that expression. We say AFK - Away From Keyboard. We think that the internet is for real." - Peter Sunde
[+] [-] Aromasin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] algaeontoast|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icebraining|7 years ago|reply
But the real problem seems this tendency to use Facebook for everything, when it's really not the best option for anything. Better platforms can provide filtered options automatically, reducing the work for both parties. I really hope FB starts losing its grasp on the web.
[1] https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/intention-economy
[+] [-] toomanybeersies|7 years ago|reply
I can't filter by location, rent, rooms, etc. etc. I have to instead scroll through dozens of irrelevant posts, then send a message to relevant ones and hope that I'm a suitable housemate and they reply back.
Meanwhile, on websites specifically designed for finding roommates, I can usually search by location, price, rooms, gender requirement (if any), building type (e.g. apartment, house), etc. etc.
[+] [-] ashelmire|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benchaney|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirimir|7 years ago|reply
I found jobs that way. Also preprints. And copies of EPA documents that were under review, or buried for political reasons. I tracked down authors, and got background.
[+] [-] awaythrow9|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ryanmarsh|7 years ago|reply
The social sciences are a dumpster fire.
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